Buddhism in the Modern World by David L. McMahan

Author:David L. McMahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

D. T. Suzuki and Zen

Japan was another historical starting point for Buddhist modernism, especially modernist forms of Zen. Under the Meiji government, established in 1867, Buddhism was criticized as a corrupt and superstitious foreign religion that hampered Japan's scientific and technological advancement, as well as its national cohesion. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, several intellectuals began an attempt to revitalize Buddhism, purging it of what they considered corrupt cultural and institutional accretions and returning it to the original vitality of the Buddha's teachings. The movement they began, which drew heavily on Zen literature as well as Western philosophy, was known as ‘New Buddhism,’ or shin bukkyō. Proponents of the movement saw it not only as a response to government persecution of Buddhism but also as a way of promoting uniquely Japanese religion and national power in a transnational context fraught with economic and military competition. One influential philosopher sympathetic to this reformist Buddhism summarized the role he hoped Buddhism would play on the world stage in the early twentieth century:

Everyone knows that we must look to the West to supply models not only for all kinds of commodities and utensils, but also for models of government, law, the military system, education, the physical sciences and technology. However, there is one thing that Japan can transmit to foreign countries and win fame: that thing is Buddhism

(quoted in Snodgrass 2003: 131)

Among the most globally influential writers influenced by the New Buddhism movement was Daisetz Teitarō (D. T.) Suzuki, who vigorously promoted a modernized articulation of Zen Buddhism highly influential in the West. Drawing from ideas of religious experience found in the work of William James, Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, and writers of the Romantic, Idealist, and Transcendentalist movements, Suzuki wrote that Zen in its essence was an experience that

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