The Awakening of Zen by D.T. Suzuki

The Awakening of Zen Reviews

• 
  julieta

  Leer sobre John Cage me trajo a DT Suzuki, leer DT Suzuki me lleva a Meister Eckhart, y así... Es hermoso este libro, y es hermoso el Zen.
• 
  Eduardo Moraes

  “Westerners talk about conquering Nature and never about befriending her. They climb a high mountain and they declare the mountain is conquered. They suceed in shooting a certain type of projectile heavenwards and then claim that they have conquered the air. (…) Those who are power-intoxicated fail to see that power is blinding and keeps them within an ever-narrowing horizon. Love, however, transcends power because, in its penetration into the core of reality, far beyond the finiteness of the intellect, it is infinity itself. Without love one cannot see the infinely expanding network of relationships which is reality. Or, we may reverse this and say that without the infinite network of reality we can never experience love in its true light.
  
  To conclude: Let us first realize the fact that we thrive only when we are co-operative by being alive to the truth of interrelationship of all things in existence. Let us then die to the notion of power and conquest and be resurrected to the eternal creativity of love which is all-embracing and all-forgiving. As love flows out of rightly seeing reality as it is, it is also love that makes us feel that we – each of us individually and all of us collectively – are responsible for whatever things, good or evil, go on in our human community, and we must therefore strive to ameliorate or remove whatever conditions are inimical to the universal advancement of human welfare and wisdom.”
  
  (D. T. Suzuki, Love and Power, pg. 70)
  
  See more at:
  http://awestruckwanderer.wordpress.co...
• 
  Forrest

  This book is an insightful and pointed read. Suzuki is successful at directly portraying the core essence of Zen, including its relation to Chinese and Indian philosophy, without overly mystifying the subject at hand, which is the fault of most western authors. Zen is a rather difficult subject to speak upon, as it’s said “that those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know”. Zen isn’t as much as a philosophy as it is an experience. And being an experience, it’s not accurately portrayed when western academia logically categorizes it’s tenets. This is the anti-thesis of Zen. Suzuki adequately takes the middle ground, between that of a western scholarly outsider, and that of the practitioner who is instilled within the institutional-hierarchy of Zen. Overall, an enjoyable, insightful read for the beginner or advanced student of Zen practice.
• 
  Earl

  Now that I have dealt with Blaise Pascal, Jean-Luc Marion, and Henri de Lubac, S.J., it was for me very timely to once again return to my Japanese Philosophy through Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. And reading him actually makes more sense. I can see how religious traditions converge but at the same time differentiate themselves against each other, toward a greater understanding of the relation between the human person and that which infinitely transcends him/her.
• 
  Bill

  The second time through this book was a wonderful experience. This collection of DT Suzuki's talks on Zen is quite old, but worth its weight in gold.
• 
  Sergio

  Interesante, sobre todo la relación entre arte japones y budismo zen. Creo que en los ultimos 3 capitulos se pierde mucho. Además, se nota mucho que una de las labores del autor era dar conferencias sobre budismo a occidentales, porque intenta unir conceptos de budismo y cristianismo constantemente, lo cual no me ha molado mucho.
• 
  Mike

  To review this book in the most Zen way I am able, would be to simply say... upon finishing the book I was hungry, so I ate a muffin.