D T SuzukiAlthough he is criticized by some today, D. T. Suzuki is still regarded as the man who “brought Zen to America.” In the days when I first started seriously reading about Buddhism, there were very few books available. Walk into any bookstore, at least in the Midwest and in New Orleans where I lived at the time, you would probably find the same measly five or six books. Invariably, one would be The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, and there was sure to be something by D. T. Suzuki.

D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) was not an ordained Buddhist priest or dharma teacher, he was first and foremost a scholar, a professor of Buddhist philosophy.  For a while, in his forties, he was an active Theosophist. Later he and his wife, Beatrice Lane, also a Theosophist, founded the The Eastern Buddhist Society.

While he is associated mostly with Zen Buddhism, Suzuki was also an expert on Japanese Kegon and Jodo Shinshu. His books and essays, and his translations of Japanese, Chinese and Sanskrit Buddhist literature, were absolutely instrumental in introducing Buddhism to the West.

In recent years, Suzuki has been accused of complicity with Japanese nationalism during World War ll, most prominently by Brian Victoria, whose book, Zen at War, in my opinion, based on the section regarding the Soka Gakkai, has some serious flaws. Victoria’s account of Suzuki’s views has been refuted by Kemmyo Taira Sato in “D. T. Suzuki and the Question of War.”

Yesterday a reader asked how, knowing that the Mahayana sutras are not the actual words of the Buddha, was it possible for me to identify with Mahayana. A very reasonable question. One that I am sure many have wrestled with. You can read my response below. However, here is a better answer to that question by Prof. Suzuki himself, from Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism:

Mahayana literally means “great vehicle” and Hinayana “small or inferior vehicle,” that is, of salvation. This distinction is recognised only by the followers of Mahayanism, because it was by them that the unwelcome title of Hinayanism was given to their rival brethren, — thinking that they were more progressive and had a more assimilating energy than the latter. The adherents of Hinayanism, as a matter of course, refused to sanction the Mahayanist doctrine as the genuine teaching of Buddha, and insisted that there could not be any other Buddhism than their own, to them naturally the Mahayana system was a sort of heresy.

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