SOURCE: A review of Studies in Zen, in Philosophy, Vol. XXXIII, No. 117, April, 1956, pp. 188-89.

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...