After stressing the universal nature of Zen, Suzuki then went on to emphasize the fact that this movement of Chinese origin could only develop to the full through contact with Japanese culture, seemingly without any fear of contradicting himself. In another of his works, entitled Zen and Japanese Culture, which was also extremely influential in Europe and the United States, he contrasted the purely intuitive nature of Zen with the cumber- some rationality of the West, establishing (in 1945!) the superiority of the sophisticated Japanese culture over the philistine culture of the West. Neglecting to comment on the responsibility of the Japanese in the development of the Pacific war, Suzuki saw the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as a consequence of Western intellectualism: “The intellect presses the button and the entire city is destroyed.” It apparently didn’t occur to him to seek the main cause of the war and the destruction which followed in the same warrior mystique which he praises throughout his book.
Faure: Unmasking Buddhism pp.79-80
Submitted December 14, 2018 at 06:25PM by grass_skirt https://ift.tt/2SOtJvt
No comments:
Post a Comment