[In the following review, Bownas finds Studies in Zen to be a “fairly broad picture of Suzuki's interpretations of Zen.”]

Studies in Zen is a collection of seven originally separate articles, the first of which was written in 1906, and the last in 1953; there is, inevitably, a certain degree of repetition, but, on the whole, the essays combine to give a fairly broad picture of Professor Suzuki's interpretations of Zen.

The book begins with a history of the school of Zen—sectarian history being a subject very near to the heart of the majority of Japanese Buddhist scholars. But we soon pass beyond this aspect of the approach, and do not return to it. Zen was admirably suited to the Chinese temperament, and to the existing, and potential rival, systems of thought. It had its breath of Taoism, and it appealed to the love of formalism and ritual on which Confucius had built: it was, in fact, so elastic, as to be adaptable to almost any environment. The stress on intuition, and the neglect of the intellect was and is ideally fitted to the thinking processes of both Chinese and Japanese: it is by no means rare to find what seems to be an intuitive feel for what one suspects is the correct answer to some problem, followed by (to satisfy the demands of western reasoning) a series of logical proofs which lead to anywhere but the same answer.

Zen is “a special transmission outside the scriptures, not depending on the letter, but pointing directly to the Mind.” Zen masters have not demanded of their pupils extensive studies of the sutras, and Professor Suzuki maintains that the attainment of the desired end is by an act of will, plus intuition, which moves over an intellectual impasse. It is at this point that he begins to run into difficulties. The Zen experience is “beyond the ken of intellectual painting, or dialectical delineation,” he admits,—yet these are his only means of explaining it to us. The paradox, or the mere repeat of the pupil's question in the reply of the master, which is part of the peculiar technique of the Zen master, must then remain unintelligible to one who has not experienced the enlightenment which comes of the act of intuition and will combined—and this Professor Suzuki cannot induce in his reader. The most that he can do is to aver, from the inside, that “when looked at from the inside, … there looms up the big character Zen, which is the key to all the mysteries.” One feels some sympathy with Hu Shih, when he complains (in an article to which one of the seven essays is a somewhat unconvincing reply), that according to Suzuki Zen is illogical, irrational and therefore beyond our intellectual understanding. The best he can do is to tell the world that Zen is Zen and altogether beyond our logical comprehension.

The editing of the essays has been undertaken by Mr. Christmas Humphreys and the London Buddhist Society: as they extend over a period of almost fifty years, it must have posed many problems. The printing of both Chinese and Japanese versions of technical terms is useful; but there are many cases where a Chinese is referred to by the Japanese reading of his name. There is a constant misunderstanding of the function of the hyphen in a Chinese proper name—Dr. Hu Shih, for example, appears as Hu-Shih, the equivalent of Humphreys-Christmas. It might also have been possible to indicate the long vowel in Japanese—and most publishing houses seem equal to the task—by means of a bar placed above the relevant vowel; thus, mondō, or bushidō. The word katsu or kwatsu (p. 45) appears elsewhere as kwatz (p. 144), or Katz (p. 184), and neither of the latter instances is listed in the index. And if the reader is keen enough to consult the Index, he will be faced with contradictions the like of the following (which is not an isolated instance); p. 184—Tokusan (Teh-shan, 790-865), and Index—Tokusan (Te-shan) (779-865). This sample of errors I have treated at some length, for they will cause as much bewilderment to the novice, as they must do exasperation to the expert.