[Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword

[curt]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the original poster, or yourself,
were expressing "shock, shock". I was referring to the reception
that Brian Victoria's work has received in the wider Zen and
Buddhist communities. If one does a google search on the words
"shock yasutani brian victoria" (leave off the quotes) one gets
quite a few direct hits:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=shock+yasutani+brian+victoria&btnG=Google+Search

The original post posed some interesting questions -
one of them being:
"Are list members, for example, troubled by Victoria's
1997 question 'is the vaunted unity between Zen and
the sword an orthodox or heretical doctrine?'"

My answer would be that I don't recognize, and never have,
the unity (vaunted or otherwise) of Zen and the Sword.
Regardless of this unity has being proclaimed by certain people -
I reserve the right to make up my own mind about what Zen
is and isn't. I am not a pacifist either - and I would question
anyone who tries to claim that that Zen is inherently pacifistic
(that is a good example of a testable hypothesis, btw).

On the specific question of reassessing DT Suzuki in light of
Victoria's books - I think that other events prior to Victoria's
book had already brought about a rather quiet reassessment
of Suzuki's work. I think (although I am going from memory
now) that Philip Yampolsky gently critiques Suzuki in his
(Yampolsky's) introduction to "The Platform Sutra of the
Sixth Patriarch". That is some introduction, btw - over 100
pages! Also I think that Bernard Faure has weighed in on
"deconstructing" DT Suzuki. There is an on-line article that
might be of interest, entitled "Chan/Zen Studies in English:
The State of the Field":
http://terebess.hu/english/faure.html

Basically Suzuki was already "reassessed" before Victoria came
along - and not because of how he spent the war years - but on
the basis of his scholarship.

- Curt

Jim Peavler wrote:

>
> On Aug 23, 2005, at 9:56 AM, curt wrote:
>
>> This only raises Aitken's naivete to a truly transcendental level. My 
>> point
>> is that all of this says much more about the western adherents of 
>> Japanese
>> Zen than it does about Japenese Zen itself. As you point out they had no
>> good reason to be "unaware" of the complicity of their teachers with the
>> fascist regime that reigned in Japan for over half a century. And yet 
>> they
>> now claim to be shocked, shocked at these "revelations". Nothing has 
>> been
>> revealed except their own willfull self-deception.
>>
>
> I have not seen anyone express even shock, much less shock, shock. I 
> have seen people asking if anything recent and worth reading happens 
> to exist. So far it doesn't look like it.
>
>
>
> Jim Peavler
>
> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
> temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
>
>     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
>     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
>
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