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Zen’s Personality: D. T. Suzuki

Jane Naomi Iwamura

in Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture

1950s mass media representations of D.T. Suzuki and the American “Zen Boom” are the focus of this chapter. The specific way that Suzuki is portrayed—as engaging, yet ineffable Oriental—and the medium ... More

1950s mass media representations of D.T. Suzuki and the American “Zen Boom” are the focus of this chapter. The specific way that Suzuki is portrayed—as engaging, yet ineffable Oriental—and the medium in which these depictions first appear—the fashion magazine—mark Eastern spirituality as a “stylized religion” and consumable object. The various “characters” that emerge in the unfolding of Zen Buddhism mid-century are explored: Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac as Suzuki’s most famous pupils and spiritual heirs; Arthur Koestler as Zen’s skeptical critic and; Mihoko Okamura, Suzuki’s long-time assistant, who figures the problematic representation of Asian Americans in the scheme of American conceptions of Asian religions. These real-life personalities and the debates and drama that ensue over Zen’s legitimacy and significance prefigure and establish a Virtual Orientalist narrative that is still popular today.Less

‘This is IT’: Alan Watts and the visionary tradition

Laurence Coupe

in Beat Sound, Beat Vision: The Beat Spirit and Popular Song

This chapter examines Alan Watts' relationship with the Beats, as well as Christianity, which is the dominant religion of North America, and its common points with the philosophies of Hinduism, Zen, ... More

This chapter examines Alan Watts' relationship with the Beats, as well as Christianity, which is the dominant religion of North America, and its common points with the philosophies of Hinduism, Zen, Taoism and Buddhism. It takes note of Watts' doubts about the Beats' spiritual authenticity and discusses his philosophy, which is rooted in the tradition of the American Transcendentalists, where mysticism is considered to be the most important goal of religion.Less

Movement into the Future

William A. Richards and G. William Barnard

in Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences

The Taboo of Knowing who you Are and the future of psychedelic studies.

Technê-Zen and the Spiritual Quality of Global Capitalism

R. John Williams

in The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West

This chapter examines the notion of technê-Zen: a discourse premised on the supposed commensurability and mutual determination of Zen Buddhism (including all of its related Taoist notions and ... More

This chapter examines the notion of technê-Zen: a discourse premised on the supposed commensurability and mutual determination of Zen Buddhism (including all of its related Taoist notions and techniques of spiritual and aestheticized practice—in short, its technê) and the possibilities of an organic and holistic form of rationalist technocracy. In analyzing the discourse of technê-Zen in Robert Pirsig's novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, its historical origins, and its ongoing role in the networked global capitalist systems we live with today, this chapter advances two main arguments: first, whereas Pirsig posits technê-Zen as a discursive rupture from the dissident “spirit of the sixties,” his book can be more correctly understood as both a continuation and an acceleration of a discourse of “cybernetic Zen” already well under way in the 1950s and 1960s; second, the forms of technê-Zen developed in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance have come to occupy an especially privileged space in the technologically saturated realms of network capitalism and particularly the corporate management theories that currently dominate international business practiceLess

With Rigor: Adopting Religion Approaches

Ira Helderman

in Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion

In the adopting religion approaches to Buddhist traditions explicated in this chapter, clinicians actively and openly take up Buddhist teachings, practices, and identities. Instead of treating ... More

In the adopting religion approaches to Buddhist traditions explicated in this chapter, clinicians actively and openly take up Buddhist teachings, practices, and identities. Instead of treating Buddhist traditions as resources for clinical work, therapists taking adopting religion approaches sometimes frame psychotherapies as resources to aid Buddhist communities. The chapter briefly surveys the impact this has on Buddhist communities in the United States, a number of which have been established by psychotherapists. Such approaches can appear to upend a hierarchy between the religious and not-religious as clinicians characterize therapy as merely a tool to, for example, clear psychological obstacles from meditation practice. This reversal can be traced back to humanistic and transpersonal therapists of the 1960s-1970s like Abraham Maslow who, critiquing secularity and “the medical model,” remade therapeutic goals to include the activation of “human potential.” While contemporary therapists who take adopting religion approaches could be defined as fully practicing religion (some describe their psychotherapies as new hybrid Buddhist schools), this arrangement of religious/not-religious also remains unstable: the specific Buddhist traditions they adopt can themselves be characterized as secularized forms, already bereft of features coded as more “conventionally” or “self-evidently” religious (merit-making practices, propitiation of deities, etc.).Less

Making Zen Modern: D. T. Suzuki

Gregory P. A. Levine

in Long Strange Journey: On Modern Zen, Zen Art, and Other Predicaments

Focused on D. T. Suzuki, this chapter considers the efforts of Japanese Zen monastics and lay Buddhists to reform and modernize Zen—to bring it out of the meditation hall—through emphasis on lay and ... More

Focused on D. T. Suzuki, this chapter considers the efforts of Japanese Zen monastics and lay Buddhists to reform and modernize Zen—to bring it out of the meditation hall—through emphasis on lay and global outreach, framed within Japanese exceptionalism and articulated through hybridization with Western theology and philosophy and premised in an argument for Zen’s universality. It turns then to critics of Suzuki’s presentations as well as the proliferation of Zen advocates in the West, including R. H. Blyth and Alan Watts, whose adaptations of Zen were not entirely consonant with the Zen promoted by Suzuki and other Japanese authorities.Less

The Musician and Philosopher

Joseph B. Atkins

in Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood's Zen Rebel

This chapter explores Harry Dean Stanton's music and philosophy of life, both very important in understanding him. Music had always been important, an inheritance from his family. His role as the ... More

This chapter explores Harry Dean Stanton's music and philosophy of life, both very important in understanding him. Music had always been important, an inheritance from his family. His role as the guitar-playing Tramp in Cool Hand Luke (1967) introduced him to many moviegoers both as an actor and a musician. After decades on screen, he confessed to musician and close friend Jamie James that he had a dream of leading a band. He realized that dream in bands that performed everything from old standards to Mexican ballads at venues such as The Mint and The Troubadour. Sometimes both musician and philosopher were on stage, as when Harry Dean asked an incredulous James to stop playing and allow silence to work its magic. Harry Dean had early on rejected the Christian fundamentalism of rural Kentucky and turned toward the teachings of Zen Buddhism, ancient philosophers like Lao Tzu, and modern-day thinkers like Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, and Eckhart Tolle. Alex Cox saw "utter mishmash" in Harry Dean's frequent philosophical musings, but others like Ed Begley Jr. said Harry Dean changed their lives by helping them focus more on the present than on the past or the future.Less