Poetic Obituaries: [Robert Aitken's] master's thesis

on the great haiku poet Basho became the basis for his book "A Zen Wave" (1978).

He was working in a bookstore in Los Angeles in the late 1940s when he began to study with Nyogen Senzaki, an itinerant Zen monk who had settled in California in the 1920s. Aitken later went to Japan to train under Nakagawa Soen Roshi, who authorized him to establish a meditation group in his home in Hawaii in 1959. He was ordained in 1974.

from Los Angeles Times: Obituary: Robert Aitken dies at 93; American Zen master

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