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. 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 Sometime during this period he was interviewed by the US Army but not drafted due to lingering allegiances to Japan. 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. at 63 West 70th Street (originally with just four members). Here he offered
sanzen interviews and gave
Dharma talks, also working on various translations of important Buddhist texts. 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). 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" The Buddhist Society of America underwent a name change following his death in 1945, becoming the First Zen Institute of America. ==Teaching style==