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.