Sokei-an Sasaki

Sokei-an Sasaki
Religion	Zen Buddhism
School	Rinzai
Education	Imperial Academy of Art (Tokyo) California Institute of Art
Personal
Born	March 10, 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); March 10, 1882 – May 17, 1945), born Yeita Sasaki (佐々木 栄多), was a Japanese Rinzai monk 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. Watts stayed for two weeks as a student of Sokei-an [1] 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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