Quotes from Bernard Faure

The major contradiction in Suzuki's position, one of which he was acutely aware, is that he negated in actual practice what he advocated in theory, namely, that Zen "is a direct method, for it refuses to resort to verbal explanation or logical analysis, or to ritualism" (Ibid. 3:318).

D. T.] Suzuki's work is in some ways an attempt at a spiritual reconquista , and his "dialogue" with Christians may have the same motivations as [Francis] Xavier's conversations with Japanese Buddhists.

Although [D. T.] Suzuki's apparently free-floating, and certainly contradictory, discourse may be charitably interpreted as reflecting the "unlocalized" mind of the enlightened master, it can also appear as a situational reflex to "cash in" on both sides of every issue.

With Suzuki, the commonsensical approach that would see Zen as a product of Japanese culture is inverted, and Japanese culture becomes a multifaceted expression of a unique phenomenon, or rather of a metaphysical principle named Zen.

Although some religious traditions may promote inner detachment vis-à-vis political systems, most religions tend to be politically conservative and nationalistic and Zen has been no exception in this regard.

Without falling into sociopolitical reductionism, it remains necessary to protest against the prevailing tendency, among Western scholars, to read the works of Nishida [Kitar?] and the Kyoto school as expressions of a "pure philosophy" stemming from a "pure experience.

Nishida has been sharply criticized after the war for lending his support to the imperial (ist) ideology of the Japanese government, but these criticisms have not led—as in Heidegger's case—to a thorough questioning of his philosophy.

If there is some truth in the Zen dictum that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, then it follows that the notion of pure experience is by no means the pure experience itself. Assuming that such an experience can be found, any attempt to characterize it, even the least reifying one, will betray it.

Their common interest in Western mystics like Meister Eckhart led both Nishida and Suzuki to misrepresent Christianity as some kind of inferior version of Mahayäna Buddhism, thus reversing the old schemas applied to the East by Westerners.

With [D. T.] Suzuki, Zen coopted the whole field of Japanese culture and, imposing on Japanese ideology the myth of transparency, claimed the status of a transcendental spirituality. With Nishida [Kitar?] and the Kyoto school, Zen acquired a crosscultural philosophical status. Thus, through the work of Suzuki, Nishida and their successors, a new field of discourse was created—one that differs markedly from the earlier Chan/Zen discourse (s) it claimed to replicate or interpret.

As it is known to us through East Asian sources, Chan/Zen is the product of two traditions that sometimes overlap, sometimes contradict or ignore each other: namely, the Buddhist orthodoxy the Sino-Japanese historiographical tradition.

To what extent is Chan amenable to a historical approach, if it is indeed? Can this teaching, as [D. T.] Suzuki thought, traverse the claim of history in the name of its own temporal character? If not, to what extent is it threatened by the results of the historical inquiry?

As the controversy between [D. T.] Suzuki and [Chinese historian] Hu Shih suggests, the history of Chan/Zen is the product of two distincts milieux, the Buddhist institutions and the academic world. Serving as relay stations between these two circles are Buddhist institutions such as Komazawa University in Tokyo and Hanazono College in Kyoto, respectively affiliated with the S?t? and Rinzai sects.

There is probably no way for Westerners to understand Asian religions from a purely traditional Indian, Chinese, or Japanese perspective, but perhaps is there no need either to do so.

Buddhists have always claimed the moral high ground and attempted, with more or less success, to maintain an exigent ideal of purity. Any spiritual practice is fated to confront the obstinate realities of human existence, however.

From the outset the Buddhist tradition has been divided between the most uncompromising moral rigorism and a subversion of all ideals in the name of a higher truth, transcending good and evil. M?h?yana Buddhism, in particular, argued that the ultimate truth can be discovered only by those who awaken to the reality of desire and are able to transmute it.

The Chan tradition first acquired its legitimacy as a narrative about patriarchs, and, although some points of the narrative have been questioned by historians, the ideological function of the narrative itself has rarely been scrutinized.

Orientalism is but one historical variety of larger epistemological issues, that of the West's encounter with other cultures and of its tendency to disparage and/or idealize them.

Both the ethnocentric and anti-ethnocentric extremes arise from the same root, the tendency to make absolute the differences among cultures and traditions.

Although, conscious of the similarities they shared with Zen, Jesuits in Japan stressed the differences.

Admittedly, it would be naive to expect a sixteenth century Jesuit, a warrior for Christ, to apologize for or to compromise his faith, and to that extent Ricci's rejection of Buddhism is consistent. Ricci, however, did compromise with Confucianism, and his justification of his faith was not free of cunning and deception.

Whereas the Enlightenment had found its model in China, Romanticism turned to India, the source of all mysticism (Schwab 1984; Halbfass 1988).

Owing to the lingering Jesuit influence, the study of Confucianism continued to prevail in Western Sinology, while Chinese Buddhism and Chan came to be considered mere offshoots of Indian mysticism.

As colonialism expanded over Asia, the image of China evolved from that of a model of enlightened government to that of a decadent, apathetic, and racially inferior country.