[Buddha-l] Re: US/UK Buddhalogy again

Bob Zeuschner rbzeuschner at adelphia.net
Fri Jan 20 12:57:25 MST 2006


As for Mahayana influences in the USA we should not underestimate the 
influence of D.T. Suzuki's output of Essays on Zen (3 vols) and Studies 
on Zen in the 1930s and 1940s, and later. Their influence on New York 
artists and San Francisco poets and intellectuals were enormous, and 
Suzuki helped shape Alan Watts and helped give direction to people like 
Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder.
The broad Tibetan influences in the USA were not strong until the 1970s 
(as I recall).
Bob Zeuschner
Dept. of Philosophy

F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing) wrote:

> Theravada, not least institutionalised in SOAS and at Oxford. In 
> America, this is absent, but, for reasons two of you have already more 
> than hinted at, Buddhalogy has been in large part fed by (a) 19th 
> Century News England Transcendentalist romanticism and 
> pseudo-orientalism, and (b) the silly mid 20th Century search for 
> 'Oriental' mystical insight to 'find oneself'. In the latter case, it 
> was added to by the politics of the Tibet Problem and the rise to 
> international prominence of HE the Dalai Lama.Moreover, we can take not 




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