Robert Aitken

Robert Aitken is a retired master of the Diamond Sangha, a Zen Buddhist society he founded in Honolulu in 1959 with his late wife Anne Hopkins Aitken. Now at age 88, he is residing at a lively resort in Hawaii Kai on Oahu.

A lifetime resident of Hawaii, Aitken is a graduate of the University of Hawaii with a BA degree in English literature and an MA degree in Japanese studies. Aitken is the author of more than ten books on Zen Buddhism, and co-author of a book-length Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Aitken works with a few long-time students, and continues to study and write. His work, Zen Master Raven: Sayings and Doings of a Wise Bird, was published by Tuttle in 2002. Shoemaker and Hoard released his more recent publications, The Morning Star: New and Collected Zen Writings, and a new edition of A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen (2003).