, was a Japanese essayist, philosopher, religious scholar, and translator. He was an authority on Buddhism, especially Zen and Shin, and was instrumental in spreading interest in these (and in Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. He was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities and devoted many years to a professorship at Ōtani University, a Japanese university of the Ōtani School of Jōdo Shinshū.
Suzuki was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963.Nomination Database
Biography Early life
D. T. Suzuki was born Teitarō Suzuki in Honda-machi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, the fourth son of physician Ryojun Suzuki. The Buddhist name Daisetsu, meaning "Great Humility", the kanji of which can also mean "Greatly Clumsy", was given to him by his Zen master Soyen Shaku.Fields 1992, pg. 138. Although his birthplace no longer exists, a humble monument marks its location (a tree with a rock at its base). The samurai class into which Suzuki was born declined with the fall of feudalism, which forced Suzuki's mother, a Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist, to raise him in impoverished circumstances after his father died. When he became old enough to reflect on his fate in being born into this situation, he began to look for answers in various forms of religion. His naturally sharp and philosophical intellect found difficulty in accepting some of the cosmologies to which he was exposed.
Education Suzuki studied at Waseda University and University of Tokyo.Suzuki, D.T. (1972) Shin Buddhism. New York: Harper & Row, p 93 (bio)Sharf, Robert (2005).Suzuki, D. T., in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones, New York: Macmillan, vol. 13, pp. 8884–8887 He set about acquiring knowledge of Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, and several European languages. During his student years at Tokyo University, Suzuki took up Zen practice at Engaku-ji in Kamakura.
Suzuki lived and studied several years with the scholar Paul Carus. Suzuki was introduced to Carus by Soyen Shaku, who met him at the World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. Carus, who had set up residence in LaSalle, Illinois, approached Shaku to request his help in translating and preparing Eastern spiritual literature for publication in the West. Shaku instead recommended his student Suzuki for the job. Suzuki lived at Carus's home, the Hegeler Carus Mansion, and worked with him, initially in translating the classic Tao Te Ching from ancient Chinese. In Illinois, Suzuki began his early work Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism.
Carus himself had written a book offering an insight into, and overview of, Buddhism, titled The Gospel of Buddha. Soyen Shaku wrote the introduction, and Suzuki translated the book into Japanese. At this time, around the turn of the century, quite a number of Westerners and Asians (Carus, Shaku, and Suzuki included) were involved in the worldwide Buddhist revival that had begun slowly in the 1880s.
Marriage In 1911, Suzuki married Beatrice Erskine Lane Suzuki, a Radcliffe graduate and theosophist with multiple contacts with the Baháʼí Faith both in America and in Japan. Later Suzuki himself joined the Theosophical Society Adyar and was an active theosophist. Beatrice died in 1939.
Late life in America Although Suzuki was already 79 years old in 1949, he accepted an invitation to lecture at Columbia University in that year, and his fame in the United States began to spread. From 1952 to 1957 he was a frequent lecturer at Columbia, at one point rising to the position of adjunct professor. His frequent travel at his advanced age was assisted by a young Japanese-American Columbia student, Mihoko Okamura (1935–2023), who approached him after a 1952 lecture and offered to serve as his secretary. In 1957 he was profiled in Vogue, Time, and The New Yorker, propelling him to national fame in the United States. This was followed in 1958 by a long-form article about Zen in Mademoiselle, several academic publications on Zen to which Suzuki was invited to contribute, and the publication of the novel The Dharma Bums, which immortalized the appropriation of Zen by Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and other members of the Beat Generation.
Suzuki retired in 1960 but continued to write about Zen until his death in Japan in 1966. He was attended on his deathbed by Mihoko Okamura.
Career
Professor of Buddhist philosophies Besides living in the United States, Suzuki traveled through Europe before taking up a professorship back in Japan. In 1909, Suzuki became an assistant professor at Gakushuin University and at the Tokyo University. Suzuki and his wife dedicated themselves to spreading an understanding of Mahayana Buddhism. Until 1919 they lived in a cottage on the Engaku-ji grounds, then moved to Kyoto, where Suzuki began professorship at Ōtani University in 1921. While he was in Kyoto, he visited Hoseki Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, a Zen Buddhist scholar, and they discussed Zen Buddhism together at Shunkō-in temple in the Myōshin-ji temple complex.
In 1921, the year he joined Ōtani University, he and his wife founded the Eastern Buddhist Society.the Eastern Buddhist Society The Society is focused on Mahayana Buddhism and offers lectures and seminars, and publishes a scholarly journal, The Eastern Buddhist.The Eastern Buddhist Suzuki maintained connections in the West and, for instance, delivered a paper at the World Congress of Faiths in 1936, at the University of London (he was an exchange professor during this year).
Besides teaching about Zen practice and the history of Zen (Chan) Buddhism, Suzuki was an expert scholar on the related philosophy called, in Japanese, Kegon, which he thought of as the intellectual explication of Zen experience.
Suzuki received numerous honors, including Japan's National Medal of Culture.
Studies A professor of Buddhist philosophy in the middle decades of the 20th century, Suzuki wrote introductions and overall examinations of Buddhism, and particularly of the Zen school. He went on a lecture tour of American universities in 1951, and taught at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957.
Suzuki was especially interested in the formative centuries of this Buddhist tradition in China. A lot of Suzuki's writings in English concern themselves with translations and discussions of bits of the Chan texts the Biyan Lu (Blue Cliff Record) and the Wumenguan (Mumonkan/Gateless Passage), which record the teaching styles and words of the classical Chinese masters. He was also interested in how this tradition, once imported into Japan, had influenced Japanese character and history, and wrote about it in English in Zen and Japanese Culture. Suzuki's reputation was secured in England prior to the US.
In addition to his popularly oriented works, Suzuki wrote a translation of the Lankavatara Sutra and a commentary on its Sanskrit terminology. He looked in on the efforts of Saburō Hasegawa, Judith Tyberg, Alan Watts and the others who worked in the California Academy of Asian Studies (now known as the California Institute of Integral Studies), in San Francisco in the 1950s. In his later years, he began to explore the Jōdo Shinshū faith of his mother's upbringing, and gave guest lectures on Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism at the Buddhist Churches of America.
Suzuki produced an incomplete English translation of the Kyogyoshinsho, the magnum opus of Shinran, founder of the Jōdo Shinshū school. He is quoted as saying that Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism is the "most remarkable development of Mahayana Buddhism ever achieved in East Asia".D.T. Suzuki Buddha of Infinite Light: The Teachings of Shin Buddhism: the Japanese Way of Wisdom and Compassion Boulder: Shambhala; New Ed edition. 2002 Suzuki also took an interest in Christian mysticism and in some of the most significant mystics of the West, for example, Meister Eckhart, whom he compared with the Jōdo Shinshū followers called Myokonin. Suzuki was among the first to bring research on the Myokonin to audiences outside Japan as well.
Other works include Essays in Zen Buddhism (three volumes), Studies in Zen Buddhism, and Manual of Zen Buddhism. American philosopher William Barrett compiled many of Suzuki's articles and essays concerning Zen into a 1956 anthology entitled Zen Buddhism.
Scholarly opinions It was Suzuki's contention that a Zen "awakening" was the goal of the tradition's training, but that what distinguished the tradition as it developed through the centuries in China was a way of life radically different from that of Indian Buddhists. In India, the tradition of the holy beggar prevailed, but in China, social circumstances led to the development of a temple-and-training center system in which the abbot and the monks all performed mundane tasks. These included food gardening or farming, carpentry, architecture, housekeeping, administration (or community direction), and the practice of folk medicine. Consequently, the enlightenment sought in Zen had to stand up well to the demands and potential frustrations of everyday life.D.T. Suzuki Studies in Zen, pp. 155–156. New York:Delta. 1955D.T. Suzuki Zen and Japanese Culture. New York: Bollingen/Princeton University Press, 1970
Suzuki took an interest in other traditions besides Zen. His book Zen and Japanese Buddhism delved into the history and scope of interest of all the major Japanese Buddhist sects.
Zen training While studying at Tokyo University Suzuki took up Zen practice at Engaku-ji, one of Kamakura's Five Mountains, first studying with Imakita Kosen Rōshi. After Kosen's 1892 passing, Suzuki continued with Kosen's successor at Engaku-ji, Soyen Shaku.Andreasen 1998, p. 56
Under Rōshi Soyen, the first master to teach zen Buddhism in America, Suzuki's studies were essentially internal and non-verbal, including long periods of sitting meditation. The task involved what Suzuki described as four years of mental, physical, moral, and intellectual struggle. During training periods at Engaku-ji, Suzuki lived a monk's life. He described this life and his own experience at Kamakura in his book The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk. Suzuki characterized the facets of the training as: a life of humility; a life of labor; a life of service; a life of prayer and gratitude; and a life of meditation.
Suzuki was invited by Shaku to visit the United States in the 1890s, and Suzuki acted as English-language translator for a book by Shaku (1906). Though Suzuki had by this point translated some ancient Asian texts into English (e.g. Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana), his role in translating and ghost-writing aspects of Soyen Shaku's book was more the beginning of Suzuki's career as a writer in English.Fields 1992 Chapter Ten
Spread of Zen in the West Zen-messenger Suzuki spread Zen in the West. Philosopher Charles A. Moore said:
Buddhist modernism As Suzuki portrayed it, Zen Buddhism was a highly practical religion whose emphasis on direct experience made it particularly comparable to forms of mysticism that scholars such as William James had emphasized as the fountainhead of all religious sentiment.William James "The Varieties of Religious Experience" (New York: Collier Books, 1981) It is this idea of a common essence that made Suzuki's ideas recognizable to a Western audience.
David McMahan claimed that Western audiences identified with 'Western esotericism concealed', 'disguised' as 'eastern mysticism'. This resemblance is not coincidental, since Suzuki was also influenced by Western esotericism, and even joined the Theosophical Society.
Several scholars have identified Suzuki as a Buddhist modernist.
Criticism Suzuki has been criticized for his essentialist approach. As early as 1951, Hu Shih criticized Suzuki for presenting an idealist picture of Zen.
McMahan states:
Suzuki's approach has been marked as "incomprehensible":
Shin Buddhism