APPRECIATON of DAISETZ SUZUKI

Joseph M. Kitagawa
Proffesor of the University of chicago

With the death of Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki on July 12, 1966, the
world lost one of its most eminent Buddhist scholars and a great human
being. Although his writings made his name widely known in various
continents, he never wrote much about himself. Consequently, only those
who had personal contacts with him know about his independent and
indomitable mind, his passion for and dedication to learning and the search
for truth, and his profound love and appreciation of nature and of his
fellow human beings. Yet, these were the marks of the man whose life
extended nearly a century.
Suzuki was born in the city of Kanazawa only three years after the
inauguration of the Meiji regime. It was the period of transition from the
feudal to the modern phases in Japanese history, characterized by restless-
ness and uncertainty caused by the decline of the old order and the pene-
tration of influences of modern Western civilization. He also experienced
a personal tragedy in the death of his father when he was five years old.
It was during his brief student career at the junior College at Kanazawa,
which had to be terminated for financial reasons, that he came to know
a fellow student named Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945),who later became the
foremost philosopher in modern Japan. The friendship between Suzuki and
Nishida, which lasted until the latter's death, was wery close, and they
stimulated each other's thinking a great deal. In 1889, Suzuki began to
teach English in a local junior high school, but f ollowng his mother's death
in 1890 he resumed his own education, first at Tokyo Semmon Gakko
(which subsequently became the Waseda University) and later at Tokyo
Imperial University. He was then studying English literature and was
greatly influenced, among others, by Emerson. Meanwhile, his own sense
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of spiritual restlessness led him to the discipline of Zen under the tutelage
of two great Zen masters, Imakita Kosen and Shaku Soyen. It was Shaku
Soyen and Paul Carus, a free-lance philosopher and editor of the Monist
and the Open Court, who were instrumental in bringing Suzuki to the

Western word.

In a rare personal reminiscence, whih he made as a part of his tribute

to Paul Carus, Suzuki stated:

My relationship with Dr. Paul Carus started through my teacher, Shaku

Soyen, who attended the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. 1 had
the task of translating the message of myyteacher into English, and my friend
Natsume Soseki, a great Japanese novelist, improved my translation. After
the Parliament Shaku Soyen and another Buddhist priest were invited to
spend about a week with Dr. Carus and his father-in-law, Mr. E. C. Hegeler,
at Lasalle, Illinois. Both Dr. Carus and M. Hegeler were great advocates of
the religion of science. At any rate, soon after the Parliament, Dr. Carus
must have collected all the available books on Buddhism written in English,
German, French and other languages.... After working nearly two years on
The Gospel of Buddha, Dr. Carus sent the proof-sheets of the book to Japan
for the inspection of Shaku Soyen. In turn, Shaku Soyen, who did not read
English, turned them over to me, so that I might read them for him in Japa-
nese. This task prompted me to translate The Gospel of Buddha into Japanese,
and my tranlsation, which was endorsed by Shaku Soyen, was published not
long after the appearance of the English edition.. When The Gospel of Buddha

was finished, Dr. Carus continued to be interested in things Oriental, and he

began to translate the Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu. For this task he needed
someone who could read Chinese with him, and he wrote to Shaku Soyen,
asking him to recommend someone. That is how I came to La Salle in 1897
(and) I remained with Dr. Carus for about twelve years in LaSalle, working
with the Open Court Publishing Company." (D. T. Suzuki, "Introduction: A
Glimpse of Paul Carus," in J. M. Kitagawa (ed.), Modern Trends in World
Religions, (LaSalle: Open Court, 1959), pp. ix-xi.)

Thus began D. T. Suzuki's long and distinguished scholarly career away

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from his homeland. Energetically he worked on the publications of Asva -

ghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (1900); T ai-
Shang Kan-Ying P'ien: Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retri-
bution (1906); Yin Chin Way: The Tract of the Quiet Way (1906); (the above
three were translated from Chinese); Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot(1906; trans-
lated from the Japanese manuscript of Shaku Soyen); Amida-butsu (1906;
Japanese translation of Paul Carus' Amitabha); as well as his own book entit-
led Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (1907). In 1908, he visited various
parts of Europe, partly as a guest of the Swedenborg Society.
Upon his return to Japan in 1909, he was offered a chair of English
literature at the Peers' School, Tokyo, and two years later married Beatrice
Lane. He was, for a period of several years, under the spell of Emanuel
Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and
theologian. Not only did he visit England in 1911 by the invitation of the
Swedenborg Society, but he translated Swedenborg's f our major wroks
into Japanese and wrote a biography of Swedenborg. At the same time, he
became interested in the True Pure Land doctrine of Buddhism which, he
felt, was a necessary complement to Zen. Also, his continued interest in
Chinese philosophy resulted in his publication of A Brief History of Early
Chinese Philosophy (1914).
In 1921 Otani University, Kyoto, persuaded Suzuki to accept a chair,
which he kept until his retirement. It was this university which conferred
the D. Litt. degree on Suzuki when he was sixty-three years old. In a
sense, the 1920's and 1930's were the best years of his life. Although Otani
University was an institution affiliated with one of the True Pure Land
schools, it offered considerable freedom to him. He founded an English
journal, Eastern Buddhist, which he edited single-handedly for twenty years.
He traveled widely in Korea, Manchuria, and China (1934), and Europe and
America (1936-37). He wrote numerous articles and books, both in Japanese
and English. Among his English publications were: Essays in Zen Buddhism,
3 vols. (I, 1927; II, 1933; III, 1934); Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (1930);
An Index to the Lankavatara Sutra (1933); The Training of the Zen Bud-
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dhist Monk (1934);An Introductionto Zen Buddhism(1934);the critical edi-
tion of The Gandavyaha Sutra (with H. Idzumi,1934-36);Manual of Zen
Buddhism (1935);Buddhist Philosophyand Its Effects on the Life and Tho-
ught of the Japanese People (1936);Japanese Buddhism (1938); and Zen
Buddhism and Its Influenceon Japanese Culture(1938).
Toward the end of the 1930's,however, the national and international
situation as well as the failing health of his wife concernedhim deeply.In
the summer of 1939,Beatrice Lane Suzuki, his companion and coworker,
died at St. Luke's International Medical Center, Tokyo. The hospital chap-
lain performed the Anglican rite for her by the request of Dr. Suzuki.
After the loss of his wife, followed by the outbreak of World War II,
he kept rather much to himself, reflecting on the meaning of religion,
especially Zen, not only as an intellectual but also as a more practical,
soteriological problem. The emphasis on experience as the foundation of
religious life runs through all the works (more than twenty in number)
written by him in Japanese during the war. In his words:
To study Zen means to have Zen-experience, for without the experience
there is no Zenone can study.But mereexperiencemeansto be able to comm-
unicateit to others; the experienceceasesto be vital unlessit is adequately
expressible.A dumb experienceis not human.To experienceis to be self-
conscious.Zen-experienceis completeonly when it is backedby Zen-consci-
ousnessand findsexpressionin one way or another. [D. T. Suzuki,"Interpre-
tation of Zen-Experience," in Charles A. Moore (ed.), Philosophy-East and
(Princeton, 1946), p. 110.)
When the war ended, Suzuki, now 75 years of age, established the
Matsu-ga-oka ("Pine Hill") Library at Kamakura, where he planned to retire.
Little did he realize that another phase of his career was then just
beginning! At that time, he wrote most books in Japanese, with the
exception of The Essenceof Buddhism (1947),although he also started an
English journal, Cultural East, with a collaborator. In 1949,he was made
a member of the Japan Academy of Sciences and was decorated with a
Cultural Medal by the Japanese government. In the same year, he parti-
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cipated in the second "Philosophy-East and West" conference in Hawaii.

In 1950, at the age of 80, Suzuki was invited by the Rockef eller Founda-
tion to deliver lectures at various universities in America, and except for
intermittent vists to Europe and Japan he stayed in America, teaching, for
the most part, at Columbia University, New York, until 1958. Although
much of his time was given to classroom and public lectures, he gave
generously of his time to a countless number of scholars, students, and
seekers who came to him for counseling and advice. It was the mesure
of his true greatness that he was willing to take even a very naive question
seriously, though he himself never claimed to be an effective teacher.
Rather, he regarded all others as his fellow seekers and fellow students.
His own intellectual curiosity was insatiable even at his advanced age. With
keen interest, he approached new thoughts. He read and reread the writings
of Eckhart, Berdyaev, Tillich, Fromm, and a number of existentialists. He
Made every effort to write simply and concisely in his later years, as seen
in his The Zen Doctrine, of No-Mind (1949); A Miscellany on the Shin
Teaching of Buddhism (1949); Living by Zen (1949); Studies in Zen (1955);
Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (1957); Zen and Japanese Buddhism
(1958); Zen and Japanese Culture (1959); and (with Erich Fromm and Ri-
chard De Martino) Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960).
One of the most heart-warming experiences in his later years, according
to Suzuki, was his "homecoming" to LaSalle, Illinois-which indeed was his
home from 1897 to 1908-as the guest of honor and the featured lecturer
at the Paul Carus Memorial Symposium. This was not just another confe-
rence to him. He was warmly welcomed by the children of Paul Carus,
who were youngsters when young Suzuki knew them. He recalled how he
used to accompany Dr. Carus in his motorboat up the Illinois River to
Starved Rock, and he was gratified to see that the natural beauty of
Starved Rock had been preserved so well. He also related that he used to
agree with Carus and his father-in-law, Mr. Hegeler, that religion must
stand on scientific foundations, but added:
If it were possble for me to talk with them now, I would tell them that my
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ideas have changed from theirs somewhat. I now think that a religion based
solely on science is not enough. There are certain "mythological" elements
in every one of us, which cannot be altogether lost in favor of science. This
is a conviction I have come to. By this I do not mean that a religion is not
to undergo a rigorous purging of all its "impure" elements. (D. T. Suzuki,
"Introductio n: A Glimpse of Paul Carus," op. cit., p. x.)

The participants of the Symposium, which incidentally gathered toge-

ther many historians of religions in America probably for the first time
in recent history, were greatly impressed to see Suzuki sitting in the front
seat at every session, listening to every discussion with the help of Miss
Mihoko Okamura, who by that time was his constant companion and
secretary. We also discovered that he had an uncanny sense of catching
otherpersons' ideas even when his hearing aid was not plugged in!
In 1959, he attended the third "Philosophy-East and West" conference
at Honolulu. In 1960, after returning from India where he lectured at the
request of the Indian government, he remained in Japan where he conti-
nued his research and writing. As late as May, 1966, when Dean Jerald C.
Brauer of the University of Chicago Divinity School paid him a visit, he
found Suzuki perfectly alert, carrying on an animated discussion on sundry
subjects. He even recollected vividly for the benefit of Brauer, the conver-
sation he had had with William Rainey Harper (1856-1906), the first presi-
dent of the University of Chicago.
Standing so close to his death, it is still very difficult for us to assess
the real significance of D. T. Suzuki's contribution to the world. There is
no question that he dedicated his life to scholarship. However, he realized
early in his life that knowledge which does not seek higher wisdom is
meaningless, and that higher wisdom cannot be attained without compas-
sion. "The Wisdom flows from the Compassion and the Compassion from
the wisdom, for the two are in fact one though from the human point of
view we have to speak of it as two" (D. T. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism
(1948), p. 50). This synthesis of wisdom and compassion, which he endea-
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vored to achieve throughout his life, enabled him to see the meaning of
humanity transcending ethnic, cultural, national, philosophical, and, above
all, religious boundaries.
A few years ago, when the writer bade farewell to him in Kyoto, he
said: "Well, at my age I never know how long I will live." And, with a
twinkle in his eyes, he added: "But, for me, any day is a good day to go!"
This was his way of saying that each day fully lived is worth living for
and dying for. Dr. Suzuki led such a life!

(Reprinted by the earnest request of Professor Kitagawa, co-editor of History

of Religions, the University of Chicago.)

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