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Title: Zen and Japanese Culture by Daisetz T. Suzuki ISBN: 0-691-01770-0 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 1970 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A Good Book, But Don't Believe the Hype
Comment: OK, enough effusion from other reviewers. This book is good, but it's not that good. It contains a lot of information about Zen, and I'm glad I read it. Zen was and still is an important aspect of Japanese culture, and Suzuki knew a lot about it. He's a good writer, and his command of English, though nonnative, is still quite good. I learned a lot from this book, as can anyone who's interested in Zen, Japan, or both. However, I'd recommend a few grains of salt with the book, as follows:
First of all, Suzuki is a good writer, but he's not writing in his native language and it shows. The prose is informative but often meanders, having trouble staying focused on whatever particular topics the chapter seems to be addressing. Maybe this is "mystical." Still, Suzuki writes clearly and is easy to understand, even if his digressions often detract from the point he's trying to make.
And the points he's trying to make are, well, not always backed up very well. He goes out of his way to show how Zen is intimately tied to bushido and study of confucian classics in Japan, for example. Frankly, though, pure land buddhism was also a powerful force among the warrior classes, and Confucian thinking and study was well established in Japan before the arrival of Zen. That's not to say he's completely wrong: Zen does become identified with these and other aspects of Japense culture. It was a powerful force in Japanese society, but Suzuki apparently wants it to be the only force (and in Chinese culture, too, when he claims original Chinese philosophy began only under the aegis of Cha'an; previously it had been either Indian in origin or the "unphilosophical" thought of people like Confucius or Lao-Tzu).
Above all, just don't take everything he says at face value. He's often correct, but he also exaggerates or makes up a lot of the things he says. He wrote the book during the 1930s, when Japan was experiencing a huge surge of nationalism, and it shows. Japan and Zen in this book are apparently responsible for anything of cultural significance that ever happened in East Asia, either originating it or preserving it when its originators (often the Chinese) were too dumb or disorganized to do it themselves. Suzuki was knowledgable, but he wasn't unbiased, and I have grave doubts about his supremely enlightened Zen master status, too.
So if you're really interested in Japan and Zen, this is a good book to read, but it shouldn't be the only book. It's filled with too many errors and fabrications for it to really be useful by itself.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Masterpiece...
Comment: This enchanting book examines the deep influence of Zen Buddhism on the central aspects of Japanese culture and gracefully illustrates that the two are linked in profound ways. Suzuki has that mysterious ability as a writer to explain extremely abstract notions in elegant though simplistic language. Zen is a difficult subject to demonstrate because, by its very nature, it defies normative modes of rational thought.
Suzuki manages to gently clear our rationally conditioned patterns of thought like a gentle spring rain, and astonishingly we come to discover that Zen is simpler than anything else we've encountered before. One comes away from the reading with a soothing, calm and certain understanding of the nature of Zen. And one is certain that the man behind the words is a master.
He begins the narrative with insightful remarks on Japanese culture, touching on Zen's history and how the military classes, the Samurai, embraced the religion. The discussion moves onto Zen and its relation to Confucianism and the connection with the cultivation of a nationalistic spirit in Japan. The majority of the text is devoted to three central areas: Zen and Swordsmanship, Zen and Haiku, Zen and the Art of Tea, and lastly, the Japanese love of nature and its manifestations through art.
Suzuki's argument is that Zen and its teachings have had such an enormous influence on the Japanese, that the culture as we know it would not exist without it. One needs to truly understand this influence in order to have any comprehension of the culture. He proposes that one does not exist without the other:
"...without a full appreciation of it not a page of the history of Japanese poetry, Japanese arts, and Japanese handicrafts would have been written. Not only the history of the arts, but the history of the Japanese moral and spiritual life would lose its deeper significance, if detached from the Zen way of interpreting life and the world." (P.364)
This is an extraordinary book because it opens the way towards a fundamental understanding of Zen Buddhism and the foundations of Japanese culture, illustrating that the two are inextricably interlinked. The text is also beautifully enhanced with poetry, paintings, calligraphy and examples of architecture. If one is interested in either of these subjects, this book is a masterpiece and an important and enlightening experience.
Rating: 5
Summary: A road worth travel
Comment: If you like me have turned corners with Zen as sign posts and have come away with less than satisfactory comprehension as to what "it is," you also may find this book helpful. In college years I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle, etc." as well as "Zen and the Art of Archery." Both had me wanting to know more about Zen.
That said, I do not know what Zen is. I have now read Suzuki's book and I cannot explain it to my friend who asked me what "it is." It is a concept very different from the Western Philosophical dialectic tradition. I cannot tell you, the reader, what it is.
Suzuki does an exceptional job in presenting the idea framed in terms of Japanese culture. As we learn by comparison, this helps significantly. His scholarship is first rate. He addresses questions such as how Buddhism, a belief that embraces life, can be consistent with kendo, the art of swordsmanship, which obviously must deal with violent death and somehow connect with Zen and the Art of the Tea Ceremony. Moreover, he presents common allegorical tales from eastern texts to illustrate ideas about Zen. This helped me since I had read several of the same or similar tales in various books. (In fact, I suspect some of them may be the same tales, corrupted by time and telling.) One tale, about a Samurai posing as a monk to defeat a kidnapper, appears in one of the first scenes of the movie, "The Seven Samurai." I include this to answer one of the other reviewers who questioned the connection between Zen and Japanese Culture.
How pervasive Zen is in the culture, I have no idea. I am not sophisticated enough in the matter to definitively respond, but I did find, in my limited experience, a connection of significance. Moreover, I do sense that I know more now after having read Suzuki's book than before.
Finally, for those who want to know what Zen is, I would recommend they include this book in their travels. I believe--think is not the appropriate word--that understanding it is a long process. One learns techniques of thinking that inhibit knowing but are necessary. One distances oneself from the techniques for them to become natural. One appreciates the distance and the techniques and becomes entangled in pride. Finally, I believe, one loses all of oneself and is. Now that is what I do not know it is.
Be sure to read the tale of "The Swordman and the Cat" beginning on page 429.
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Title: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Carl Gustav Jung ISBN: 0802130550 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Zen Buddhism by Daisetz T. Suzuki ISBN: 038548349X Publisher: Image Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki ISBN: 0834800799 Publisher: Weatherhill Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Three Pillars of Zen : Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition) by Phillip Kapleau Roshi ISBN: 0385260938 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 27 February, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century by Donald Keene ISBN: 0802150586 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.50 |
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