I was planning to write about a subject other than Zen Buddhism today, but a comment by Appreciative Reader on one of my posts about D.T. Suzuki, a noted author and popularizer of Zen, stimulated me to compose this defense of Suzuki.
Which isn't going to be in my words. I've read three of Suzuki's books, each several times. I consider that this gives me a good feel for both the man and his work. But that's just my opinion. Appreciative Reader has its own, though he admits that he isn't very familiar with Zen, nor with Suzuki.
What particularly caught my eye was Appreciative Reader's contention that Suzuki was a charlatan who came to the West to make money and a name for himself. That struck me as an odd thing to say, even if someone was deeply familiar with Suzuki and his writings. To just assert that without any evidence struck me as an insult to Suzuki and his legacy.
So I'm requesting that Appreciative Reader read some information about the life of D.T. Suzuki, and consider whether he may be mistaken about him. There's an informative biographical summary of Suzuki on the Association for Asian Studies web site. Here's info on the author:
ERIC CUNNINGHAM is a Professor of East Asian and World History at Gonzaga University. He complements his specialty areas of modern Japanese intellectual history with research in Zen Buddhism, Eastern and Western spirituality, film, and Japanese literature. He is the author of Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton (Academica Press, 2007); Zen Past and Present(AAS, 2011); and over a dozen articles.
The biography is very positive. This is the first (long) paragraph, which I've broken int0 several paragraphs to make it easier to read.
It would be difficult to name any world religious or cultural figure of the twentieth century who did more to transform modern civilization than Zen Buddhist scholar Daisetsu Teitaro (D. T.) Suzuki (1870–1966). While we might look to such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Mother Teresa and note the profound changes their lives brought to postwar global consciousness, the influence they exercised was of a different species than Suzuki’s.
D. T. Suzuki did not just hold up a “spiritual” mirror to the modern West to reveal its moral contradictions, nor did he engage in activism of any kind. He was, rather, in his unofficial capacity as Zen’s “apostle to the West,” a spirit-minded scholar who consciously wove his life’s work into the fabric of history, helping a modern global society reconsider its assumptions, aspirations, and mode of operating.
As a mentor to such international culture producers as Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Heidegger, John Cage, and Gary Snyder—to name but a few—Suzuki worked effectively across cultural, social, and generational boundaries to help articulate a new historical consciousness whose full effects have yet to be realized. While he may not have occupied as strong a position in the hearts and minds of the masses as other modern spiritual leaders, Suzuki was indeed unique in his contributions to the world’s religious culture.
I also asked ChatGPT to give me a biography of Suzuki, since I was interested in what an artificial intelligence had to say about him.
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, more commonly known as D.T. Suzuki, was a Japanese philosopher, author, and scholar who is best known for his pioneering work in bringing Zen Buddhism to the Western world. He was born on October 18, 1870, in Kanazawa, a city on the west coast of Japan.
Suzuki's father was a physician, and his mother came from a family of samurai. From an early age, Suzuki showed an interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and he studied the writings of Confucius and Lao-Tzu as a teenager. He also learned English and began to read Western philosophy.
In 1890, Suzuki enrolled at Tokyo University, where he studied philosophy and Sanskrit. After graduating, he became a lecturer at the same university and began to specialize in the study of Buddhism. He later became a professor of Buddhist philosophy at Otani University in Kyoto, where he taught for many years.
In 1897, Suzuki met the Zen master Shaku Soen, who was then the head of Engakuji temple in Kamakura, Japan. Soen became Suzuki's mentor and introduced him to the practice of Zen meditation. Suzuki became deeply committed to Zen and began to write extensively on the subject, publishing numerous books and articles throughout his career.
Suzuki's work emphasized the practical, experiential nature of Zen, and he emphasized the importance of meditation and direct experience in understanding the teachings of Zen. His most famous book, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism," was first published in 1934 and is still widely read today.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Suzuki began to travel to the United States and Europe to give lectures and seminars on Zen Buddhism. He became a popular speaker and was widely credited with introducing Zen to the Western world. His work influenced many leading Western philosophers, theologians, and writers, including Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, and Jack Kerouac.
Suzuki remained active in teaching and writing throughout his life, and he continued to be a leading figure in the Zen community until his death in 1966 at the age of 95. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the most important Zen masters of the 20th century, and his work continues to be influential in both Eastern and Western philosophy and religion.
Discover more from Church of the Churchless
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Brian, I really hadn’t wanted to revisit the Zen topic on here, after that last comment of mine. But since you’ve taken the trouble to write a whole post around this, perhaps I should venture a response.
Clearly you respect Suzuki, maybe for old time’s sake. And of course, it isn’t as if he was actually a con man, or anything like that! Instead of just speed-typing my first thoughts around that article, I guess I might have taken care to tone down the tenor of my criticism, even if not the content of it. Agreed, my delivery was kind of over the top, given the abstract nature of the discussion, and given that I’ve nothing to do with Suzuki. Apologies if I’ve hurt your feelings! What I wrote was entirely impersonal, and entirely basis what I read of him here.
I looked to see what AR wrote, and I guess the gist is he calls out Suzuki as :a complete charlatan, for trying to sell Zen by deriding other schools of Buddhism. Just contrast that with someone like Thich Nhat Hanh, who draws so plentifully from Theravada, and Mahayana, and from Zen as well.”
“Complete charlatan” seems a bit much for a number of reasons. One of them being that all schools of Zen are criticisms of other schools of Buddhism. That’s not a slam on Zen, as founders of any sect invariably justify their new movement as a much needed reform of the status quo. Dogen criticized the Zen ancestors in Shobogenzo. Dogen critiqued Rinzai as well.
Does there exist a pure school of Zen, a Zen sect that’s objectively 100% orthodox and to which all Zen enthusiasts must hew to? There’s no such thing in Zen or elsewhere in the Buddhist world. All the sects are the product of social evolution, including both ardent practitioners and those who made stuff up along the way. Ever try to read Shobogenzo? Tell me which that is. Same question goes for Sar Bachan.
As Bart Ehrman jokingly says when asked about what’s authentically orthodox: “my doxy is orthodoxy and your doxy is heterodoxy.” Most people in the religious world think this way, whether they realize it or not.
I think it’s OK to be a popularizer, certainly so in the way DT Suzuki wrote his books. I don’t see the harm. He was no Carlos Castaneda (a great writer by the way, but even gullible me knew as a teenager his books were fiction). I also think it’s OK to write with an objective point of view, to argue for something. Arguing for something ineluctably requires that one argue against something else.
Did DT get basic historical facts wrong? I haven’t looked deeply into that, but who hasn’t? DT was like most Japanese of his time, in that he believed what he’d been told about the West. When you’re raised your entire life in a culture that tells you only certain things, then the obvious happens. And so there’s no doubt that DT erred in some of his assumptions. A lot of Zen teachers did the same, which either proves they were all terrible people or, gosh, they are examples of what I’m talking about re the influence of culture and closed systems of information.
I can name a boat load of religious charlatans, but DT Suzuki isn’t one of them.
“Zen practice is to open up our small mind. So concentrating is just an aid to help you realize the “big mind”, or the mind that is everything.”
— Shunryu Suzuki
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”
-Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu has been confused with D. T. Suzuki… But they are different.
D. T. Suzuki was a true academic scholar.
Shunryu was a Zen master.
Both popularized Zen thought in the West. And both made contributions to Western understanding.
Some of D. T. Suzuki’s more touching and famous quotes..
“Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.”
“Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”
“Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world.”
” Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.”
” The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.”
” No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the identical rate of speed.”
” Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he ought to live.”
” In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of angle of observation.”
” Is satori something that is not at all capable of intellectual analysis? Yes, it is an experience which no amount of explanation or argument can make communicable to others unless the latter themselves had it previously. If satori is amenable to analysis in the sense that by so doing it becomes perfectly clear to another who has never had it, that satori will be no satori. For a satori turned into a concept ceases to be itself; and there will no more be a Zen experience.”
“The beginner sees many possibilities
“Satori is the raison d’être of Zen, without which Zen is not Zen. Therefore every contrivance, disciplinary and doctrinal, is directed towards satori.”
D. T. Suzuki
“Tokusan was a great scholar of the Diamond Sutra. Learning that there was such a thing as Zen, ignoring all the written scriptures and directly laying hands on one’s soul, he went to Ryutan to be instructed in the teaching. One day Tokusan was sitting outside tr\’ing to look into the mystery of Zen. Ryutan said, “Why don’t you come in?” Replied Tokusan, “It is pitch dark.” A candle was lighted and held out to Tokusan. When he was at the point of taking it Ryutan suddenly blew out the light, whereupon the mind of Tokusan was opened.”
– from ‘An Introduction to Zen Buddhism’ by D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966)
My mother and her father’s family are very dark skinned (compared to whites) and they were all born with jet black hair. My dad’s side were more Germanic/French/IDK.
But my mom’s side of the family were the beautiful ones. They all seemed to be born with perfect biological symmetry. They were truly beautiful and astonishingly charming by character to match.
So, I always wished I could be more like my mother. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit those traits.
Tell me, in this day and age are we really that stupendously prejudiced???
I’m dumbstruck.
The need to be more special or “better” than everyone else, might just be the root to all evil.