D. T. Suzuki - Spread of Zen in The West - Buddhist Modernism

Buddhist Modernism

That Suzuki was a university-educated intellectual steeped in knowledge of Western philosophy and literature allowed him to be particularly successful and persuasive in presenting his case to a Western audience. As Suzuki portrayed it, Zen Buddhism was a highly practical religion whose emphasis on direct experience made it particularly comparable to forms of mysticism that scholars such as William James had emphasized as the fountainhead of all religious sentiment. It is this idea of a common essence which made Suzuki's ideas recognizable to a Western audience, who could identificate with the Western esotericism concealed in it in it, disguised as eastern metaphysics. Suzuki presents a version of Zen that can be described as detraditionalized and essentialized. This resemblance is not coincidental, since Suzuki was also influenced by Western esotericism, and even joined the Theosophical Society.

Several scholars have identified Suzuki as a Buddhist modernist. As scholar David McMahan describes it, Buddhist modernism consists of

forms of Buddhism that have emerged out of an engagement with the dominant cultural and intellectual forces of modernity."

Most scholars agree that the influence of Protestant and Enlightenment values have largely defined some of the more conspicuous attributes of Buddhist modernism. McMahan cites

western monotheism; rationalism and scientific naturalism; and Romantic expressivism" as influences.

Buddhist modernist traditions often consist of a deliberate de-emphasis of the ritual and metaphysical elements of the religion, as these elements are seen as incommensurate with the discourses of modernity. Buddhist modernist traditions have also been characterized as being "detraditionalized," often being presented in a way that occludes their historical construction. Instead, Buddhist modernists often employ an essentialized description of their tradition, where key tenets are described as universal and sui generis. It was this form of Zen that has been popularized in the West:

The popular “lay” image of Zen, notably the notion that Zen refers not to a specific school of Buddhism but rather to a mystical or spiritual gnosis that transcends sectarian boundaries, is largely a twentieth-century construct. Beginning with the persecution of Buddhism in the early Meiji (haibutsu kishaku) Zen apologists have been forced to respond to secular and empiricist critiques of religion in general, and to Japanese nativist critiques of Buddhism as a “foreign funerary cult” in particular. In response, partisans of Zen drew upon Western philosophical and theological strategies in their attempt to adapt their faith to the modern age.