his own Japanese introduction to Swedenborg’s life and
teachings, dubbing him “the Buddha of the North.” Where-
as his passion for Swedenborg later cooled, his interest in
Christian mysticism did not; his writings following the war
are filled with appreciative discussions of the medieval Do-
minican mystic Meister Johannes Eckhart (c. 1260–1327/8).
In 1921 Suzuki moved to Kyoto to take a position as
Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Otani University, a uni-
versity affiliated with the Shin denomination of Japanese
Buddhism. (Suzuki had a life-long interest in Shin Pure Land
teachings and published many works touting the unity of
Zen and Pure Land thought.) Inspired in part by his experi-
ence with Open Court and The Monist, at Otani Suzuki
launched the journal Eastern Buddhist, which was intended
to serve as a non-sectarian vehicle for the propagation of
Maha ̄ya ̄na Buddhism. “Our standpoint,” wrote Suzuki in
the second issue of Eastern Buddhist, “is that the Maha ̄ya ̄na
ought to be considered one whole, individual thing and no
sects, especially no sectarian prejudices, to be recognized in
it, except as so many phases or aspects of one fundamental
truth. In this respect Buddhism and Christianity and all
other religious beliefs are not more than variations of one sin-
gle original Faith, deeply embedded in the human soul”
(Suzuki, 1921, p. 156).
PHILOSOPHY OF ZEN. Virtually all of Suzuki’s later writings
are attempts to elucidate this “one single original Faith,”
which he would come to understand as grounded in a trans-
cultural, transhistorical, nondual religious experience lying
at the core of all the major religions. The word “Zen,” insists
Suzuki, refers precisely to this singular transformative experi-
ence. That is to say, Zen is not Buddhism, not religion, not
philosophy, not really anything that can be talked about at
all. In his An Introduction to Zen Buddhism Suzuki writes:
“Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rites to observe,
no future abode to which the dead are destined, and, last of
all, Zen has no soul whose welfare is to be looked after by
somebody else and whose immortality is a matter of intense
concern with some people. Zen is free from all these dogmat-
ic and ‘religious’ encumbrances” (Suzuki, 1934, p. 14).
The claim that true Zen is free of the trappings of reli-
gion might seem commonplace to contemporary students of
Buddhism, but it is nonetheless a rather peculiar way to char-
acterize a tradition that placed tremendous emphasis on mo-
nastic ritual and liturgy, on funerary rites for the welfare of
the deceased, on literary accomplishment, and on the formal
veneration of a host of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and religious
patriarchs. Suzuki’s characterization of Zen as something
that transcends religious and cultural differences must be un-
derstood as the result of his life-long effort to synthesize a
variety of religious and philosophical traditions, both Bud-
dhist and non-Buddhist, Eastern and Western. If his presen-
tation of Zen seems unremarkable to us today, it testifies to
the enduring legacy of Suzuki and his intellectual heirs.
Suzuki’s claim that Zen refers to a universal mystical ex-
perience is considered by many modern scholars and Zen
masters alike as an oversimplification, however well inten-
tioned. More troubling, however, is Suzuki’s insistence that
Zen constitutes the very essence of Japanese culture. Suzuki
began emphasizing the connection between the Japanese cul-
tural experience and the experience of Zen in the 1930s as
part of his claim that the Japanese are more evolved spiritual-
ly than other peoples, including their Asian neighbors. Japa-
nese life is, according to Suzuki, inherently “Zen-like,” and
thus the Japanese are naturally predisposed to Zen under-
standing.Suzuki’s attempts to ennoble Japanese culture must be
understood within the context of the times—his writings on
the subject first appear just as Japan’s imperial ambitions
were reaching new heights, and their armies were driving
deeper into Korea, Manchuria, and China. Suzuki’s exten-
sive writings touting the innate spirituality of the Japanese,
and linking this spirituality with the warrior ethos, were in
keeping with popular sentiments of the day. (The Zen estab-
lishment was, on the whole, an enthusiastic supporter of Jap-
anese colonial expansion.) As the war progressed, so did the
extravagance of some of Suzuki’s claims. In 1944, for exam-
ple, between trips to the air-raid shelter, Suzuki wrote a book
called Japanese Spirituality, which argued that true Zen is not
a product of China, much less India, but rather emerged out
of the meeting of Buddhism and Japanese culture in the Ka-
makura period. Suzuki was fully aware of the Indian and
Chinese roots of Zen, having written extensively on the
topic, but here he insists that true Zen is not a “natural ex-
pression” of those cultures, and thus it was not until Zen
came to Japan that it was fully realized. Besides, in Suzuki’s
mind Zen had long since disappeared on the continent. In
so far as such statements would have lent credibility to
Japan’s sense of spiritual mission in Asia, Suzuki could un-
derstandably be construed as supporting the ongoing mili-
tary campaign.
After the Japanese defeat, Suzuki claimed to have been
opposed to the war; he said that he believed losing the war
was in Japan’s own best interests. Private letters to friends
written prior to the war substantiate Suzuki’s claims: they ex-
press his reservations about Japanese militarism, and his dis-
gust with excessive public displays of patriotic zeal. Never-
theless, some Japanese intellectuals such as Umehara Takeshi
(1925–) took umbrage with Suzuki: if Suzuki was so op-
posed to the war effort, why did he—a student of Zen who
claimed to have attained satori—not speak out openly?
IMPACT. Be that as it may, Suzuki’s lifelong effort to impart
his love of Zen and Japanese culture must be deemed a re-
sounding success. Following the war he continued to travel
to Europe and America, sometimes for extended periods of
time. He was a popular lecturer, speaking at college campus-
es around the world, and from 1951 to 1957 he held a series
of professorships at Columbia University. And he was, above
all else, an indefatigable writer, producing over thirty vol-
umes in English and even more in Japanese. Whereas much
of Suzuki’s writings were intended for a popular audience,8886 SUZUKI, D. T.