SOURCE: “D. T. Suzuki's Place in the History of Human Thought,” in A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki Remembered, edited by Masao Abe, John Weatherhill, Inc., 1986, pp. 65–80.

In the following essay, Shimomura discusses the cultural thought patterns that make Zen Buddhist concepts difficult for Westerners, and Suzuki's importance in bridging that understanding.

I think that one of D. T. Suzuki's great achievements, historically speaking, was the opening up of a path to the essential spirit of Mahayana Buddhist and especially Zen thought for the intellectual world of the West. In Oriental thought, especially in Buddhism, there is something which would have remained completely closed off to those Western scholars who know of no other approach to understand it except through linguistic or philological study. This is because in Oriental thought there is something beyond verbal expression, denying conceptual understanding; moreover, this is precisely the case with its most...