Thirty_Years_of_Buddhist_studies,Conze

28 Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies
Hu-shih is an historian who wants to know exactly what
happened, how, and in what sequence. For Suzuki, on the other
hand, "Zen is above space-time relations and naturally above
historical facts 11 . Arthur Waley tried to mediate between the
two with a parody of Han Shan:
11 Water and ice do one another no harm;
History and religion—both alike are good".
There is no time here to give the reasons why excessive
attention to the facts of Buddhist history must do harm to the
spiritual vision of the dharma. I must be content to distinguish
between three kinds of historian—the scientific, the humanistic
and the transcendental. The first studies a butterfly after killing
it and fixing it with a pin into a glass case, where it lies quite still
and can leisurely be inspected from all angles. The second lets it
fly in the sun, and looks wonderingly at its pretty ways. The
third assures us that a man will know a butterfly only if he
becomes one. As a creative thinker Suzuki tells the descriptive
historian, whether scientific or humanistic, that Zen must be
grasped within, and not as an outside historical fact, and that
only by actually becoming Zen can one know it. Although his
demands may be rather hard on the average historian, I see no
reason to disagree with him.
Apart from Suzuki's overtowering eminence, his effect on
some Western intellectuals has provoked unfavourable
reactions. Unsuspectingly Suzuki fed an Eastern form of
spirituality into a predominantly ex-Protestant environment
which, having lost all touch with spiritual tradition, gravitated
inevitably towards a self-assertive nihilism. Stirred by his
message, a vast literature on "Zen" arose in England, France,
Italy, Germany, and the U.S.A., ranging from positively stuffy
and ultra-respectable "square" Zennists to the wild whoopees
of Mr. Kerouac and his Beatniks. 1 All that there is in these
books about Zen comes from Suzuki, and he is held responsible
for the misunderstandings they contain. 2 If Suzuki is to be
1 In this connection Allan Watt's pamphlet on Beat Zen, Square Zen
and Zen (1959) is of some interest.
2 So Chen-chi Chang, "The nature of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism 9 ', Philosophy
East and West VI 4, 1958. Though it makes some telling points
against some of the vulgarizers, this article makes the essential soundness
of Suzuki's own work quite apparent.