Zen was made up by a guy in Illinois: D.T. Suzuki & Paul Carus [PREVIEW]

The Kingless Generation

As Anglo-American capitalism swept across the globe in the nineteenth century, the school of Japanese Buddhism most closely associated with the thoroughly discredited feudal government, Zen, was struggling to rebrand. Meanwhile, Paul Carus, a German immigrant serving as court philosopher to a zinc magnate in LaSalle, Illinois, published a book identifying Buddhism as a possible source for the “Religion of Science” purified of all superstitions, which he believed must become the ideology of modern, capitalist “Teutonic peoples” (Anglo-Saxons and Germans both). Enthralled by this welcome departure from the standard dogma, accepted no less in Japan than in Anglo-America, that Christianity was the source of everything modern, capitalist, and democratic, young Suzuki Teitarō (who had spent no more than a few days visiting a Buddhist temple) eagerly translated Carus’ book on Buddhism into Japanese and asked to go and study at his feet. Thus began eleven years in Illinois, where the man later known as D.T. Suzuki imbibed Carus’ ideas on “modernizing” religion—and, crucially, techniques for claiming whiteness on behalf of a non-Anglo-Saxon people—that would serve him so well decades later when he suddenly started talking about “Zen”.

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