Zen was introduced in the United States at the end of the 19th century by Japanese teachers who went to America to serve groups of Japanese immigrants and become acquainted with the American culture. After World War II, interest from non-Asian Americans grew rapidly. This resulted in the commencement of an indigenous American Zen tradition which also influences the larger western (Zen) world.
History
Late 19th century – The Parliament of Religions
In 1893, the World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago. It was a landmark event for the introduction of Asian religions to a western audience. Although most of the delegates to the Parliament were Christians of various denominations, the Buddhist nations of China, Japan, Thailand, and Sri Lanka sent representatives.
In the January 1844, issue of The Dial magazine, the publication of the New England Transcendentalist Club, Henry David Thoreau, one of the great originals of the American Renaissance and author of Walden, introduced a translation of the Parable of the Medicinal Herbs chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the core and heart of all Buddhist teachings, to the American public.
Japanese Rinzai was represented by Soyen Shaku, the teacher of D.T. Suzuki. Other Buddhist delegates included Zenshiro Noguchi, a Japanese translator; Anagarika Dharmapala, a Sri Lankan associate of H. S. Olcott and the founder of Maha Bodhi Society; and Chandradat Chudhadharn, a brother of King Chulalongkorn of Thailand. Paul Carus also attended as an observer. The Parliament provided the first major public forum from which Buddhists could address the Western public; Dharmapala was particularly effective because he spoke fluent English.
Early 20th century – early Zen teachers
(Rinzai) Zen Buddhism was the first imported Buddhist trend to put down roots in North America. Though Soyen Shaku, Nyogen Senzaki and Sokei-an, were among the first to reach a western audience, the single most important influence was D.T. Suzuki, who popularized Zen with his extensive writings. Early converts included Ruth Fuller Sasaki.
Soyen Shaku
In 1893, Soyen Shaku was invited to speak at the World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago. He made the trip to what was then considered the "barbaric" United States, although his associates "discouraged him from attending".
In 1905, a wealthy American couple invited Shaku to stay in the United States. For nine months he lived near San Francisco, where he established a small zendo in the home of Alexander and Ida Russell and gave regular zazen lessons. Shaku became the first Zen Buddhist priest to teach in North America.
Nyogen Senzaki
Shaku was soon followed by Nyogen Senzaki, a young monk from his home temple in Japan. Senzaki briefly worked for the Russells and then as a hotel porter, manager and eventually, owner. James Ford says Senzaki referred to himself as a "mushroom": no deep root, no branches, no flowers and "probably no seeds". In 1922 Senzaki rented a hall and gave a talk in English on a paper by Shaku; his periodic talks at different locations became known as the "floating zendo". A teacher of Robert Aitken, Senzaki established an itinerant sitting hall from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where he taught until his death in 1958.
Sokatsu Shaku and Sokei-an
Another Zen teacher named Sokatsu Shaku, one of Shaku's senior students, arrived in late 1906 and founded a Zen meditation center called Ryomokyo-kai. Although he stayed only a few years and had limited contact with the English-speaking public, one of his disciples, Shigetsu Sasaki, made a permanent home in America. Sasaki, better known under his monastic name Sokei-an, spent a few years wandering the west coast of the US. At one point he lived among American Indians near Seattle, and reached New York City in 1916. After completing his training and being ordained in 1928, he returned to New York to teach. In 1931, his small group incorporated as the Buddhist Society of America; it was later renamed the First Zen Institute of America. By the late 1930s, one of his most active supporters was Ruth Fuller Everett, an American socialite and the mother-in-law of Alan Watts. Shortly before Sokei-an's death in 1945, he and Everett would wed, at which point she took the name Ruth Fuller Sasaki.