MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. News Office (AC0069) TE RELEASE From the Office of Public Relations For IMMEDIA MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY November 21, 1958

Ruth Fuller Sasaki, the first American to have advanced (Nov. 25) to priesthood in Japanese Zen, will speak Tuesday evening of Tech- at 8:p.m. at the Hayden Library, Massachusetts Institute

nology. Her subject will be "Zen: A Method of Religious Awakening." A native Chicagoan, Mrs. Sasaki is on a three-month visit to

the U.S. from Japan where she is priest of the Buddhist sub-temple

of Daitokuji and director of the Kyoto branch of the First Zen In-

stitute of America. The titles were conferred upon her last spring

when the Daitoku4& Temple asked that her Zen study center in Kyoto be designated as the restored sub-temple of Paitokuji. To accom-

plish this the Abbot of Daitokuji made Mrs. Sasaki a Buddhist

priest--a well-deserved honor considering that she had advanced

further in the discipline of Zen training than any other "Iesterner. Zen is a Japanese form of Buddhism which stresses enlight-

enment through meditation. Zen meditation includes the solving of

short problems without logical solutions, breath control, and con-

centration on nothingness, among other things. When Mrs. Sasaki

was first learning Zen she spent approximately 13 hours each day

in meditation. Mrs. Sasaki has been a student of Oriental religions since

her college years when she studied Sanskrit at the University of

Chicago. In 1944 she married Sokei-an Sasaki, the only Zen master to have taught extensively in the West, and worked with him at

Manhattan's First Zen Institute of America. Since her return to

Japan in 1950 she has been holding regular classes in Zen for

Arericans and supervising the translation of basic Zen documents

into English. She is co-author of "The Development of Chinese Zen"

and issues a small monthly publication called "Letter from Kyoto." -30- Use copy created from Institute Archives record copy. © Massachusetts Institute of Technology