Roshi Philip Kapleau, founder of the Rochester Zen Center, has studied and taught Zen for more than 50 years, after first encountering Zen Buddhism while a reporter at the war crimes trials in Japan in 1946. While there he met D. T. Suzuki and in 1950 began to study Buddhist philosophy, completing over sixteen years of study and practice in both Japan and America. Roshi Kapleau lives in Rochester.