Influential in the growth of Zen Buddhism in the United States, Sokei-an was one of the first Japanese masters to live and teach in America and the foremost purveyor in the U.S. of Direct Transmission.

[3] Following the death of his father when he was fifteen, he became an apprentice sculptor and came to study under Japan's renowned Koun Takamura at the Imperial Academy of Art in Tokyo.

[4][5] Sokei-an then moved to Oregon without Tomé and Shintaro to work for a short while, being rejoined by them in Seattle, Washington (where his wife gave birth to their second child, Seiko,[3] a girl).

In Seattle, Sasaki worked as a picture frame maker[3] and wrote various articles and essays for Japanese publications such as Chuo Koron and Hokubei Shinpo.

Over the next few years he made a living doing various jobs, when in 1916 he moved to Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York, where he encountered the poet and magus Aleister Crowley.

[4] In 1922 he returned to the United States and in 1924 or 1925 began giving talks on Buddhism at the Orientalia Bookstore on E. 58th Street in New York City, having received lay teaching credentials from Sokatsu.

[4] Then, on May 11, 1930, Sokei-an and some American students founded the Buddhist Society of America, subsequently incorporated in 1931,[8] at 63 West 70th Street (originally with just four members).

[11] In 1941 Ruth purchased an apartment at 124 E. 65th Street in New York City, which also served as living quarters for Sokei-an and became the new home for the Buddhist Society of America (opened on December 6).

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sokei-an was arrested by the FBI as an "enemy alien"[5] taken to Ellis Island on June 15 and then interned at a camp in Fort Meade, Maryland on October 2, 1942 (where he suffered from high blood pressure and several strokes).

[2] He was released from the internment camp on August 17, 1943, following the pleas of his students and returned to the Buddhist Society of America in New York City.

[13] Sokei-an's primary way of teaching Zen Buddhism was by means of sanzen, "an interview during which the teacher would set the student a koan"[14]—and his Dharma talks were often delivered in the form of a teisho.

[16] According to Mary Farkas, "Sokei-an had no interest in reproducing the features of Japanese Zen monasticism, the strict and regimented training that aims at making people 'forget self.'