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.

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.