House of Silent Light tells the story of Mrs. Ida Russell.
She was the first Westerner to practice Zen meditation under the direct
guidance of a Japanese Zen master, and the first Westerner to live for an
extended period at a traditional Zen monastery.
It was in her mansion, located
on a quiet stretch of Californian beach and dubbed locally ‘The House of Silent
Light’, that Soen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to actively engage in missionary
activity in the West, first spoke on Zen in America. House of Silent Light will
show that Ida Russell’s enthusiasm for Zen ignited in Soen Shaku the desire to
see his mission understood and appreciated internationally. Without her
interest and support, Zen could not have taken root in America in the way that
it did. In fact it can be argued that without Ida Russell, Zen may never have
captured Americans’ imagination at all. So this ground-breaking book will show
how Ida Russell’s unconventional religious pursuits led to her friendship with
one of Japan’s most prominent Zen figures at the turn of the twentieth century,
and directly inspired his work to establish Zen’s first foothold in the United
States.
