Abstract:As the other volumes in this series have amply demonstrated, Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō was arguably the preeminent Asian spokesman for the Buddhist religion to the West in the twentieth century.Suzuki b...As the other volumes in this series have amply demonstrated, Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō was arguably the preeminent Asian spokesman for the Buddhist religion to the West in the twentieth century.Suzuki brought forth an impressive array of communicative talents in pursuing this role and was not shy about using his native Japanese heritage, education, and religious training to shore up his bona fides in this effort.An important part of Suzuki's legacy falls under the rubric of Buddhist Studies, the main focus of this volume.Unlike particular sectarian traditions like Zen or Pure Land, or the lively contemporary field of Comparative Religion where there is a broad sense of freedom as to what topics are deemed relevant, Buddhist Studies in Suzuki's time largely centered on the philology of canonical texts and their exegesis, with a heavy focus on doctrine.Suzuki's approach to Buddhist Studies followed this same path, at least before World War II.That is, he edited and translated classics and also presented summaries and studies of doctrines with examples of the influence of those doctrines in Chinese and Japanese tradition.What marks Suzuki as standing outside normative Buddhist Studies as a professional, academic discipline is the fact that he does not expand his text-critical apparatus after his Lan .kâvatāra and Gan .d .avyūha studies published between 1930 and 1936.Note that the so-called Peking or "Suzuki" edition of the Tibetan canon published between 1955 and 1964 was a product of the Tibetan Tripitaka Research Institute under the supervision of the Suzuki Foundation (Suzuki Gakujutsu Shinkōkai); there is nothing to suggest that it was edited by Suzuki himself, despite his name appearing as senior editor. 1 Although criticized for his idiosyncratic and somewhat shotgun approach in Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (1907), after WWII he returned to similar textbook-like explanations of Buddhist systems of thought as introducti on Prosaic moderners, however, ask for something concise and directly to the point.Read More