Ruth Fuller Sasaki: “Zen Pioneer”

Joanne Freeman: As the government labeled Buddhists a threat to national security during World War Two, one woman sough to bridge the divide between the Buddhist East and the American West. Her name was Ruth Fuller Sasaki. She was the first Westerner and woman to be named priest of a Rinzai Zen Buddhist temple.

Isabel Stirling: It still is astounding to me, because it probably won’t even happen again. It was a first and only kind of situation.

Joanne Freeman: This is Isabel Stirling. She wrote a biography about Ruth Fuller Sasaki called Zen Pioneer. From the 1930s through the ’60, Sterling says Ruth helped lay the foundation for zen in America by creating Buddhist institutes, supporting zen teachers, and translating numerous Buddhist texts into English.

Isabel Stirling: She was not a university person, and yet she put together a translation team of some of the most brilliant scholars in that area. It was this interesting combination of they were young men, and it was right after the war, and they were interested in the topic. She had of course Gary Snyder was working with her on the translation team, and her daughter had married Alan Watts, so she was passionate and she had the resources to hire them. She was at the center hub of people interested in Zen Buddhism coming to Japan and then trying to get people in Japan who were Zen Buddhist teachers interested in coming to the U.S.

Ruth F. Sasaki: For myself I believe that zen practice is one of the most remarkable religious disciplines men have devised, and that the fruits of the practice are beyond price. Therefore though real zen students may be few, for those few it seems to me important that this discipline be preserved and made available.

Joanne Freeman: Though she spent most of her life promoting Buddhism’s humble practices, Ruth actually came from less than humble beginnings. She grew up in Chicago in a well-to-do family who sent Ruth as a young woman across Europe to study piano and foreign languages. Ruth’s life started to change course in her 20s after she visited an eccentric country club outside New York City.

Isabel Stirling: There was a place in Nyack, New York called the Clarkstown Country Club, were people like herself who wanted a retreat and a rest could go. It was a place that wasn’t just a retreat or a country club. It was a place started by Pierre Bernard. He was a Eastern mystic interested in yoga in particular and started this place as a rest and healing place, but also as a country club. They had elephants. This place is incredible. He had a huge library, 7,000 books or so, on Sanskrit and Eastern philosophies.

Joanne Freeman: After she absorbed these material, Ruth ventured to Kyoto, Japan to explore Zen Buddhism through meditation.

Isabel Stirling: She rented a house on the Kamo River, and every day she would go, and a zen master had a completely little private temple in his compound where she would sit all day at specified intervals and then go home again.

Joanne Freeman: She kept doing this for weeks, going to her own little space to meditate every day, while all of the monks sat in the meditation hall called the [Zendo 00:27:33], until one day the zen master invited her to join them, much to the chagrin of the male monks, who were skeptical of a woman and a foreigner being invited into the Zendo.

Isabel Stirling: She went over and got settled on it and sat very quietly and had good posture and then went back home. They said, “Oh, that was so good. You can come back another night.” Pretty soon they said, “Okay, you’re serious. You can come sit in the meditation hall.” A little bit later I thought it was funny, because she said, one night during these intensive weeks, the sitting went on for quite long hours, and one night she said the zen master, the Roshi, was bellowing and making lots of noise, and she had no idea what he was saying to the monks. It turned out he was saying, “You’re all lazy. You’re going to have to sit all night.” All she knew is they didn’t have a break. At the end of that period they had to carry her off the [tahn 00:28:39], which is a bench where all the cushions are sat, because her legs were completely paralyzed from all the sitting.

Joanne Freeman: Despite her temporary paralysis, Ruth regarded this time meditating in the temple as:

Ruth F. Sasaki: The most completely satisfactory time I have ever had in my life. Under any circumstances, sitting in a Zendo is wonderful. The big quiet room, the dim light, the faint smell of coarse incense, the cold, fresh air, the sounds of the night coming from a distance, passing voices, the throb of a Nichiren drum, the notes of a flute, the Chinese noodle man’s whistle, all melt into you. Sometime I hope you all know the experience.

Joanne Freeman: After her sojourn in Japan, Ruth returned to the United States and began to study with a man she would eventually marry, Sokei-an Sasaki. He was one of the first zen teachers to live and teach in the United States. Ruth decided to buy a brownstone in New York City and use it as the headquarters for Sokei-an’s burgeoning group, the Buddhist Society of America. They opened the space on December 6th, 1941. The next day was Pearl Harbor.

Isabel Stirling: They realized that the FBI was watching them from across the street. They could see the people come and go. They were under observation. She was interviewed. Sokei-an was interviewed, and then he was taken to Ellis Island on June 15th of 1942, and then interned at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Joanne Freeman: Even with Sokei-an detained and the U.S. government casting a threatening cloud of Buddhism, Ruth continued the work of the Buddhist Society of America. For the next two years she lobbied to get Sokei-an released from the internment camp. She succeeded in 1943, but by then Sokei-an’s health was deteriorating.

Isabel Stirling: They were married in 1944, and a year later he died. Part of what influenced the rest of her life was he wanted her to go back to Japan, he wanted her to find another zen teacher for the group. He just wanted her to continue the work.

Ruth F. Sasaki: The problem of how to get the true line of zen teaching transplanted into America in the shortest possible time is with me night and day. I feel its speedy accomplishment is imperative, or zen may be lost to humanity.

Joanne Freeman: Ruth returned to Kyoto, Japan and got to work recruiting a new zen teacher to take Sokei-an’s place. During her time in Kyoto, she also put together a research team that translated several Buddhist texts, while publishing her own insights on Buddhism. Meanwhile, she traveled around the United States, giving lectures to scholars and nonacademics about her Buddhist explorations. Finally in 1958 she was ordained as the first Westerner and woman to be a priest of a Rinzai Zen temple in Kyoto.

Isabel Stirling: The actual event of that did break barriers. At first she resisted it, because she said, “I don’t want to go to all those meetings and I don’t really want to be a priestess of this and have to do all the things that are traditionally expected.” She resisted it a little bit, but she realized that the event of having that happen would give it an authenticity that would help her in her goal of getting more recognition from the zen teachers in Japan to maybe want to come and do more in the U.S.

Joanne Freeman: Ruth Fuller Sasaki died of a sudden heart attack in 1967, just shy of her 75th birthday. Sterling says Ruth’s work and dedication helped ignite a passion for Zen Buddhism in a Western audience that continues to grow today.

Isabel Stirling: She saw that it was the long view, not the short view, that would matter. It’s like Gary Snyder said recently, the early history of Zen Buddhism to the West is still in its beginning stages. We look at it and say, “Let’s see, what did they accomplish in the last 50 years?” but it’s still the early beginning.

Joanne Freeman: Isabel Stirling is the author of the book Zen Pioneer: The Life and Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki.