Zen lineage charts interest from beat poets such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. The most successful implementation of Zen-practice was brought about by Shunryu Suzuki, Hakuun Yasutani, and Yasutani's student Taizan Maezumi. Shunryu Suzuki (鈴木 俊隆 "Suzuki Shunryū", dharma name "Shōgaku Shunryū" 祥岳俊隆, often called Suzuki Roshi) (born May 18, 1904, Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan; died December 4, 1971 in San Francisco, CA, USA) was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Buddhist monastery outside Asia (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center). Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen
Zen aware of Zen as a distinct form of Buddhism, the visit of Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Zen monk, to Chicago during the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 is often pointed to as an event that enhanced the profile of Zen in the Western world. It was during the late 1950s and the early 1960s that the number of Westerners other than the descendants of Asian immigrants who were pursuing a serious interest in Zen began to reach a significant level. Japanese Zen has gained the greatest popularity in the West. The various books on Zen by Reginald Horace Blyth,