D. T. Suzuki

D. T. Suzuki was a Japanese Buddhist scholar and writer who did more than anyone to introduce Zen to readers in the West. He trained in Zen at Engaku-ji in Kamakura, spent eleven years in Illinois translating Buddhist texts, and later taught at Ōtani University in Kyoto and lectured at Columbia University. Books such as An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934) and Essays in Zen Buddhism presented Zen as a direct experience of awakening, satori, beyond logic and doctrine. Scholars now criticise his picture of Zen as idealised and tied to Japanese nationalism, but its influence was vast.

Key ideas

• Zen centres on satori, a sudden, direct insight into one's own nature that intellectual analysis cannot reach.
• Zen is not a philosophy or a set of doctrines but a way of seeing that transforms ordinary life.
• Zen awakening is akin to mystical experience in other religions, including the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart.
• Japanese arts such as swordsmanship, the tea ceremony and haiku express the spirit of Zen.

Major works

• An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934)
• Essays in Zen Buddhism (1927)
• Manual of Zen Buddhism (1935)
• Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (1957)
• Zen and Japanese Culture (1959)

In the Book corner

• An Introduction to Zen Buddhism 1934 · Beginner
  An introductory book on Zen by D. T. Suzuki, the Japanese scholar who did most to bring Zen to Western readers. First…

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