novative philosophical network centered on Kyoto University. What had hap-
pened was that Japanese Buddhist sojourners in the West had discovered that
they had something to offer European and American sophisticates. The leader
of the Kyoto school, Nishida, was a childhood friend of the most popular Zen
exporter, D. T. Suzuki. In the particulars of these histories we can see another
variant on the central pattern of intellectual life. In all these cases the exporters
became creative because they were actively drawn into a new network, in this
case a long-distance one, full of migrations and upheavals on the exporting
side as much as or more than among the receptors. The bases of intellectual
productivity were rearranged, opening the possibility of new alliances and
conflicts within the networks. A foreign audience can help build up an attention
space as much as a domestic one, above all when the most important networks
on both sides come into contact face to face. Then the intensified interaction
rituals of intellectual life occur which raise emotional energy for new combi-
nations in the realm of symbols. Who best reaps the excitement of these periods
depends on whose indigenous networks are already most familiar with the
ingredients; for the newcomers, the excitement of introducing old ideas blots
out the fact that, outside of their local attention space, the ideas are not
original.^40450 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths