A Buddhist Life – D.T.
Suzuki
The Endless Further Dec 17
2014
December 18 marks the 144th
anniversary of the birth of D. T. Suzuki, Japanese teacher, author,
translator, and at one time the most famous Zen Buddhist in the
world. The importance of Suzuki’s role in introducing Westerners to
Zen, and Buddha-dharma in general, cannot be overstated.
Yet, the bright sheen that
his image once radiated has lost some of its luster in recent
years. Brian Victoria in his book Zen at War has accused Suzuki of
complicity with Japanese nationalism during World War ll. Victoria
has himself suffered some slings and arrows as the quality and
methodology of his scholarship has been questioned by many and
Kemmyo Taira Sato in “D. T. Suzuki and the Question of War”, among
others, has refuted Victoria’s account of Suzuki’s views on
militarism.
Suzuki was not only an
influential figure of his time, but a unique one, in that he was
not an ordained Buddhist priest, but rather a professor of Buddhist
philosophy. As a result, while he had great influence outside the
Zen tradition, his secular standing limited his influence within
the tradition. And by taking a more secular approach, eschewing
some of the more metaphysical and ritualistic elements of Zen, and
emphasizing the meditative aspect as well as the “special
transmission” with “no dependence on words and letters,” he likely
did more to shape the still-present form of Zen in the West than
anyone else.
Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro was
born in 1870, into a samurai family. It was the era of the Meiji
Restoration when the samurai class lost its privilege in Japanese
society. His father, a physician, died when he was six, leaving his
mother, a Jodo Shinshu believer, to raise him amid impoverished
circumstances. By the time she passed away in 1890, Suzuki was
already very interested in spirituality, gravitating toward
Zen.
Suzuki attended the
University of Tokyo, where he studied Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali,
several European languages, and of course, philosophy and religion.
It was around this time that he also began Zen training at
Engaku-ji in Kamakura, where he eventually became a disciple of
Shaku Soen, a great Zen master. Shaku Soen invited Suzuki to
accompany him to the Parliament of Religions at the 1897 World Fair
in Chicago and act as his translator. There he met Paul Carus and
began to translate into Japanese Carus’ work The Gospel of
Buddha.
Suzuki lived in the United States and worked for Carus’ publishing
company for ten years. It was here that he also met and married
Beatrice Erskine Lane, a Radcliffe graduate and
Theosophist.
Suzuki took up a
professorship back in Japan, at Otani University in
1921.
Following the death in 1939
of his wife, Suzuki went into seclusion until the end of World War
II. When he emerged in 1949, he went to Honolulu to attend the
Second East-West Philosopher’s Conference and taught for a year at
the University of Hawaii. He spent a year in California, then in
1951 he moved to New York and began teaching on Zen at Columbia
University. Some of the notable people who were his students at
that time included psychoanalysts Erich Fromm and Karen Horney and
the composer John Cage.
Suzuki retired from Columbia in 1957 and
traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he taught and helped
found the Cambridge Buddhist Society. Suzuki’s influence was
perhaps most profound on those figures of the time who also wielded
considerable influence, people such as Carl Jung, Thomas Merton,
Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and British dharma enthusiast
Christmas Humphries, founder of the Buddhist
Society.
While he is credited mostly
with spreading Zen in the West, during the latter half of his life
Sukuki was actually more interested in Jodo (Pure Land).
This is merely a snapshot of
Suzuki’s life. For those who would like to learn more, I invite you
to read
A Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki Remembered by Masao Abe. There is also
a documentary available called
A Zen Life.
And I recommend the books by Suzuki himself:
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (with foreward by Carl
Jung),
Manual of Zen Buddhism, and
Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, to mention just
three.
The latter work is one of
the Suzuki books in my library. I am not sure I am agreement with
him on every point he makes, yet at the same time it would be
rather vain on my part to think that I know more about it than he
did. Here is a short passage from the book:
“A few more remarks about “Emptiness.”
Relativity
[pratitya-samutpada
or dependent
arising] is an aspect of Reality and not Reality itself. Relativity
is possible somewhere between two or more things, for this is the
way that makes one get related to another.
A similar argument applies
to movement. Movement is possible in time; without the concept of
time there cannot be a movement of any sort. For a movement means
an object going out of itself and becoming something else which is
not itself. Without the background of time this becoming is
unthinkable.
Therefore, Buddhist
philosophy states that all these concepts, movement and relativity,
must have their field of operation, and this field is designated by
Buddhist philosophers as Emptiness (sunyata).
When Buddha talks about all
things being transient, impermanent, and constantly changing, and
therefore teaches that there is nothing in this world which is
absolutely dependable and worth clinging to as the ultimate seat of
security, he means that we must look somewhere else for things
permanent (jo), bliss-imparting
(raku), autonomous
(ga), and absolutely free from
defilements (jo). According to the Nirvana
Sutra (of the Mahayana school), these four (jo-raku-ga-jo)
are the qualities of Nirvana, and Nirvana is attained when we have
knowledge, when the mind is freed from thirst (tanha), cravings
(asava), and conditionality
(sankhara). While Nirvana is often
thought to be a negativistic idea the Mahayana followers have quite
a different interpretation. For they include autonomy
(ga, atman) as one of its qualities
(guna), and autonomy is free
will, something dynamic. Nirvana is another name for the
Emptiness.
The term “emptiness” is apt
to be misunderstood for various reasons. The hare or rabbit has no
horns, the turtle has no hair growing on its back. This is one form
of emptiness. The Buddhist sunyata does not mean
absence.
A fire has been burning
until now and there is no more of it. This is another kind of
emptiness. Buddhist sunyata does not mean
extinction.
The wall screens the room:
on this side there is a table, and on the other side there is
nothing, space is unoccupied. Buddhist sunyata does not mean
vacancy.
D.T Suzuki died in 1966 in
Tokyo at age 95.
Gary Snyder said he was
“probably the most culturally significant Japanese person in
international terms, in all of history.”