ABSTRACT
Zen made its way into the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, an early wave of Chinese immigrants came to California to work in the gold mines and on the Central Pacific Railroad (Fields 1992; Prebish 1999). Chinese, Taoist, Confucian, and some Buddhist temples were soon established on the Pacific coastline, some of these possibly housing Zen priests. Several schools of Buddhism, including Zen, were represented at the World Parliament of Religions, which took place at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Present at that Parliament were several key figures in the teaching, dissemination, and development of Zen in the United States: Shaku Soen, Nyogen Senzaki, and Shaku Sokatsu, who were ordained Zen priests and teachers, as well as the scholar and author D.T.Suzuki (Fields 1992; Prebish 1999).
