He received dharma transmission from Kosen at age 25, and subsequently became the superior overseer of religious teaching at the Educational Bureau, and patriarch of Engaku temple at Kamakura.

[3] In 1893 Shaku was one of four priests and two laymen, representing Rinzai Zen, Jōdo Shinshū, Nichiren, Tendai, and Esoteric schools,[4] comprising the Japanese delegation that participated in the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, organized by John Henry Barrows and Paul Carus.

Shaku, upon returning to Japan asked his student and Tokyo University scholar D. T. Suzuki to go to the United States, where he would eventually become the leading academic on Zen Buddhism in the West, and translator for Carus's publishing company.

He spent nine months at their isolated oceanside house on the Great Highway in San Francisco,[8] teaching the entire household Zen.

[10] Following a March 1906 train trip across the United States, giving talks on Mahayana translated by Suzuki, Shaku returned to Japan via Europe, India and Ceylon.