Nyogen Senzaki

Nyogen Senzaki

Nyogen Senzaki 千崎如幻 (18??-1958) was a Japanese Zen monk and one of the first modern Zen teachers in North America.

Though his early life is shrouded in mystery, Senzaki is believed to have been born on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia, to a Japanese mother and speculatively to a Russian or Chinese father. The tradition has it an itinerant Buddhist monk discovered the infant near the frozen body of his mother and returned with the baby to Japan. What is certain is that he was adopted by a carpenter named Senzaki, who lived in Aomori Prefecture. The origin of his given name "Nyogen" (Japanese for "like a dream") is not entirely clear, although he most likely was given it or adopted it as a Buddhist name around the turn of the century.

Senzaki was a precocious youth and a consummate scholar. By the age of twenty, he had read the entire Tripitaka in Chinese. In addition he was an accomplished poet. Senzaki also developed an extensive knowledge early Zen koan literature. While it appears he was originally ordained a Soto monastic, he is today closely associated with the renowned Rinzai master Soyen Shaku. In 1905, he accompanied Soyen Shaku to San Francisco, and from that time spent the rest of his life in America. He quickly learned English and over the years translated and commented on many traditional Zen writings. These would be the first authentic presentations of Zen for many Americans and other Westerners.

Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Senzaki was among the tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans to be relocated to internment camps. He spent the duration of the war in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

At the conclusion of the war, Senzaki moved what he called his "Floating Zendo" to Los Angeles. While making his living in a number of ways he devoted his passion for the rest of his life to teaching Zen. Among his students at this time were Robert Aitken, who would become one of the most significant of modern Western Zen teachers and Samuel Lewis who would later be known as a prominent Sufi teacher in the line of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Also, Senzaki maintained a long-term correspondence with Soen Nakagawa, an unconventional young monk practicing in Japan, who would go on to become one of the most prominent Rinzai Zen teachers to come West.

Senzaki died on May 7, 1958. There are several versions of his "last words," one of the most compelling were "Remember the Dharma! Remember the Dharma