Daisetsu Suzuki was a great scholar capable of original research in Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese ancient literature, and a subtle commentator on such works.　His width of knowledge was great but his appreciation of Zen and Buddhism shifted during his long career from a profound antinomianism to a greater appreciation of the range of Zen experience and its historical transmission.　It was

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however his early presentation that made such a great impact in the West.　His later reservations have left little mark.

Suzuki’s early view of Zen was lop-sided, favouring a presentation of Japanese Rinzai emphasizing spontaneity of responses and the sudden and direct apprehension of reality (subitism).　As Faure’s detailed critique demonstrates (1993:52-88), Suzuki interpreted Zen experience as the timeless, ahistorical, context free, basis of mystical experience and hence the very root of religion, of which Zen was thus the purest form (Suzuki 1949-53,1:73, 265, 270-272, 2:304).　The experience of enlightenment (kensho) was interpreted as a supreme individual achievement attained through heroic efforts but open to all irrespective of race, nationality or creed. “Because Zen is supposedly free from all ties with any specific religious or philosophical tradition, Suzuki argues it can be practiced by Christians and Buddhist alike. ──Suzuki’s view of Zen’s ‘oceanic nature’ reveals the extent of the exorbitant privilege that he confers on his own interpretation.” (Faure 1993:62).

Reading between the lines, his critics see in Suzuki’s work a skilled apologia relating an increasingly triumphalist Japan of the post Meiji era to the Western world.　In spite of living in the United States and marrying an American, Suzuki, in the end, is considered by some to have been a Japanese chauvinist who tolerated the militarism of his country leading to the Pacific war in WW2, did not condemn the use of Zen in military training and argued that the war itself was a consequence of Western intellectualism and lack of respect for nature (Faure 1993:70. Victoria 1997:22-25, etc).  His work has been described as “militant comparativism”; comparative study in order to press home one’s own case.　And yet it is necessary to see the war time Suzuki in context.　To a degree the Japanese police were suspicious of him due to his prolonged visits to the West and his marriage to an American.　He lived in seclusion in his home in Kamakura and recognized that Japan could not possibly win a war

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against the USA.　While his early writings accepted a link between Zen and the state, after the war, although he wrote several times on the war responsibility of Japan and accepted that Zen practitioners had been at fault, he mainly blamed Shinto for the disaster (Victoria 1997:147 et seq).　As an adopted Westerner, were he alive today, Suzuki would doubtless be greatly surprised by being read in this way as indeed are some of his ardent followers.

Suzuki understood very well the spiritual vacuum in the West of the first half of this century, the aridity of scientific materialism and the alienation arising from the general collapse of Christian beliefs before the impact of scientific knowledge.　In seeking to go beyond the mere rationalism of the Western “enlightenment,” not only was science itself then an expression of Western romanticism, a seeking for ultimate knowledge outside social and historical experience, but the extreme individualism of Western culture meant that personal cultivation leading to so high a credential as Zen “Enlightenment” based in a heroic, inner adventure was alluringly attractive (Wright 1998).

　　In reading Suzuki it is not always easy to distinguish between the early antinomian radical and the later more cautious and more orthodox Buddhist writer.　Suzuki’s tendency is to emphasis the spontaneity and radical nature of Zen.　Thus after providing an entirely orthodox account of Zen Buddhist origins in Japan he goes on “Zen undertakes to awaken Praj~naa found generally slumbering in us under the thick clouds of ignorance and karma.　Ignorance and karma come from our unconditioned surrender to the intellect; Zen revolts against this state of affairs . . . .  Zen disdains logic and remains speechless when it is asked to express itself.　The worth of the intellect is only appreciated after the essence of things is grasped.　This means that Zen wants to reverse the ordinary course of knowledge and resort to its own specific methods of training our minds in the awakening of transcendental wisdom.” (Suzuki 1938:5).

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But what is this Zen to which his use of the word applies──a person, a system, a belief, a form of yoga? Later, in referring to the way in which a master answer questions, he says: “. . . the answering mind does not stop anywhere but responds straightaway without giving any thought to the felicity of the answer.　This ‘non-stopping’ mind remains immovable as it is never carried away by the things of relativity.　It is the substance of things, it is God . . . the ultimate secret etc.” (p.80).　In these moods Suzuki appears to forget pratiitya samutpaada, the interconnectedness of things and the identity of opposites completely.　While the intimations that arise in meditative practice may be psychologically transcendent, the world within which they happen is far from so──the everyday grind of monastic living.　Can one distance “Zen” from this supporting context?  Doing so has become the root of much confusion.