Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist by D.T. Suzuki

Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist Reviews

• 
  Erik Graff

  I'd previously read some Eckhardt, at least extracts, so had some idea of the comparisons Suzuki was drawing here between the former's idiosyncratic Christianity and Zen Buddhism, comparisons supportive of Huxley's perennial philosophy claims. Unlike Christianity, Japanese Buddhism does not have a penchant for condemning mysticism and persecuting mystics.
• 
  Rachel

  This book was great. I had to take it slow and kind of break from it - read some lighter fiction in between parts. I had some great moments of insight and clarity while reading. He talked a lot about the nothingness of Buddhism and how it is mistakenly compared to nihilism... at one point I had a beautiful image in my head, an understanding of the idea he was trying to illustrate. The idea of returning to the no thing ness of before we were us. And I saw a drop of water that splashes out of the ocean, is separate & experiences all that it does as it flies through the air, apart from the vast body of water, then it returns again and the rest of the water doesn't see it as separate, the other drops don't say Oh we missed you... there are no other drops. It's all one vast seamless body of water. All one. Kind of abstract I know. And not exactly the stuff of light reading. But if you're interested in some deep thought about eastern philosophy compared to christianity... you might really like it. I did. Anyway, going to CA last week and seeing the ocean again was a wonderful reminder of that feeling I got upon understanding the metaphor of the water. I miss the ocean.
• 
  NosNos

  Good examination of some common ground between Meister Eckhart and Zen buddhism; but all over the place, fragmented, bizarrely structured, all around incoherent at points. Has a stupefying effect where all the words stop making sense due to how often their repeated. Suzuki often launches into tangents without background, context, or clear trajectories. I still don't exactly know who Saichi is, but I like to think he is a provincial sage in the style of Daoist hicks. Frustrating book in the sense that you constantly have the sensation that you're about to be elucidated on something, but then Suzuki pivots to a new discourse. Some effort is put into explaining the terms, but it's not a consistent one. Most definitely not an introduction of any kind, but requires some background knowledge to know what is being opposed and compared. Maybe, as another reviewer mentioned, this is a bad place to start with Suzuki because it makes him seem unsystematic, prone to overly generous analogy, and somewhat careless. He is not as careful as one ought to be when is doing comparative religion: his claim of Eckhart's mystical notion of God being close to buddhist Emptiness is surface level and does not consider the enormous challenge of trying to carry-over concepts from very different religious traditions. On top of it, an uncharitable interpretation of non-mystical Christianity and an opposition to what is embodied and this-worldly marks Suzuki as still not disentangled from dogmatic thinking as one might hope for a book like this.
  
  Book's strongest points are not when discussing inscrutable mondos (Buddhist Q & As) or beating you over the head with the ineffectual nature of language to describe or contain the grand mysticisms, but when Suzuki endeavours to show what might this mysticism actually mean with regards to our perception and interpretation of life (the sanctity of the world, animals and plants being imbued with moral significance, what an experience of the eternal in everyday life might look like), IE, the phenomenology of sagehood.
• 
  Alexa Tanne

  I picked this up as it seemed to cover two of my very keen interests; the mysticism of Meister Eckhardt and Buddhism. This is the first Suzuki I have read, and as it was so closely related to my tastes I thought it would make a good starting point. However, I was quite wrong and I think I probably should have begun elsewhere.
  
  First of all, this book doesn't really seem to be intended to have been published as a book. It's more of a collection of small sketches (you can't really call them essays) that loosely relate to each other. It starts off quite promisingly by analysing certain quotes from Eckhardt and making rough comparisons to Buddhist philosophy, however the fragmentary nature of the book soon kicks in and this format is quickly lost. Instead, we get tangential explorations of different Buddhist concepts that don't really seem to go anywhere and come out of nowhere, too.
  
  The editors at Routledge could have done a much better job. It is all well and good publishing a collection of fragments or short essays if they cohere and form a.. well, collection. But here we begin with comparative religious studies and end with extracts that (rather narrow-mindedly, I have to say) condemn aspects of Christianity against those of Buddhism. This would have been more understandable if they had been introduced with an editor's note to give context, but nothing of the sort comes about. Very disappointing, and more crucially, quite misleading for people new to Buddhism.
  
  I will say that I enjoyed the extracts from Saichi's journals, a folk-Buddhist text that I didn't know about previously, and Suzuki's commentary on them. But this is a really small portion of the book that has little to do with the opening premise.
  
  At most, the reader might find extracts from Eckhardt that are inspiring, and will prompt further reading into his work. Even then, I wouldnt recommend this as a starting point for Suzuki, Eckhardt, nor Buddhism. Having said this I won't give up on Suzuki and i'll be trying out his Introduction to Zen Buddhism quite soon as a better known book that has greater reputation.
• 
  Kyle

  Way back in my classical studies in college, I was convinced there was some connection between Eastern and Western philosophy, but couldn’t find anything specific. Little did I know then that such a mystical connection between Zen Buddhism and an alchemical reading of the Apocrypha through Meister Eckhart would reveal some much about what I wanted to know about time, space and spirit. No easy answers found in the elusive questions raised on either end, but safe to agree with Hamlet’s assessment of more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of, you know, in philosophy.
• 
  Paul

  this is one of the most interesting books on comparative religions that I have encountered. He takes a pretty unorthodox example of Christian theology in Meister Eckhart, but still the connections between his approach to prayer and Zen are fascinating. Suzuki is a Zen master himself, and his writing is clear, humorous and unselfconscious. A good introduction to some of the more complex ideas of a superficially simple philosophy.
  
• 
  Dan Lurie

  Some of this book was admittedly over my head, but I enjoyed the comparison between Eckhart's teachings and Buddhism.
• 
  Mad Russian the Traveller

  Interesting contrast and comparison of the two religions. There are profound mysteries in the eternal, and the glimpses into various mysterious aspects of reality afforded by this book gave much to contemplate for me in time to come. I shall read this again.
  The discussion of the transmigration of souls was interesting, but in practical terms it devolves to a scheme of earning your way to heaven. Any method of earning your way to heaven is like the purgatory scheme in the Roman church in that it minimizes how egregious and damaging sin is. The concept of the sinfulness of mankind is mocked by the world. This sin is primarily a moral failure to live up to the impossibly high standards that God has revealed to us. Sin is not the evilness of matter; God likes matter--He created an entire universe of matter. Individuation is not evil either, since God ordained more than 7 billion unique individuals to live upon the earth (not counting those who lived in the past).
  I will still think about the mysteries discussed in this book, but I raise a red flag when any human (other than Jesus Christ) claims to have transcended their personal sin and short-comings to attain enlightenment. We can get a glimpse of mysteries, but we still need a remedy for our sin.
  {And that remedy is found in Christ.}
  
  P.S. Another great thing about this book is the discovery of other new writers; thanks to Mr. Suzuki for introducing me to the poet, Thomas Traherne!
• 
  Jarizleifr

  A very comfortable read, even if the subject material is pretty heavy and requires active thought. I've been reading this back to back with a collection of Meister Eckhart's works and it really paid off. This book is like philosophical glue that makes you see both sides in a new light. Absolutely recommended for any religious scholars interested in mysticism.
• 
  Flora Wong

  2015/12/2
  
• 
  Rajaa Bokhari

  The title of the book was more exciting than the actual content, which was fragmented, incoherent, and inconsistent. I just could not understand how this book got past an editor. Instead of doing justice to the subject it claimed to cover, the book made it an exercise in patience. You could tell the book intended to inspire its readers, but it seemed to have presumed this instead of making the actual effort to do so. It started strong but lost the thread completely. Overall, extremely disappointing and difficult to finish, though I will be pursuing both studies in Buddhism and Suzuki's work elsewhere.
• 
  George Burks

  Very deep I mean deep Zen and Christian (Meister Eckhart), ideas on spirituality, religion of both paths, and more! However, I did learn a lot of stuff on my own personal path.