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Sokei-an
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.
==Biography==
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.〔Stirling, 31-35〕 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.〔Ford, 66-67〕 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.〔Lopez〕 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.〔〔
Sokei-an then moved to Oregon without Tomé and Shintaro to work for a short while, being rejoined by them in Seattle Washington (where his wife gave birth to their second child, Seiko,〔 a girl). In Seattle, Sasaki worked as a picture frame maker〔 and wrote various articles and essays for Japanese publications such as ''Chuo Koron'' and ''Hokubei Shinpo''. He traveled the Oregon and Washington countrysides selling subscriptions to ''Hokubei Shinpo''.〔 His wife, who had become pregnant again, moved back to Japan in 1913 to raise their children. Over the next few years he made a living doing various jobs, when in 1916 he moved to Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York, where he encountered the poet and magus Aleister Crowley.〔The International (# 2 and 4, 1918 ) ed. George Sylvester Viereck〕 Sometime during this period he unsuccessfully tried to join the U.S. army.〔 In New York he worked both as a janitor and a translator for Maxwell Bodenheim. He also began to write poetry during his free time.〔 He returned to Japan in 1920 to continue his koan studies, first under Soyen Shaku and then with Sokatsu.〔 In 1922 he returned to the United States and in 1924 or 1925 began giving talks on Buddhism at the Orientalia Bookstore on E. 58th Street in New York City, having received lay teaching credentials from Sokatsu.() In 1928 he received inka from Sokatsu in Japan, the "final seal" of approval in the Rinzai school.〔 Then, on May 11, 1930, Sokei-an and some American students founded the Buddhist Society of America, subsequently incorporated in 1931,〔Prebish, 10〕 at 63 West 70th Street (originally with just four members).〔Smith, Novack; 150-151〕 Here he offered sanzen interviews and gave Dharma talks, also working on various translations of important Buddhist texts.〔 He made part of his living by sculpting Buddhist images and repairing art for Tiffany's.〔Stirling, 20〕
In 1938 his future wife, Ruth Fuller Everett, began studying under him and received her Buddhist name (Eryu); her daughter, Eleanor, was then the wife of Alan Watts (who also studied under Sokei-an that same year).〔Tweti〕 In 1941 Ruth purchased an apartment at 124 E. 65th Street in New York City, which also served as living quarters for Sokei-an and became the new home for the Buddhist Society of America (opened on December 6). Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sokei-an was arrested by the FBI as an "enemy alien"〔 taken to Ellis Island on June 15 and then interned at a camp in Fort Meade, Maryland on October 2, 1942 (where he suffered from high blood pressure and several strokes).() He was released from the internment camp on August 17, 1943 following the pleas of his students and returned to the Buddhist Society of America in New York City. In 1944 he divorced his wife in Little Rock, Arkansas, with whom he had been separated for several years. Soon after, on July 10, 1944, Sokei-an married Ruth Fuller Sasaki in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Sokei-an died on May 17, 1945 after years of bad health.〔 His ashes are interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.〔Stirling, 253-254〕 The Buddhist Society of America underwent a name change following his death in 1945, becoming the First Zen Institute of America.〔Miller, 163〕
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