Reb Anderson was born as Harold Anderson[2] in Mississippi in 1943 and grew up in Minnesota. His father left the family when Anderson was eleven.[3] In his youth, he was a Golden Gloves boxer.[4] Anderson developed an interest in Buddhism while still in his teens.[4] In 1967, he abandoned his graduate studies in psychology and mathematics to study Soto Zen under Shunryu Suzuki at the San Francisco Zen Center.