Two Arrows Zen

Robert A.F. Thurman, one of the most influential American interpreters of Buddhism, died on June 16, 2026, at the age of 84. A scholar, translator, teacher, activist, and longtime student of the Dalai Lama, Thurman helped bring the intellectual and spiritual depth of Tibetan Buddhism into American public life.

Although Thurman was not a Zen teacher, his importance reaches across Buddhist traditions. Buddhism came to the West through many streams: Zen teachers opened zendos, Tibetan lamas established dharma centers, immigrant communities preserved temples, translators rendered texts into English, and scholars helped make Asian Buddhist thought intelligible to Western audiences. Thurman’s life belongs to this larger story of transmission.

Born in New York City in 1941, Thurman’s path to Buddhism began after a serious accident in his early adulthood cost him the sight in one eye and redirected the course of his life. He traveled widely, eventually encountering Tibetan Buddhism and meeting Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, in India. That relationship became one of the defining connections of his life.

In 1965, Thurman became the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama. He later returned his monastic vows, married, raised a family, and entered academic life, but his commitment to Buddhism never became merely scholarly. He remained a practitioner, translator, advocate, and cultural bridge-builder for the rest of his life.

Thurman went on to earn his doctorate from Harvard and later became the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. In that role, he helped establish Buddhist Studies as a serious academic field while also making complex Buddhist philosophy accessible to students and general readers.

His contributions were unusually broad. He translated important Buddhist texts, including the Vimalakirti Sutra, wrote extensively on emptiness, compassion, Ta**ra, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and helped found Tibet House US, an organization dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture in exile. He also became one of the most visible Western advocates for the Dalai Lama and for Tibetan cultural survival.

What made Thurman distinctive was his ability to move between worlds. He could speak as a scholar, activist, storyteller, translator, and practitioner. His teaching often combined rigorous philosophical explanation with humor, urgency, and a deep conviction that Buddhist wisdom had something vital to offer the modern world.

For Zen practitioners, Thurman’s life is a reminder that the Dharma does not enter a culture through one doorway alone. The flourishing of Buddhism in America has depended on many kinds of work: meditation instruction, translation, scholarship, interfaith dialogue, activism, ritual, community-building, and the preservation of endangered traditions.

Thurman’s particular gift was helping Western audiences understand that Buddhism was not simply a religion of meditation techniques or exotic imagery. It was a vast philosophical, ethical, and contemplative tradition capable of addressing suffering, interdependence, compassion, and the nature of reality with extraordinary precision.

In the broader history of Buddhism in the West, Robert Thurman stands among those who helped build the bridge between Asian Buddhist traditions and modern Western life. He did not belong to the Zen lineage, but Zen communities benefited from the same cultural opening he helped create: a world in which Buddhist thought could be studied seriously, practiced sincerely, and engaged as a living tradition.

His legacy is not only in the books he wrote or the institutions he helped build, but in the generations of students, practitioners, and readers who encountered Buddhism more deeply because of his work.

May He have a swift passage to the other shore.

Rest in Peace Robert Thurman

Few figures in the history of American Buddhism embody the spirit of Zen more completely than Nyogen Senzaki. Often called the “First Zen Ancestor of North America,” Senzaki helped introduce Zen Buddhism to generations of Western students during the first half of the twentieth century. Yet unlike many influential religious leaders, he left behind no great monastery, no sprawling institution, and no organization bearing his name. Instead, he left something far more elusive: a way of understanding practice itself.

Senzaki arrived in the United States in the early twentieth century and spent decades teaching Zen under circumstances that were often challenging. Buddhism remained largely unfamiliar to the broader American public. Resources were scarce. Interest was limited. Language and cultural barriers were significant. Many immigrant Buddhist communities faced discrimination and social exclusion. Yet Senzaki continued teaching, not by building permanent institutions, but by meeting people where they were.

Apartments became zendos.

Living rooms became zendos.

Church basements became zendos.

Rented halls became zendos.

Wherever sincere practitioners gathered, practice appeared.

Senzaki called this approach a “Floating Zendo.”

The phrase is deceptively simple. A traditional temple is easy to recognize. It has walls, a roof, an address, a schedule, and a sign out front. A Floating Zendo has none of these things. It appears wherever people gather to sit, study, and awaken together. Then it disappears and reappears somewhere else. The temple moves, but the practice remains.

At first glance, this may seem like a practical solution to a lack of resources. Yet beneath Senzaki’s approach lies a profound Zen question: What is a temple?

Is it the building?

Is it the altar?

Is it the cushions, the statues, or the walls?

Or is a temple simply the place where practice occurs?

For Senzaki, the answer appears clear. The Dharma was never dependent upon architecture. Buildings are useful. Institutions are valuable. Communities need places to gather. But the essence of Buddhism cannot be contained within any structure. The real temple is the practice itself.

This insight would quietly shape the future of Buddhism in America.

Among those influenced by Senzaki was Robert Aitken, who encountered him during the years following World War II. Having first discovered Zen through conversations with R.H. Blyth while imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp, Aitken returned home searching for a deeper understanding of Buddhist practice. Through Senzaki, he encountered a form of Zen that was both deeply traditional and remarkably adaptable. Here was a teacher demonstrating that the Dharma could cross oceans, cultures, and languages without losing its essential character.

That lesson stayed with him.

Years later, after training in Japan with Soen Nakagawa Roshi and Yasutani Haku’un Roshi, Aitken would help establish the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii. While the Diamond Sangha would grow into one of the most influential Zen organizations in the English-speaking world, one can still see traces of Senzaki’s influence running through its foundation: a commitment to serious practice, accessibility for lay practitioners, and a recognition that the Dharma must be able to take root in new cultural soil.

In many ways, the story of Senzaki’s Floating Zendo is the story of Buddhism in the West itself. Long before retreat centers, urban zendos, and established institutions became common, the Dharma survived because a small number of practitioners continued showing up. They gathered wherever they could. They sat together. They practiced together. They carried the teachings forward.

More than a century later, many of the places where Senzaki taught have disappeared. The rented halls are gone. The apartments have changed hands. The meeting rooms have been repurposed. In some cases, there is no visible trace that Zen was ever practiced there at all.

Yet the Dharma remains.

Students taught students.

Communities gave rise to other communities.

The practice continued.

Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of the Floating Zendo.

A building can be lost.

An institution can disappear.

A teacher can die.

But the Dharma was never contained by walls.

The real temple was never the building.

The real temple was the practice itself.

The New York Knicks have finally won a championship.

For many fans, it marks the end of a wait that lasted more than half a century.

But from a Zen perspective, the championship may not be the most interesting part of the story.

The more interesting question is this:

What kept people coming back?

Every season began with hope.

Most seasons ended with disappointment.

Coaches came and went.

Players came and went.

Expectations rose and fell.

Yet the fans returned.

Year after year.

Decade after decade.

Not because victory was guaranteed.

Because showing up had become part of who they were.

Zen practice often looks much the same.

You sit.

You get distracted.

You begin again.

You have a good day.

You have a difficult day.

You begin again.

You have a breakthrough.

You lose it.

You begin again.

Most days, nothing spectacular happens.

The practice is not in reaching some future destination.

The practice is in returning.

Again and again.

One breath.

One sitting period.

One season.

One game.

One life.

The championship matters.

The joy is real.

The celebration is deserved.

But from a Zen perspective, it is not the trophy that is most interesting.

It is the decades of returning.

The thousands of games.

The seasons of hope and disappointment.

The willingness to begin again.

In Zen, we sometimes call this practice.

Knicks fans might simply call it being a fan.

Few individuals played a more important role in the development of Western Zen than Robert Aitken Roshi. While many practitioners recognize his name as the founder of the Diamond Sangha, his broader contribution lies in helping shape a form of Zen practice that could flourish outside of Asia while remaining grounded in the depth and rigor of traditional training.

Aitken’s path to Zen began during World War II, when, as a civilian prisoner of war, he encountered the British scholar R.H. Blyth. Their conversations about haiku, Japanese literature, impermanence, and Zen sparked a lifelong interest in Buddhism and ultimately altered the course of his life.

Yet the encounter with Blyth was only the beginning.

When the war ended, Aitken returned home carrying more questions than answers. Blyth had introduced him to Zen literature and philosophy, but Aitken wanted to understand the living practice from which those teachings emerged.

His search eventually brought him into contact with Nyogen Senzaki, one of the earliest Japanese Zen teachers to establish a presence in the United States. Senzaki’s teaching style left a lasting impression. Rather than building large institutions, Senzaki often referred to his community as a “floating zendo,” teaching wherever students gathered. Through Senzaki, Aitken encountered a form of Zen that was both deeply traditional and remarkably adaptable—a lesson that would later shape his own approach to practice and community.

Still, Aitken sought deeper training.

In the years that followed, he traveled repeatedly to Japan, immersing himself in formal Zen practice. There he studied with Soen Nakagawa Roshi of Ryutakuji, one of the great Rinzai masters of the twentieth century. Nakagawa was known for combining rigorous Zen training with poetry, calligraphy, and a spirit of openness that appealed to many Western students. Aitken also trained with Yasutani Haku’un Roshi, whose emphasis on intensive zazen and koan practice would significantly influence the development of Zen in the West.

These experiences provided Aitken with something rare. He had encountered Zen through literature with Blyth, through early American practice with Senzaki, and through rigorous monastic training in Japan with Nakagawa and Yasutani. By the late 1950s, he occupied a unique position between cultures—deeply rooted in traditional Zen while intimately familiar with the realities of Western life.

When Robert and Anne Aitken founded the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1959, they brought all of these influences together.

The Diamond Sangha was not intended to be a copy of a Japanese monastery. Nor was it an attempt to dilute Zen for Western audiences. Instead, it became a place where authentic Zen practice could take root in a new cultural environment while remaining faithful to its essential principles.

At the time, Zen Buddhism was still relatively unfamiliar to most Americans. While a handful of teachers and communities had begun establishing roots, the question remained: How could an ancient Asian tradition become a living practice within Western culture?

The Diamond Sangha became one of the places where that question was explored most successfully.

Aitken remained deeply committed to the rigor of traditional Zen training. Meditation, sesshin, koan practice, ethical conduct, and direct teacher-student relationships remained central to the path. Yet he also recognized that most Western practitioners were not monks.

They were parents.

Teachers.

Artists.

Professionals.

People living ordinary lives.

Aitken believed that awakening was fully available within those conditions.

This seemingly simple insight would become one of his most important contributions to Buddhism in the West.

Under his guidance, the Diamond Sangha demonstrated that profound Zen practice could flourish among lay practitioners without sacrificing depth or authenticity. Students engaged in intensive meditation, koan study, and retreats while remaining active participants in family life and society. The model helped establish a pattern that would later become common throughout Western Buddhism.

The Diamond Sangha also helped make Zen more accessible to Western audiences. Practice was conducted primarily in English. Classical Buddhist texts were translated, discussed, and studied. Students were encouraged to engage both direct experience and scholarly inquiry. The result was a community that honored traditional forms while allowing the Dharma to speak within a new cultural context.

Its influence spread far beyond Hawaii.

Through Aitken and his successors, the Diamond Sangha became one of the most influential Zen networks in the English-speaking world. Teachers trained within the tradition established sanghas throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Many contemporary Zen practitioners can trace some aspect of their lineage, training, or influence back to the work of the Diamond Sangha.

Aitken’s contribution extended beyond institutional growth.

He was among the first major Western Zen teachers to consistently engage questions of peace, militarism, environmental responsibility, and social justice. Long before the phrase “Engaged Buddhism” became common, Aitken argued that meditation and compassion could not be separated. Practice on the cushion had to find expression in the world.

In this sense, he helped create a distinctly Western expression of Zen—one that remained rooted in traditional training while responding to contemporary concerns.

Today, it is easy to take many of these developments for granted. English-language Zen centers are common. Serious lay practice is common. Women teachers are common. Discussions of social responsibility and Buddhist ethics are common.

In the 1950s and 1960s, however, much of this remained uncertain.

The Diamond Sangha helped demonstrate that Zen could cross cultures without losing its depth.

Looking back, it is difficult to overstate the significance of Aitken’s journey. A chance encounter with R.H. Blyth during wartime imprisonment led to study with Nyogen Senzaki, training under Soen Nakagawa and Yasutani Roshi, and ultimately the founding of one of the most influential Zen communities in the Western world.

Robert Aitken did not simply help bring Zen to the West.

He helped create the conditions through which Zen could become at home here.

More than sixty-five years after the founding of the Diamond Sangha, that may remain his most enduring legacy. The story of Robert Aitken Roshi is not merely the story of a teacher or an institution. It is the story of how an ancient tradition crossed an ocean, encountered a new culture, and found a way to take root while remaining true to its deepest principles.

As we approach the 109th anniversary of the birth of Robert Aitken Roshi on June 19, it is worth reflecting on one of the most remarkable origin stories in the history of American Buddhism.

Many practitioners first encounter Zen through a meditation hall, a retreat, a book, or a teacher. Robert Aitken’s introduction came under far different circumstances. He encountered Zen not in a temple or monastery, but in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

Born in 1917, Aitken came of age during a period of profound global upheaval. As a young man, he possessed a broad intellectual curiosity and a deep interest in literature, language, and culture. In 1941, while living in Guam, his life changed dramatically when Japanese forces invaded the island in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Captured and interned as a civilian prisoner of war, Aitken entered a world defined by uncertainty, confinement, and hardship. It was there that he met the person who would alter the course of his life: the British scholar and educator Reginald Horace Blyth.

Today, R.H. Blyth is remembered as one of the most important interpreters of Zen and haiku for Western audiences. Yet when Aitken met him, Blyth was not a famous author or scholar. He was simply another prisoner.

The image is striking.

A prison camp.

A world at war.

Barbed wire, uncertainty, and confinement.

And in the midst of it, conversations about Bashō, poetry, awareness, impermanence, and the teachings of Zen.

Blyth shared his love of Japanese literature and Zen thought with the younger Aitken. What began as conversations between two prisoners gradually became something much deeper. Years later, Aitken would refer to Blyth as his first Zen teacher, despite the fact that Blyth was not a formal Zen master.

That detail is worth pausing over.

In Buddhism, we often speak of transmission as something that occurs between teacher and student. Yet the person who first opens the gate is not always the person who eventually walks us through it. Sometimes a single conversation plants a seed that changes the course of a life.

When the war ended, Aitken did not leave those conversations behind. Instead, they became the beginning of a lifelong commitment to Buddhist practice.

He traveled to Japan and undertook formal training with some of the most influential Zen teachers of the twentieth century, including Soen Nakagawa Roshi and Yasutani Haku’un Roshi. Through years of study, zazen, koan practice, and intensive training, he emerged as one of the pioneering figures in the transmission of Zen to the West.

In 1959, Aitken and his wife Anne co-founded the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu, Hawaii. What began as a small community would eventually become one of the most influential Zen organizations in the English-speaking world. Through its teachers, students, and affiliated centers, the Diamond Sangha helped shape the development of Zen throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Looking back, it is difficult to overstate the significance of those early conversations with Blyth. Through Aitken, their influence would reach thousands of practitioners across multiple generations. The transmission line that passed through a prisoner-of-war camp became part of the larger story of Buddhism’s journey from Asia to the modern West.

Yet perhaps the deepest lesson of Aitken’s story lies elsewhere.

Buddhist practice is often imagined as something pursued only when conditions are favorable—when life is quiet, stable, and under control. Aitken’s experience suggests otherwise.

Like the Buddha himself, whose spiritual journey began through encounters with sickness, old age, and death, Aitken’s path emerged from confrontation with suffering. War, imprisonment, uncertainty, and loss became the conditions through which a deeper question revealed itself.

His story echoes a truth that runs throughout Buddhist history:

Awakening does not wait for ideal circumstances.

The Dharma has appeared in monasteries and marketplaces, mountain hermitages and crowded cities, refugee camps and prisons. It emerges wherever human beings are willing to look deeply into the nature of their experience.

For Robert Aitken Roshi, that journey began behind barbed wire.

From that unlikely beginning emerged one of the most important teachers in the history of American Zen.

Sometimes the path finds us where we least expect it.

On June 14, 1899, Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan.

Today, Kawabata is remembered as one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century and as the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1968. His achievement marked a significant moment in the global recognition of Japanese literature and culture.

Although not a Zen teacher or Buddhist scholar, Kawabata’s work is often associated with qualities that have long been linked to Japanese Buddhist aesthetics: simplicity, impermanence, restraint, attentiveness, and an appreciation for the subtle beauty of ordinary experience.

His novels emerged from a cultural landscape shaped by centuries of Buddhist thought, classical poetry, tea ceremony, landscape painting, and contemplative practice. Rather than presenting philosophical arguments, Kawabata explored themes of transience, memory, solitude, and beauty through carefully observed moments and spare, evocative prose.

In his Nobel Prize lecture, Japan, the Beautiful and Myself, Kawabata reflected extensively on the influence of Zen monks, Buddhist poetry, and traditional Japanese arts. The address remains one of the most important statements by a modern Japanese writer on the relationship between culture, spirituality, and artistic expression.

Works such as Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and The Old Capital introduced generations of Western readers to a sensibility in which beauty is often inseparable from impermanence. The changing seasons, a fleeting encounter, a tea bowl, a snowfall, or a passing glance become occasions for reflection on the ephemeral nature of human experience.

Kawabata’s contribution to the transmission of Asian contemplative traditions is therefore subtle but significant. Alongside figures such as D.T. Suzuki, who introduced Zen through scholarship and translation, Kawabata helped acquaint Western audiences with the aesthetic and cultural world from which many Buddhist traditions emerged.

More than a century after his birth, his work continues to remind readers that attention itself can become a form of contemplation, and that the ordinary moments of life often reveal their deepest significance precisely because they do not last.

In this sense, Kawabata’s literature remains a quiet invitation to encounter impermanence not as a problem to be solved, but as one of the conditions that makes beauty possible.

On June 11, 1979, the Cambridge Buddhist Association dedicated its meditation center at 75 Sparks Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Initially, the inauguration of a meditation center may seem like a small event — a structure opens, cushions are arranged, practitioners assemble, and practice commences.

However, this anniversary signifies a significant chapter in the history of Buddhism's establishment in America.

The origins of the Cambridge Buddhist Association can be traced back to 1957, when a group of practitioners inspired by the works of D.T. Suzuki, Shinichi Hisamatsu, and local supporters John and Elsie Mitchell endeavored to establish a venue where Western students could directly engage in Buddhist practice. During a period when Zen was predominantly unfamiliar beyond immigrant communities and specific academic circles, the Association emerged as one of the earliest enduring Buddhist institutions in New England.

The notable figures associated with its history read like a roster of early American Buddhism luminaries.

D.T. Suzuki’s publications introduced numerous Western readers to Zen and facilitated the creation of an intellectual bridge between East and West. Shinichi Hisamatsu, a philosopher, scholar, and Zen practitioner, promoted a vision of Buddhism capable of resonating with modern Western audiences without sacrificing its profundity or authenticity. The first president of the Association was Shunryu Suzuki, who later founded the San Francisco Zen Center and became one of the most influential Zen teachers in American history.

Long before Zen centers proliferated across American cities, individuals were quietly laying the groundwork for what would develop into a flourishing Buddhist landscape.

The dedication of the Sparks Street center in 1979 represented more than a mere opening of a building; it symbolized a nationwide transition. Buddhism was evolving from informal gatherings in living rooms, rented halls, and small study groups into enduring institutions capable of nurturing future generations of practitioners.

In the same year, the center embarked on a new chapter under the leadership of Maurine Stuart Roshi, a disciple of Soen Nakagawa Roshi and one of the pioneering women to emerge as a prominent Zen teacher in North America. Affectionately known as “Ma Roshi,” she transformed the Cambridge Buddhist Association into one of the most respected Zen practice centers along the East Coast. Through her teachings, the influence of Soen Nakagawa—and consequently the Rinzai lineage of Hakuin and Torei—reached a new generation of American practitioners.

Presently, the building at Sparks Street no longer functions as a Buddhist center. Nevertheless, the narrative of the Cambridge Buddhist Association underscores that the history of Buddhism in America was not solely constructed by renowned teachers or popular books.

Rather, it was established by communities — individuals willing to open doors, organize meditation halls, support sanghas, and create spaces where practice persists.

Forty-seven years after the dedication of the Sparks Street center, the physical structure itself may have vanished. However, the Dharma persists. The lineage endures. And the seeds sown by early practitioners continue to yield fruit across the landscape of American Buddhism today.

One of the great untold stories of Buddhism in America is that it did not begin with the Beat Generation.

Before Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums. Before Alan Watts became a household name. Before Suzuki Roshi, Trungpa Rinpoche, and the Zen centers that would emerge across the country, there were already thriving Buddhist communities in the United States.

Many of them were built by Japanese immigrants and their American-born children.

By the 1930s, Buddhist temples could be found throughout the West Coast and Hawaii. Priests taught the Dharma, families gathered for services, children attended Buddhist Sunday schools, and communities were beginning the long process of integrating Buddhism into American life.

Then came World War II.

Following Executive Order 9066, more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated. Buddhist priests were often among the first arrested, viewed with suspicion because of their religion and cultural ties to Japan. Temples were shuttered, property was confiscated or abandoned, and communities that had taken decades to build were disrupted almost overnight.

Had this not occurred, Buddhism might have become a visible part of American religious life much earlier than it did.

Yet what happened next is one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of American Buddhism.

Inside the camps, people rebuilt their spiritual lives from almost nothing.

Makeshift temples appeared in mess halls, recreation buildings, and barracks. Altars were fashioned from scrap lumber. Buddhist services were held behind barbed wire and under the watch of armed guards. Priests continued teaching. Children continued learning. Communities continued gathering.

At places such as Heart Mountain, Topaz, Manzanar, Tule Lake, and other incarceration camps, the Dharma survived not because conditions were favorable, but because people refused to let it disappear.

Some Zen teachers, including figures such as Nyogen Senzaki, found themselves practicing and teaching within the camp system. Senzaki famously referred to one camp gathering as a “floating zendo,” reminding students that awakening does not depend upon a permanent temple. Wherever sincere practice appears, the Dharma can be found.

The irony is striking.

The Buddhism that would later capture the imagination of many Americans often arrived through writers, scholars, artists, and seekers such as D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

But Buddhism was already here.

Thousands of Japanese-American Buddhists had been practicing, teaching, and building communities long before most Americans had ever heard the word “Zen.”

In fact, some scholars argue that the incarceration period helped shape the future of American Buddhism. Different Buddhist traditions were forced into closer contact. English-language services became more common. Communities adapted to circumstances that demanded resilience, creativity, and flexibility. The Dharma survived, but it also evolved.

Today it is worth asking:

What would American Buddhism look like if those communities had been allowed to flourish uninterrupted?

Would Buddhist temples have become part of the American religious landscape decades earlier?

Would we know the names of Japanese-American Buddhist pioneers as readily as we know Kerouac, Watts, or Ginsberg?

We cannot know.

But we can remember.

The history of Buddhism in America did not begin in coffeehouses, universities, or the counterculture.

It was already here.

And one of its greatest achievements was surviving behind barbed wire.