Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki ( Japanese 鈴木大拙 , Suzuki Daisetsu * 18th October 1870 in Kanazawa as 鈴木貞太郎 , Suzuki Teitaro ; † 12 July 1966 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese author of books on the Zen - Buddhism .

life and work

Teitaro Suzuki was born as the fifth and youngest child of the doctor Ryojun Suzuki. When Suzuki was six years old, his father died and, shortly afterwards, an older brother.

The difficult economic situation forced Suzuki to drop out of school without a formal qualification at the age of 17 and earn his living by taking English lessons.

Two years later his mother also died. A little later, Suzuki moved to Tokyo to study Western languages ​​and literature at Waseda University . During this time he was supported financially by one of his brothers. At the suggestion of his friend Nishida Kitarō , Suzuki also studied philosophy at the Imperial University .

Suzuki was born into a samurai family. The social change in Japan at that time, however, deprived the respected noble families of their privileges. Suzuki's philosophical and religious studies also corresponded to his search for orientation. His religious interest was aroused at a time when Japan was experiencing social upheaval due to the Meiji Restoration . Initially rejected by the abbot of the family temple of Rinzai-Zen , the 21-year-old Suzuki met Imagita Kosen in the temple Engaku-ji in Kamakura and received his first kōan . Imagita Kosen died a few months later. The new abbot and thus Suzuki's teacher was Shaku Soen , who after his ordination was immensely involved in the inner-Buddhist exchange with other Asian traditions. Like his predecessor Imagita Kosen, Soen also represented an adaptation of Zen Buddhism to the realities of modernity. This progressive attitude gave Suzuki access to religious knowledge that would not have been possible a few years earlier. Previously, the institutions presented Zen as "a closed world of monks and priests", which only became apparent through the loss of state support in the course of the Meiji Restoration and the resulting need to assert itself against the newly established state Shinto and Christianity opened for interested laypeople.

Suzuki's university education enabled him to work as a translator for Shaku Soen for his lively lectures, including at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893. After meeting Paul Carus there , Soen suggested his student Suzuki to help Carus with the translation and editing of some Buddhist works to be.

However, Suzuki remained a novice of the monastery and with his master Soen and experienced satori by releasing his kōan (clapping of a hand). He received the Buddhist surname Daisetsu from his Zen master . After completing his Zen studies in 1897, Suzuki followed Carus' call to America and became his personal assistant.

After more than ten years of translating and later also lecturing and teaching, Suzuki returned to Japan via Europe in 1908. His work as a translator kept him in Paris and London for some time.

Back in Japan, Suzuki began teaching English and lived near his Zen master Soen's monastery. In 1911 Suzuki married the American Beatrice Erskine Lane (1878-1939). After the death of his Zen master, he gave in to the insistence of his childhood friend Nishida Kitaro and in 1921 he became professor of Buddhist philosophy at the Ōtani University in Kyoto .

Both Suzuki himself and his wife Beatrice were members of the Adyar Theosophical Society (Adyar-TG) and in 1920, together with nine other theosophists, founded the Tokyo International Lodge in Tokyo with Suzuki as president. Beatrice acted as the lodge's secretary. In 1921 they moved to Kyoto , where they founded the theosophical Mahayana Lodge of the Adyar-TG, again with Suzuki as president and Beatrice as secretary. During a visit to Japan in 1937, Suzuki translated Curuppumullage Jinarajadasas , who later became President of the Adyar-TG, whose lectures were translated from English into Japanese.

In 1921 he founded the Eastern Buddhist Society with his wife Beatrice Erskine Lane , a society that focuses on Mahayana Buddhism. His sense of mission to bring Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in particular closer to the western world corresponded to the publication of the quarterly English-language magazine The Eastern Buddhist .

After participating in a major interreligious congress initiated by Francis Younghusband , the World Congress of Faiths , which was held at University College London in 1936 , Suzuki embarked on a lecture tour through American and British university cities.

After World War II, Suzuki continued his lectures in the West, especially in the United States. He also decided to live in America again and spent another ten years teaching and lecturing at universities (from 1952 to 1957 at Columbia University in NY). In 1949 he was awarded the Order of Culture by the emperor in Japan .

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki died in Tokyo on July 12, 1966.

He was the author of several works on Zen Buddhism and translated the Lankavatara Sutra from Sanskrit into English. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung wrote the preface to THE GREAT LIBERATION, Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1958), one of Suzuki's books. Most of his works have also appeared in German.

It can be assumed that Suzuki's specific portrayal of Zen is the product of an orientalist network and is a reaction to post-colonial-modern demands for religious identity. Through his lively exchange with Buddhist-Asian reformers, American and European intellectuals as well as with Western actors from theosophy, science, art and literature, Suzuki can be understood as the global founder of a modernized Zen Buddhism, which arose from the negotiation processes of this network:

"DT Suzuki transmitted Zen to the West - and to some extent back to Japan. As a product of both East and West he acted as a translator of cultures, as a spiritual bridge-builder and 'midwife,' and he had been a mythological figure, he could have been called a culture hero. [...] He was part of a fine-meshed interrelated network, a human sign among a web of signifiers, and infinite frame of reference where ideas, ideals and metaphors were part of a communicative living tradition. "

Suzuki's work, like that of other reformers, such as Vivekananda or Dharmapala , can also be classified in the broader discourses of the 19th century. Christian theological actors endeavored to defend Christianity against the newly discovered Asian religious history, which was given special attributions of originality due to its higher age, and at the same time to proclaim its compatibility with science. Asian actors such as Suzuki were familiar with these European debates due to their excellent global network and explicitly referred to them in their own works. For example, Suzuki emphasizes the special importance of the experience in opposition to faith, as well as the compatibility with Western psychoanalysis .

Influences

  • In 1957 Charlotte Selver was one of the speakers, along with Erich Fromm , Richard DeMartino, and Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, at the conference in Mexico entitled “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis.”
  • Through his student Alan Watts and Charlotte Selver , Suzuki had an influence on the humanist movement at the Esalen Institute (Human Potential Movement: Fritz Perls , Abraham Maslow , Alexander Lowen , Will Shuts, John Periocus, Rollo May, Carl Rogers , Moshé Feldenkrais , Ida Rolf )
  • "The premier metaphysician of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, once said in regard to DT Suzuki," If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings. "Roman Catholic writer Thomas Merton, analytical psychologist Carl Jung, social psychologist Erich Fromm , avant-garde musician John Cage , writer and social critic Alan Watts , poet Gary Snyder - all influential in their own rights, claim a debt to Mr. Suzuki and his writings, the most representative of which are gathered here in Zen Buddhism. An intellectual understanding of Zen begins with this book. " Ref Zen Buddhism (Hardcover), by Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, Aryan Books International, 2002

criticism

Victor Trimondi postulated in his book Hitler - Buddha - Krishna that Suzuki had cooperated with the Japanese military during the Second World War and contributed in several publications to the "formulation of a fascist-Buddhist warrior ethos". Trimondi refers to the book Zen at War by Brian Daizen Victoria . After 1945, however, Suzuki was "the first known Japanese Buddhist who criticized his country's war policy and the opportunistic attitude of Japanese Buddhists in several articles."

A review by Kemmyō Taira Satō, who analyzed and questioned the critical statements about Suzuki in Zen at War , initiated an extensive discussion on the subject.

Works (selection)

As an author

Title of the English editions:

  • Zen and Japanese Culture . Pantheon Books, New York City 1959.
    • Zen and the culture of Japan , slightly abbreviated published by: rowohlts deutsche enzyklopädie, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1958.
  • Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series . Rider, London 1970, ISBN 0-09-026771-0 . Edited by Christmas Humphreys
  • Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series . Rider, London 1970, ISBN 0-09-048431-2 . Edited by Christmas Humphreys
  • Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series . Rider, London 1970, ISBN 0-09-048441-X . Edited by Christmas Humphreys; German translation: Prajna . Zen and the highest wisdom. The realization of “transcendent wisdom” in Buddhism and Zen ; Otto Wilhelm Barth-Verlag, Bern 1990
  • Living by Zen, A synthesis of the historical and practical aspects of Zen Buddhism . Rider, London 1991, ISBN 0-7126-5136-5 .
  • Manual of Zen Buddhism, A collection of Buddhist texts, images, including the "ten ox-herding pictures" . Grove Press, New York 1960.
  • Mysticism, Christian and Buddhist . Greenwood Press, Westport 1975, ISBN 0-8371-8516-5 ; German translation by Lieselotte and Walter Hilsbecher : The west and the east way , Ullstein-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1995 ISBN 3-548-35505-6
  • Swedenborg, Buddha of the North . Swedenborg Foundation, West Chester 1996, ISBN 0-87785-184-0
  • The Great Liberation - Introduction to Zen Buddhism , Eastern Buddhist Society, Kyōto 1934; First published in German translation by Weller, Leipzig 1939 with the title: The Great Liberation - Introduction to Zen Buddhism , translated from English by Heinrich Robert Zimmer and with a preface by CG Jung . Up to 2010 14 editions and a few superb editions, most recently by Barth, Frankfurt am Main 2005 ISBN 3-502-61157-2
  • The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind . Samuel Weiser, York Beach 1993, ISBN 0-87728-182-3 .
  • Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis , with Erich Fromm and Richard de Martino. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 3-518-36537-1 .

As translator

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Prohl, Inken: Zen for Dummies . Wiley, Weinheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-527-70501-6 , pp. 376 .
  2. ↑ Adele S. Algeo: Beatrice Lane Suzuki and Theosophy in Japan . in Theosophical History . Volume XI, Fullerton, July 2005.
  3. ↑ American Occultism and Japanese Buddhism: Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nanzan-u.ac.jp
  4. ↑ Adele S. Algeo, Beatrice Lane Suzuki: An American Theosophist in Japan http://theosophical.org/publications/questmagazine/janfeb07/algeo/index.php ( Memento of June 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Congress report at religion-online ( memento of the original from June 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed October 30, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.religion-online.org
  6. ^ Borup, Jørn: Zen and the Art of Inverting Orientalism. Buddhism, Religious Studies and Interrelated Networks . In: Antes, Peter / Geertz, Armin W. / Warne, Randi R (eds.): New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-017698-X .
  7. ^ Bergunder, Michael: "Religion" and "Science" within a Global Religious History . In: Aries . No. 16 , 2016, p. 86-141 .
  8. ↑ cf. also the English-language Wikipedia article ( Zen at War ).
  9. ↑ Excerpt from the book Hitler-Buddha-Krishna on the Trimondi homepage (accessed November 4, 2012).
  10. ↑ Kemmyō Taira Satō: DT Suzuki and the Question of War . In: The Eastern Buddhist 39 (1), 2008, pp. 61-120.
  11. ^ Brian Daizen Victoria: The "Negative Side" of DT Suzuki's Relationship to War ( Memento November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), The Eastern Buddhist 41 (2), 2010, pp. 97-138.
  12. ↑ Kemmyō Taira Satō: Brian Victoria and the Question of Scholarship ( Memento of November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), The Eastern Buddhist 41 (2), 2010, pp. 139–166.
  13. ^ Daniel A. Metraux, A Critical Analysis of Brian Victoria's Perspectives on Modern Japanese Buddhist History , Journal of Global Buddhism 5, pp. 66-81, 2004
personal data
SURNAME Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 鈴木 大 拙 (Japanese); 鈴木 貞 太郎 (real name, Japanese); Suzuki, Teitarō (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese author
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Kanazawa , Japan
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1966
Place of death Tokyo