Tricycle | Awake in the World

With his silvery mane and doublebreasted suits, Nyogen Senzaki looked more like a businessman than a Buddhist monk. Indeed, in the more than 50 years he spent in California, he learned to live like an American, supporting himself variously as a farm worker, a hotel telephone operator, and a housekeeper. All the while he was deepening the practice he had undertaken at Engaku-ji, the Zen monastery in Kamakura, Japan, where he trained under the Rinzai master Soyen Shaku Roshi. Alone, and far from home, Senzaki undertook the task of realizing Soyen’s dream of bringing Zen to the West.