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Albert Shansky

Albert Shansky was born on March 26, 1925 in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish working class family. He had two older brothers and a younger sister. He never knew his father who died when he was four years old. They were a poor family, but as his mother used to say, "It's no disgrace to be poor, it's just inconvenient."

The meaning of life for Shansky became clear and patent when he was about eight years old. The year 1933 was the height of the Great Depression. Shansky quickly learned the value of work, the ways of survival and the usefulness of self-reliance and independence. A growing consciousness of social inequity was developing during his adolescence until the age of fourteen when the Spanish Civil War ended and World War II began in 1939.

At the age of eighteen, shortly after graduation from Boys High School, Shansky was drafted into the United States Army where he earned two battle stars, Rhineland and Northern France, in the European Theater of Operations. Upon being mustered out of army service in 1946, he immediately took up his college career at Brooklyn College where he graduated with a B.S. and an M.S. degree in chemistry. He then went on in 1951 to Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

He worked as a chemist for more than fifty years, thirty years of which he was an independent consultant operating his own laboratory. During his chemical career he wrote and published more than sixty scientific papers and produced eighteen patents.

In 1947 he married Pearl Brody and as of this writing they have been married fifty-eight years. They have four children who have produced seven grandchildren.

Shansky spent three summers from mid-May until September in 1992, 1993, and

1994 learning and practicing Zen teachings at theHosshinji Monastery in Obama, Japan where he was ordained as a lay monk. Shansky practices zazen (Zen meditation) every morning without fail, regardless of location. In addition, he pursued Shambhala training at the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Shansky has had a life-long love for scholarship and in 1978, at the age of fifty- three, he returned to college. He attended Fairfield University where he took a total of fifty-three courses, half in philosophy and half in art history over a twenty-year period. In

1995 he established a second career by accepting the position of Executive Vice President of the International Institute for Field-Being at Fairfield University on a part time basis while still pursuing his chemical consulting practice. As of this writing, he has written and presented more than twelve papers on philosophy and Buddhism at various professional and scholarly organizations and conferences. He has written a book on Buddhism in thirteenth century Japan titled, The Extinction of Illusion, which has been published by Publish America, Frederick, MD, March, 2006. He has written a three part memoir titled, The Trilogy of Awakening, which is awaiting publication. He is presently engaged in writing a book on the beginnings of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, titled Shinran and Eshinni.

Shansky has some experience as a pedagogue having taught biology at the Norwalk Community College and Analytical Chemistry at the Norwalk Technical Institute in the 1960s. In addition he has lectured to the history class, Pacific Rim, at Norwalk Community College on basic Buddhism in East Asia. And has lectured twice to the Asian history class at Fairfield University on Buddhism and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints respectively.

He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the Association of Asian Studies, the American Academy of Religion, and the International Association of Buddhist Studies.