Introduction

introduction Th is is the third volume in University of California Press’s Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki, under the series editorship of Richard Jaff e. Volumes 1 and 2 deal with Suzuki’s writings on, respectively, Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, the two major traditions with which he is most famously associated. For volume 3, we have decided to present a wide-ranging selection of letters, essays, and lectures—some of them translated into English for the fi rst time—that illustrate Suzuki’s encounters and opinions about religion more generally. Th ese fall into two basic, sometimes over- lapping categories. First are writings that exemplify his opinion on religion as a phenomenon. Th ese include texts wherein Suzuki comments on “the times,” as they reveal his perspective on philosophical issues. Second are texts that display his ideas of or experiences with non-Buddhist religions. Christianity is the most frequently encountered of these traditions, but we have also collected representative writings by Suzuki that discuss Shinto, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, and more. His method was frequently comparative, bringing his topic into conversation with some other phenomenon (usually Buddhism, especially Zen or Pure Land) in order to tease out the points he wished to make. Th us readers will fi nd much discussion of Buddhism in this volume. Readers who are familiar with Suzuki’s works in both English and Japanese oft en notice that he dealt with diff erent topics depending on which language he wrote in. Particularly in his English writings, Suzuki frequently discussed Christi- anity in comparison with Zen Buddhism.1 One reason for this is that the vast majority of his English-speaking potential readers were Christians or were raised in a culture whose dominant religion was Christianity, and thus he used compari- sons with Christianity to make Buddhism more intelligible to them. Moreover, xi xii Introduction Suzuki scrutinized Christianity in light of his own evolving concept of religion, which it is important to analyze historically, and he introduced Christian mystical traditions to Japanese Buddhist circles by translating the works of the peculiar philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg into Japanese and frequently referring to the German theologian Meister Eckhart in his essays. Readers of the other volumes in this series can note the evolution of his thoughts about Buddhism; in this volume, we can observe a parallel evolution in his ideas concerning Christianity over the course of his life. We refer readers to the previous two volumes, especially Jaff e’s introduction to volume 1, which contains signifi cant biographical information about Suzuki and explores recent shift s in scholarship on him. In this volume’s introduction, we discuss how Suzuki’s encounters with non-Buddhist religions, especially Christianity, infl uenced his appreciation of religion, and uncover how he tried to enhance the concept of religion as a whole. MOVEMENT AND ENCOUNTER D. T. Suzuki’s life can be charted largely through the concepts of movement and encounter—especially travel through the foreign and encounter with the other. In this he was the quintessential modern: a man on the move, propelled across oceans and even vaster cultural gulfs by forces originating far from his rustic birthplace, and also seeking out the other, in many ways as a means of better expressing or understanding the self. But while journeys change the traveler, Suzuki was an unu- sual sort of itinerant, for he also changed the strange new worlds that he encountered. Jack Kerouac, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm—so many people told stories of the transformative eff ect of their encounter with Suzuki that the researcher cannot be allowed to overlook this fundamental aspect of his legacy. Th rough these people and other channels, Suzuki made his impact on North Americans, Europeans, Asians, and others, helping to initiate wide-ranging changes in religion, psychol- ogy, literature, and more. To be clear, in this volume of Th e Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki we do not seek to praise Suzuki or to condemn him. He has been the object of much scholarship and semischolarship—especially, at fi rst, approbation, and later a revisionist turn with more critical, at times harsher, analysis. We assert neither that he was a posi- tive nor that he was a negative fi gure in history—rather, it is our observation that he powerfully infl uenced a variety of spheres and that this infl uence can be more fully considered by attending to how he encountered, understood, and depicted various religious and ideological systems. Th e typical focus on Suzuki’s Buddhist activities oft en obscures this facet of his experience. Yet that work of travel and encounter with non-Buddhist religions was present from very early in his career as a scholar. It was Daoism—not Buddhism—that brought Suzuki to the West, and from there to eventual international stature, as he left Japan for Chicago in 1897 in Introduction xiii order to assist Paul Carus in translating the Daodejing.2 As he described it, “Carus decided to translate Laozi’s Daodejing into English but could not fi nd anyone in America who could read the text well. Shaku Soen asked me if I would like to go to America for this purpose, and so, through this connection, I went to the United States. Poverty forced me to remain at Carus’s publishing company, helping out in various ways in the editorial department. One year grew into the next and I wound up staying in America for more than a decade.”3 Without that initial comparative religious work for Carus, it is unlikely that Suzuki would have become the famous fi gure that he did. For those who study Buddhism—with which Suzuki is most commonly associated—observing him journeying and encountering other religions like an unsui, a freely traveling prac- titioner of Zen, can be fruitful, since it is in these moments that we may oft en discern how he constructed and displayed Buddhism. At the same time, Suzuki’s work as a scholar of comparative religion will be of interest to those who work in that fi eld and to those who specialize in the specifi c traditions that he encountered and analyzed, such as Christianity and Confucianism. What are some of the representative encounters that defi ned Suzuki’s life? Th e spiritual encounter with the modernist Zen master Sōen; the intimate encounter with the American Th eosophist Beatrice Erskine Lane; the intellectual encounter with the maverick religious philosopher Carus; the interreligious encounter with the famed convert and Catholic monk Th omas Merton; the imaginative encounter with the works of the visionary Christian prophet Swedenborg; the interdiscipli- nary encounter with the Swiss psychoanalyst Jung; the countercultural encounter with the Beat poet Jack Keroauc; and the complex encounter with American concepts and stereotypes of “the East” via the pages of the New Yorker, Vogue, Time, and other media. In many cases, these encounters with Suzuki also infl uenced these interlocutors and the traditions they represented. Along with these famous persons, Suzuki met countless other individuals and audiences during his many decades as a public intellectual. Th e historian Jane Naomi Iwamura has pointed out how Suzuki’s image and physical presence acted as powerful signs to Westerners. As she explains, “Suzuki served as a fi gure through which Zen Buddhism was made accessible to a wider English-speaking audience. Although the two—Zen Buddhism and D. T. Suzuki— are oft en taken as distinct forces, I would argue that they symbiotically worked together to shape an American conception of Zen. In this scenario, Suzuki is not viewed as simply a ‘cultural ambassador’ or ‘translator’ of the larger tradition, but as the embodiment of that tradition—the icon through which Zen Buddhism achieved meaning for those in the West.”4 Suzuki’s importance lay not only in his many writings that explained Buddhism and compared it with other religions, but in the fact of his frequent travels in the United States and other places, where non- Buddhists could meet him and thus encounter Zen Buddhism. xiv Introduction We can see this dynamic in the narratives of many who refl ected on their meet- ings with him. For example, Merton, among the most famous of contemporary Christian writers during Suzuki’s lifetime, described their encounter in this way: It was my good fortune to meet Dr. Suzuki and to have a couple of all too short con- versations with him. Th e experience was not only rewarding, but I would say it was unforgettable. One had to meet this man in order to fully appreciate him. He seemed to me to embody all the indefi nable qualities of the “Superior Man” of the ancient Asian, Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions. Or rather in meeting him one seemed to meet that “True Man of No Title,” that Zhuang Zi and the Zen Masters speak of. And of course this is the man one really wants to meet. Who else is there? In meeting Dr. Suzuki and drinking a cup of tea with him I felt I had met this one man. It was like fi nally arriving at one’s own home. A very happy experience, to say the least. But I did feel that I was speaking to someone who, in a tradition completely diff erent from my own, had matured, had become complete, and had found his way.5 Th ere was something transfi xing for Merton in this encounter with Suzuki. He praises Suzuki while thoroughly placing him within a context of Asian motifs, so that Suzuki is understood through them and as embodying or personifying them.

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