Sokei-an
| Sokei-an Sasaki | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Religion | Zen Buddhism |
| School | Rinzai |
| Education | Imperial Academy of Art (Tokyo) California Institute of Art |
| Personal | |
| Born | 1882 Japan |
| Died | May 17, 1945 (age 63) |
| Spouse | Tomé Sasaki Ruth Fuller Sasaki |
| Children | Shintaro Seiko Shioko |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | Buddhist Society of America |
| Title | Roshi |
| Predecessor | Sokatsu Shaku |
| Religious career | |
| Teacher | Sokatsu Shaku Soyen Shaku |
| Website | www.firstzen.org/ |
Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki (佐々木 指月 (曹渓庵); 1882 – May 17, 1945), born Yeita Sasaki (佐々木 栄多), was a Japanese Rinzai roshi who founded the Buddhist Society of America (now the First Zen Institute of America) in New York City in 1930. Influential in the growth of Zen Buddhism in the United States, Sokei-an was one of the first Japanese masters to live and teach in America. In 1944 he married American Ruth Fuller Everett. He died in May 1945 without leaving behind a Dharma heir. One of his better known students was Alan Watts, who studied under him briefly in the late 1930s.
Sokei-an was born in Japan in 1882 as Yeita Sasaki. He was raised by his father, a Shinto priest, and his father's wife, though his birth mother was his father's concubine. Beginning at age four, his father taught him Chinese and soon had him reading Confucian texts. Following the death of his father when he was fifteen, he became an apprentice sculptor and came to study under Japan's renowned Koun Takamura at the Imperial Academy of Art in Tokyo. While in school he began his study of Rinzai Zen under Sokatsu Shaku, (a Dharma heir of Soyen Shaku), graduating from the academy in 1905. Following graduation he was drafted by the Japanese Imperial Army and served briefly during the Russo-Japanese War on the border of Manchuria. Sasaki was discharged when the war ended shortly after in 1906, and soon married his first wife, Tomé, a fellow student of Sokatsu. The newlyweds followed Sokatsu to San Francisco, California that year as part of a delegation of fourteen. The couple soon had their first child, Shintaro. In California with the hope of establishing a Zen community, the group farmed strawberries in Hayward, California with little success. Sasaki then studied painting under Richard Partington at the California Institute of Art, where he met Nyogen Senzaki. By 1910 the delegation's Zen community had proven unsuccessful. All members of the original fourteen, with the exception of Sasaki, made return trips back to Japan.
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