Taking the Path of Zen
Honolulu, Hawai'i · 1982
R
Robert Aitken
Robert Aitken
1917 CE–2010 CE · Modern · Philadelphia, PA
June 19, 1917 – August 5, 2010
Robert Aitken (1917–2010) was an American Zen teacher in the Harada–Yasutani (Sanbō Kyōdan) lineage and a founder of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha, which he established with his wife Anne in 1959. Introduced to Zen while interned in Japan during World War II, he later received transmission as an independent master in 1985 and built one of the principal Western Zen networks. He was also a co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (1978) and a noted advocate of socially engaged Buddhism. He died in 2010.
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Stop 1 of 2Born
Philadelphia, PAPennsylvania, USA
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: born in 1917; a lifelong resident of Hawai'i, he first encountered Zen while interned in Japan during World War II, where he met the scholar R. H. Blyth.
About Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, was the birthplace, in 1917, of Robert Aitken, the American Zen teacher who co-founded the Diamond Sangha in Hawaiʻi and became an influential figure in Western Zen and socially engaged Buddhism.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Robert Aitken’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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Christian world
Hindu world
Works(2)
The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics
Honolulu, Hawai'i · 1984