Nyogen Senzaki - Floating Zendo

Floating Zendo

In 1919 Nyogen received word that Shaku had died back in Japan. Around this time, he compiled the famous book 101 Zen Stories. In 1922 Nyogen scraped together enough money to rent out a hall and lecture on Zen. He continued this, moving from place to place throughout the city teaching about Zen meditation. By 1927 he had developed a small following with his "floating zendo." His only material whilst going from hall to hall was a picture of Manjusri Bodhisattva. Eventually, along with the help of some students, he managed to rent an apartment in San Francisco where he would hold practice. During this period he even had a guest speaker from Japan come to lecture, Gyudo Furukawa.

Nyogen moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, where he again rented out an apartment and continued the so-called "floating zendo" model. Soon Senzaki became familiar with the community of Japanese immigrants there. In 1932 he befriended a Japanese woman named Kin Tanahashi, who had a mentally retarded boy. Nyogen cared for the boy in exchange for room and board. It was Mrs. Tanahashi who introduced Nyogen to the haiku poetry of Soen Nakagawa. Senzaki was extremely impressed with these poems, so he contacted Soen and they began corresponding with one another.

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 L. Lewis who would later be known as a prominent Sufi teacher in the line of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Zen teacher in the lineage of Korean Zen Master Dr. Kyung-Bo Seo. 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 at 81 years old. There are several versions of his "last words," one of the most compelling was "Remember the Dharma! Remember the Dharma! Remember the Dharma!"