Zen Buddhism and American Religious Culture: A Case Study of Daistez Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966)

This work explores the life, works, and role of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) in the reception of Zen Buddhism in the United States. Particular attention is paid to the major themes that informed Suzuki’s presentation of Zen to American audiences: Western mystical-universalist traditions, intellectualism, psychology and Japanese nationalism. These themes, as Suzuki used them, are not part of traditional Zen in Japan; instead they are responses to Western modernity, colonialism, and Orientalist discourses. Suzuki and many of his contemporaries rephrased Zen in order to assert Japanese cultural and religious superiority.

Suzuki was a prolific writer and his books became the primary source for understanding Zen Buddhism in the United States, especially at the height of his popularity in the 1950’s and 1960’s. From the mid-1960’s onward his popularity in American Buddhist circles dwindled due to a shift to practicing Buddhism rather than merely studying it. I argue that while attention has shifted toward practice and away from Suzuki’s works, his influence has not completely evaporated; instead he remains an important resource for Buddhists in the United States.