Dwight Goddard

Dwight Goddard was a pivotal figure in early American Zen Buddhism. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1861, Goddard was an industrial engineer who made his fortune with the US government during WW1. Disillusioned with the war, he became a missionary, sent first to China, and later to Japan, where he lived and studied at a Zen Buddhist Monastary outside Kyoto for a year. After his return to the United States in 1924, he began writing books on Buddhism. He wrote and edited nine titles, among them, The Buddhist Bible, a work credited with influencing the views of Jack Kerouac and other Beat Generation authors. He died in 1939.