Spreading Indra's Net: The Columbia Lectures of D. T. Suzuki

D. T. Suzuki’s 1950s lectures at Columbia University were foundational for the postwar Zen boom. Speaking softly in a bookcase-lined room, Suzuki, then in his eighties, introduced East Asian Buddhism to a rapt audience of the general public, scholars, and students. He offered a distinctive interpretation of Zen, weaving together his understanding of classical Buddhist texts, especially the Flower Garland Sutra, with Christian mysticism, psychology, and twentieth-century European and American philosophy. The freewheeling lectures captivated listeners drawn from the New York intelligentsia and art world—including Carolyn Brown, John Cage, Arthur Danto, Sari Dienes, Erich Fromm, Phillip Guston, Ibram Lassaw, and Dorothy Norman—and catalyzed public interest in Buddhism. Spreading Indra’s Net presents Suzuki’s 1952–1953 lectures in full, giving a vivid look at how one of the most important global Buddhist figures of the twentieth century interpreted Zen for an American audience. Drawing on archival research in Japan and the United States, editor Richard M. Jaffe provides an extensive introduction that traces Suzuki’s path to Columbia, analyzes the content of the lectures, and surveys their reception. Among the most accessible works of a major figure and a record of a crucial moment in New York history, this book displays Suzuki’s gifts as a teacher, scholar, writer, and thinker.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations Editorial Notes Introduction: A Course with No Beginning Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s Columbia University Seminar Lectures, 1952–1953 I II III IV V VI Character Glossary Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Richard M. Jaffe is professor of religious studies at Duke University. He is the general editor of the Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki and the author of Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism and Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism. Shigematsu Sōiku is abbot of the Rinzai Zen temple Shōgenji in Shizuoka, Japan. He is the editor-translator of A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Zen Masters and the cotranslator of D. T. Suzuki’s Columbia University Seminar Lectures into Japanese. Tokiwa Gishin is emeritus professor at Hanazono University. He is the translator of Zen and the Fine Arts and the cotranslator of D. T. Suzuki’s Columbia University Seminar Lectures into Japanese. Elizabeth Mary Thomas (1907–1986) was an accomplished Egyptologist who regularly attended Suzuki’s seminars. The manuscript that she compiled based on her remarkably detailed class notes forms the basis of this book.

Review :
D. T. Suzuki’s legendary Columbia University lectures position Zen as a lively, iconoclastic, art-friendly, and experiential form of spirituality. Scholar-sleuth Richard Jaffe uncovered a set of almost verbatim lecture notes, providing, for the first time, access to one of the key documents in the transmission of Zen to the West, and his well-researched introduction gives us the moment. Suzuki’s momentous 1952–53 seminars on Buddhist philosophy captivated his Columbia University audience, and his unique ideas, insights, and interpretations remain alluring. Now we get to join that audience thanks to Jaffe’s fine introduction and labor of love to make these texts available. An illuminating look into D.T. Suzuki’s first lectures at Columbia University and a clear biographical vision of this renowned Zen scholar and philosopher. Jaffe offers a path to the mind of the teacher and a thorough read of lectures believed by artists and art historians to be a vital root of creative innovation that deeply influenced the art of the 1950s and beyond. Admired by philosophers, artists, literary figures, psychologists, and spiritual seekers, Daisetz Suzuki played a unique role in the dissemination of Buddhism to the modern West. Spreading Indra’s Net displays his ingenuity in communicating Zen through the varied idioms of mid-twentieth century thought and the reasons for his enduring appeal. Richard Jaffe's introductory essay is impressive and illuminating and puts into context what made D.T. Suzuki so attractive. Jaffe’s Introduction, meticulous and most interesting, is just right. The Suzuki lectures are replete with knowledge, conviction, and—of all things—individual charm. This central, largely hidden event in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West is now an event for us all.