Brian Daizen Victoria’s
Zen at War is a study of how Zen Buddhism became deeply complicit in Japanese militarism
Brian Victoria, a
Soto Buddhist priest, directly challenges the “touchy-feelie” good image that Buddhism has in the West. Especially
Zen Buddhism in the US. Zen at War is particularly confronting in what it shows about
D T Suzuki’s
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It's always difficult to say what is "original" and what isn't when it comes to translating philosophical concepts across different cultures, since they change so much in transition. What I chiefly took from Heidegger was his concept of the way we experience objects as relative to their function in our consciousness rather than "things in themselves": Ie most of the time we don't think of a hammer as "a hammer" but as "in order to drive in a nail". This is also a buddhistic concept (interdependent origination) but not one that "mainstream" buddhism has paid much attention to recently - the general trend as you say has been to turn inward to examining the will instead of examining the world and our relationship with it.
I remember Derrida ran into all sorts of problems trying to deny Heidegger's Nazism. Served him right.
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Part of the point of study was, surely, to understand concepts by shedding preconceptions. Which is not to say they then don't get embedded in social contexts and re-interpreted, of course they do. But it is far from the only thing that happens.
And yes, Derrida deserved his problems.
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