1 Introduction and overview
[…] the practice of compassion is the lesson most needed in the world today. War between nations and hatred between individuals could not exist if all practiced compassion […it is] the only antidote to all the trouble, turmoil, and suffering endured by man and other beings. (Beatrice Lane Suzuki [BLS] 1935c: 12–13)
On 22 October 1932, Beatrice Lane Suzuki, the American born wife of renowned Zen scholar D. T. (Daisetz Teitaro) Suzuki, lectured a Japanese audience in Nagoya on ‘Buddhism in Practical Life’ (1933a). She had, by this time, been living in Japan for over twenty-one years, studying and practicing Buddhism, writing on it, and, since 1921, co-editing the pioneering journal of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Eastern Buddhist. The lecture revealed much of her own belief and practice. Its key message: the path to Buddhist Awakening is open to everyone whatever their social station, and there are many ways to work towards it while living an ordinary modern, secular life. The examples she gave were all inspired by her application of the Ten Vows of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra to contemporary society. Two are particularly relevant to a study of Beatrice. The first was to show kindness to animals. Beatrice was an ardent animal lover. Throughout her life she collected stray cats and dogs – a habit that caused considerable domestic tension as the numbers grew – and in 1929 founded Japan’s first animal refuge. The second was her call for ‘those who have a talent in writing’ to use it ‘to make Buddhism better known by writing articles for the press and magazines about Buddhism’ (BLS 1933a: 13) as she herself had been doing and would continue to do even more prolifically in the years left to her. Being compassionate towards all beings and disseminating knowledge of Buddhism were the two pillars of her own Buddhist practice, and as the quote above indicates, also key aspects of the early twentieth-century Japanese progressive agenda intent on contributing to world peace through the dissemination of Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhism. This was a project in which she and D. T. Suzuki were deeply involved.
Beatrice was a pioneer in the globalization of Buddhism, sharing D. T. Suzuki’s ideal of making Mahāyāna Buddhism better known and understood. Though they were unquestionably partners in the mission, each had their own domain of interest and expertise. Beatrice had come to Mahāyāna after several years studying New Thought, Transcendentalism, Theosophy, Bahai, Vedanta, and various alternative spiritualities. What had attracted her to Buddhism over these, she confided to her Nagoya audience, was its encompassing vision: ‘the teaching of enlightenment for all living beings including even the animals and no evil beings absolutely without hope seemed to me a wonderful teaching’ (BLS 1933a: 7). All had the potential for spiritual realization. She could not accept that salvation was only possible for humans. As she expressed it on another occasion: ‘It had always seemed wrong to me that man should be so arrogant as to feel that he alone of all creation should be so worthy of salvation’ (BLS 1940d: 186). Buddhism, by contrast, taught that
in every man and woman, yes, even in animals, plants, and mountains, the very dust beneath our feet is the Buddha-nature, the germ or seed of Buddhahood latent, and which is bound to develop in time until it reaches the full fruition of Buddhahood. (BLS 1940d: 179)
The second crucial factor in her commitment to Mahāyāna Buddhism was its ‘unique and beautiful teaching of the Bodhisattva’ (BLS 1933a: 5). As she explained, the term ‘bodhisattva’ as understood in Theravada Buddhism, is applied to the Arhat, an ascetic on the path to Awakening for their own spiritual benefit. It is a teaching of individualistic salvation. In Mahāyāna Buddhism by contrast, a Bodhisattva is one has who attained Awakening, but in an act of great compassion, has resolved to remain in the world of transmigration to work for the salvation of all beings. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the bodhisattva sets an example not only for monks, but for lay people as well, offering a path to spiritual awakening for everyone regardless of age, gender, or position in society. And, as Beatrice’s lecture explained, it does not require world renunciation, but can be achieved through the practices of everyday life. In early twentieth century Japan, the Japan that Beatrice knew, the Bodhisattva Path was the basis of the ‘New Buddhism’ of modern reform: Buddhism in the world and for the world.
It is this Japanese Buddhism which ought to be made known to the outside world, for it is yet little known and appreciated. [...] It ought to be made known in different ways, through lectures, through magazine articles, through books and through general social intercourse between individuals. (BLS 1933a: 5–6)
Beatrice published so prolifically it is intriguing that her writings are not better known. Her first papers on Buddhism appeared in 1914 (‘Poetry of Shaku Sōen’; ‘The Study of Zen’; ‘The Secret of Zen’). From 1921 she contributed regularly to the Eastern Buddhist, and from 1934, to the Young East, a second English language journal published in Japan by Japanese Buddhists. (Both journals are discussed more fully below.) Throughout the 1920s and 1930s she also published in journals, magazines, and newspapers in Japan, across Asia, and in the West. She was a regular contributor to the Japanese government sponsored journals, Japan Today and Tourist (1934–1936). She wrote three books: Nōgaku (1932), a study of classical Japanese theatre deeply imbued with Buddhism; Buddhism and Practical Life (1933a), the text of the Nagoya lecture; and Mahāyāna Buddhism: A Brief Outline (1939a; later editions 1948 and 1959), a monograph commissioned by the British Buddhist Christmas Humphreys. After her death in 1939, Suzuki compiled and published Impressions of Mahāyāna Buddhism (1940d), a collection of thirty-one of her major essays. It is an invaluable starting point for anyone wanting to study her work or learn about Mahāyāna Buddhism and includes work otherwise inaccessible, such as the text of the radio broadcast on ‘Buddhism and Women’ she made from Kyoto in 1934 (BLS 1940b), and obscure papers like ‘Problems of Present Day Buddhism’ from Japan Today (BLS 1940f). Nevertheless, it represents only a part of her output.
Suzuki’s Preface to the work mentions his plan for two more volumes of her collected writings. Though they did not eventuate as planned, a version of the first, a collection of articles on temples from the Eastern Buddhist, appeared in 2013 (Pye 2013). Published under the title Buddhist Temples of Kyoto and Kamakura, it is promoted as a useful guide for the contemplative tourist, and its well-informed, engagingly written accounts of the great temples, their history and their treasures certainly fulfil this function. But they are also more than this. Written as they are from Beatrice’s personal experience, informed by her considerable research into the history and sectarian teachings of each, and her appreciation of the art and ritual of Buddhism, they present an overview of the diversity and richness of the various schools of Japanese Mahāyāna and teach of the lived practices of Japanese religion.
The other two volumes Suzuki planned remain unpublished. One was to bring together Beatrice’s writings on flowers and the seasons from Tourist, Japan Today, and various newspapers. These reveal both her deep appreciation of Japanese culture and the Buddhist ideals that imbue it. The other was to be the book on Shingon, the Vajrayāna school of Japanese Buddhism, that was to be her crowning achievement. Beatrice had been studying Shingon for over two decades; her first papers on it were published in 1915 (1915a; 1915b). Her personal papers include several handwritten books of notes she made at Kōyasan where she spent each summer from 1928, taking instruction from leading scholars such as Toganoo Shōun. (The English-speaking Akizuki Shōken translated for her.) When at home in Kyoto, she continued her Shingon studies with scholar priests at Tōji, the Shingon temple founded in the eighth century and central seminary for Shingon Buddhism. She also followed Shingon practice attending rituals and services. On June 9, 1929, she and her friend Miriam Salanave took Bodhisattva-sila at Tōji, the Kannon ceremony, receiving a mantra and mudra. As she wrote in her diary: ‘We are now Bodhisattvas and must live up to it’ (Hioki 2024a).
Beatrice was not just a Buddhist scholar but also a practitioner as is evident in the paper ‘Ceremonies for Lay Disciples at Koyasan’ (1933b) which includes the translation of the Bodhisattva-sila she had translated in preparation for taking the vows with a description of the ceremony itself. Since virtually nothing had been published on this esoteric sect, her book would have been groundbreaking. What we do have are the sections of it published in the Eastern Buddhist and the Young East (BLS 1923; 1924; 1931a; 1931b; 1931c; 1933b; 1936e; 1936f; 1937c) and a set of seven in papers in Impressions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, several not previously published (BLS 1940a; 1940e; 1940g). However, they still only represent a small part of the envisioned book. She had planned five sections: The Introduction (1931c) was to be followed by a section ‘The Mandara’ (1936e and 1937c deal with one of these, the Taizōkai mandara). Sections three and four were to be on Shingon doctrine and section five on practical Shingon. These, and the account of the Kongōkai mandara, the essential second half of the pair central to Shingon teaching and practice remains to be completed.
The collected papers of 2013 and the republication of the monograph Mahāyāna Buddhism testify to the continuing value and relevance of her work. That D. T. Suzuki recognized and valued her talent is evident in the posthumous collection. It was also evident in the prominence given to her essay ‘Mahāyāna Buddhism and the Layman’ (1935a) in the inaugural issue of The Cultural East (July 1946), a journal edited by D. T. Suzuki and the English writer R. H. Blyth, funded by the Foreign Ministry in the immediate post war period to introduce Japanese culture to Occupation troops (Freeman 2022: 216). Beatrice wrote, as she said in the Nagoya lecture, to increase cross cultural understanding. ‘As the religious ideals of the Japanese become better known, so will the Japanese people become better known, and as they become better known they will be appreciated and admired’ (BLS 1933a: 6). Republication in this context was fitting.
The unavoidable question when writing about the wife of such a prominent Buddhist scholar as D. T. Suzuki, is just how much her own work owes to him. Part of the answer is that it would not have happened had they not met. Their meeting was her introduction to Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhism. Through her marriage she came to live, work and study in Japan, experiencing life in a Buddhist society, living in Buddhist temple environments, moving among Buddhist scholars, immersed in Japanese culture. Apart from her own reading and study, she would have learned much through her work of editing and proofreading his work, which she did from the time they met in the United States, and later in the to and fro with leading scholars involved in editing the articles in the Eastern Buddhist. Her marriage to Suzuki gave her unusual access to Buddhist scholars for study and assistance with translation. Her marriage enabled the work that she did, and as her letters and diaries show, the couple worked together and shared a great deal. Overall, I see them as partners in the mission she referred to in the Nagoya lecture – making Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhism better known and understood in the West – and her writings as independent, supportive of, and complementary to his. Beatrice interpreted and taught Buddhism from her own, independent perspective.
Beatrice and Suzuki met and married very early in his career when he was still seeking to establish himself. His first book, Outlines of the Mahāyāna Buddhism (1907) was not yet published. Beatrice was thirty-six when they married, a well-educated, independent woman, an experienced writer and teacher, a journalist and a poet, with an established commitment to the study of alternative spiritualities. Though she knew little of Buddhism and nothing of the Mahāyāna before she met Suzuki, her writings on Buddhism would be informed by intense and ongoing study from the time she arrived in Japan, a logical continuation of the spiritual search that had begun years earlier and that had brought them together.
Beatrice brought commitment, skills, and experience to the partnership. As a seeker herself, and one who had moved among socially progressive and alternative religious circles in Boston and New York, she was able to present Mahāyāna in a way that spoke directly to the familiar questions of a Western audience. She was aware of the cultural background and assumptions from which they arose, of what knowledge was available to them, of common, consequent misperceptions. In particular, she knew that although many in the West were interested in Buddhism, most only knew of the Theravāda of Pāli scholarship. This knowledge was crucial in disseminating Mahāyāna Buddhism to the West. Suzuki regularly acknowledged her assistance in producing his own English language writings and recognized the originality of her writings on Buddhism. As he observed in his preface to Impressions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, noting particularly the success of her work translated into Japanese:
She was not brought up in a Buddhist family, nor in the Buddhist atmosphere, and thus was naturally free from Buddhist tradition and bias. It is for this reason that what she wrote is, from the Japanese point of view, fresh and even inspiring. (Preface by D. T. Suzuki, BLS 1940d: viii)
What made her perspective unique was that she occupied a position of authority across cultures; she was embedded in both.
2 Becoming Beatrice: education, journalism, and spiritual search
So who was Beatrice and how did she become a teacher of Mahāyāna Buddhism? Though her various CVs and even her tombstone show later dates, Beatrice was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 21 April 1875. She died in Japan on 16 July 1939, having left the country only once after arriving in 1911 when she took a short trip back to the States in 1916 to sort out her mother’s affairs. She was strongly influenced by her mother, Boston feminist, journalist, social activist and Theosophist, Emma Erskine Lane Hahn (Dobbins 2022c). Beatrice’s full name at birth was Beatrice Elizabeth Greene Erskine Lane. (Emma Erskine and Thomas Lane were her parents; ‘Elizabeth Greene’ was the daughter of William Batchelder Greene [1819–1878], a radical social reformer, anarchist, and Unitarian with whom Emma was close.) Beatrice also wrote under the name Beatrice Erskine Hahn, acknowledging her stepfather, the German doctor and academic, Albert Hahn, under whom Emma studied medicine from 1884 and married in 1885 when Beatrice was ten.
Beatrice was well travelled and well educated. Her CV highlights the year she spent at a girls’ school in Germany during her teens (1888–1889) before returning to attend the Newark Seminary, New Jersey, and the Cambridge Latin School in Massachusetts. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, from Radcliffe College, the women’s affiliate of Harvard, in 1898. After graduation, she returned to Britain and Europe (1899–1900) spending most of the time in Germany. She began her publishing career while travelling, sending engagingly written, astutely observed accounts of the social customs and cultures of England and Germany to the Newark Sunday Call, a leading independent newspaper. From 1904 to 1907 she published a series of short fiction pieces and poetry in Boston Ideas, and occasional pieces in various other journals. One worthy of particular note in this context is ‘Mind Concentration’ (BLS 1904), an article recommending meditation as an aid to study – with instructions on how to do it – which appeared in The Literary Novice, the journal of the Newark Seminary for Girls. This was two years before she met Suzuki.
Beatrice’s maiden publications mentioned above are among those contained in a scrapbook held at the Matsugaoka Bunko archive of Suzuki papers (https://www.matsugaoka-bunko.com/en/index.html). They show her accomplishment as an author across genres and tell us much about her interests and attitudes. Her observation of women in Germany, for example, is revealing of her progressive feminist views. She is amazed at their lack of education, and that ‘no matter how wealthy her husband may be or how many servants she has’, her sole interest is her house. ‘The fact that a woman may have other interests, that she may have an intellectual mind or perhaps an idea of forming a life for herself and not some man, is not considered for an instant’ (‘German Ways’, Newark Call, 10 September 1899). Her own marriage would be different.
The scrapbook is signed ‘Beatrice Erskine Hahn, “Aymar Hahn”’ indicating her commitment to Indian religion at the time she put it together. (She had studied with Swami Abhedananda [1866–1939], head of the Vedanta Society of New York, between 2 December 1902 and 25 April 1903. The archive also holds a substantial notebook, about 100 pages in all, of her ‘Notes From Baba’.) Among Beatrice’s press cuttings is a newspaper report on a speech she made in 1907 calling for the preservation of forests (Boston Ideas, 26 February 1907) and a series of reports on the activities and speakers at the Green Acre Conference on religious diversity and spirituality held between 1 July and 2 September 1906. (This is shortly after Beatrice had met Suzuki.) Green Acre had been founded in 1894 by Sarah Farmer (1844–1916) to provide a platform for an open minded and diverse discussion on the practice of religion, social justice and spiritual inquiry focusing on universal truth; objectives aligned closely with Beatrice’s own. Among the speakers in 1906 were Kentoku Hori, a Japanese Buddhist undertaking post graduate study in the USA, and Jinarajadasa, president of the Theosophical Society in New York. According to the reports, both spoke on Buddhism; Jinarajadasa also spoke on Vedanta. (‘This week at Green Acre’, The Evening Journal, 21 July, 28 July, and 11 August 1906.)
Beatrice had no doubt encountered Buddhism before she met Suzuki, but evidently what she had come across had not captured her attention, possibly because the prevailing perception of Buddhism at the time was of a humanist ethical philosophy, one that downplayed the meditation and spiritual teachings that Beatrice sought. But spirituality alone was not enough. In May 1908, in the context of a letter to Suzuki recounting her social life in New York during his absence, attending talks and evening gatherings with Vedantists, Theosophists and followers of Bahai, Beatrice wrote that ‘[m]y own position toward Bahai is that it appeals to my heart but not my head. After all, I am more of a Vedantist than anything else, I think’ (Snodgrass 2024: 121).
The breadth of Beatrice’s interest in religion and philosophy in the early years of the twentieth century is evident in other notebooks in the Matsugaoka collection. A volume from February 1903 entitled ‘New Thought’ contains extensive notes on writings by philosopher and animal welfare activist Ralph Waldo Trine, Lyman Abbott, M. J. Barnett and others of the movement. Another, ‘Old Thought’ dated July 1903, records her readings of an eclectic set of works on various aspects of spiritualism, the occult, and ancient religions, predominantly Eastern. (How relevant is it, in the light of her life’s work, that at this time, Eastern religion was considered as something from the past?) The first entry, ‘A Visit to a Gnani’, is a transcription of a long passage from Utopian Edward Carpenter’s book on his travels in India.
3 Beatrice and D. T. Suzuki in America
In 1906, Beatrice’s search took her to a lecture in New York presented by Japanese Zen Abbot, Shaku Soen (1860–1919). It was here, on 8 April, that she met Suzuki, Shaku Sōen’s disciple. Shaku Sōen had been one of the four priests in the delegation of Japanese Buddhists to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 where he met and became friends with German American philosopher and publisher, Paul Carus (1852–1919). As a consequence of this meeting, Suzuki had been living in the United States since 1897, working with Carus at the Open Court publishing house in La Salle, Illinois, founded by Carus’s father-in-law, the wealthy industrialist Mr Edward Hegeler (1835–1910). (For more on the Open Court and Suzuki at La Salle, see Snodgrass 2009.) When Shaku Sōen returned to the States in 1905–1906, Suzuki accompanied him as translator on an extensive lecture tour. In a biographical note of 1949 he recalls noticing an enthusiastic young woman in the audience at the New York lecture. They would meet in person when Beatrice arranged a follow up interview with the Abbot on 18 April. Sōen’s diary records talking with Miss Hahn for a long time. Suzuki, of course, translated.
The friendship between Beatrice and Suzuki grew over the following year. Beyond her interest in learning about Buddhism, Suzuki shared her interest in New Thought and active spiritualities, as did a number of young Japanese Buddhist intellectuals around the turn of the twentieth century. He had written on the topic in 1896 (DTS 1896; see Yoshinaga 2012: 116, 126–127). They corresponded when he returned to La Salle. He visited her home in Stamford, Connecticut, and her apartment in New York; they had plans to marry as early as 1907. Their working collaboration appears to have begun from this time: proofs of Suzuki’s English translation of Shaku Soen’s American lectures, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot (Shaku Sōen 1906) show margin notes and corrections in Beatrice’s handwriting. A later edition was renamed Zen for Americans, signalling that what Shaku Sōen delivered was an introduction to Mahāyāna designed for a Western audience. His lectures presented a Zen inflection of ‘Eastern Buddhism’, a term coined by the Japanese delegation to Chicago to denote a selective presentation of the ‘New Buddhism’ of nineteenth-century Japanese reform, an interpretation of the tradition that emerged from the need to restructure the role of religion in the modern society. It was consciously intellectual, philosophical, positive, rational, lay centred, and socially committed: it was a Buddhism that aligned with Beatrice’s search.
Beatrice moved from Stamford to New York in 1907 to be close to the campus of Columbia University when she enrolled in a masters degree at the recently established School of Philanthropy in the Faculty of Political Science. While living in the city she moved among fellow seekers, attending lectures and talks, and socializing among prominent members of the various alternative spiritual communities. Her graduation thesis, ‘Care of the Aged Poor in the United States’, shows a concern for social welfare that prefigured the emphasis on compassion for others prominent in her Buddhist writings. In May 1908, she became a director of the International Anti-Vivisection Union. All of this would contribute to her later work.
The couple were separated from 26 February 1908, when Suzuki, sponsored by Mr Hegeler, sailed to England. The purpose of the trip was vaguely described as ‘promoting Mr Hegeler’s interests’, but also involved research in British collections, meeting Buddhist scholars, and attending a congress on religion. They corresponded regularly. The Matsugaoka archive holds Beatrice’s letters to ‘Tei’, as she called him, from the day of departure until she submitted her thesis and returned to her home in Stamford in May. These tell us much about what Beatrice brought to the partnership (Snodgrass 2024).
While at Columbia, excited by the prospect of travel and living in Japan, Beatrice studied Japanese language and avidly read as much as she could about East Asia in her spare time, regularly asking Suzuki to send books from England. But her coursework, alongside the social welfare core, also offered the opportunity to expand her knowledge of Asia, its art and its religions. Several of her professors shared her interests in Asia. Prominent in her letters are sociologist Franklin H. Giddings; Frederick Hirth, Professor of Chinese with a passion for Chinese art and ceramics; Professor Abraham Jackson, expert on Zoroastrian scriptures who lectured on Indian religion; and Vladimir Gregorievitch Simkhovitch, a sociologist, lecturer in socialist economics, and serious collector of Chinese art.
Though the couple had hoped to meet after Beatrice graduated later that year – in Japan, in England, or ideally, travelling in India – they were not to be together again until March 1911 when Beatrice arrived in Tokyo. They married on 12 December that year. There were various reasons for the delay. Suzuki stayed in Europe longer than intended, not returning to Japan until 1909, but the main impediment was financial. Beatrice’s journey to Japan depended on her mother selling a property, which took longer than expected, so she spent two years after graduating from Columbia supporting herself by teaching, first at a school in Stamford, and later at Brenau College, Alabama. As her plan was to work in Japan as a teacher, the experience was useful. She would teach for the rest of her life.
4 Beatrice and Buddhism in Japan
Once in Japan, Beatrice immersed herself in the study of Buddhism. She read whatever she could find on the subject and made the most of the connections available through Suzuki. She attended lectures at Shaku Sōen’s Zen temple, Engakuji, participated in ceremonies there, undertook Zen sesshin – intensive meditation and practice sessions that may last as long as a week – wrestled with her kōan. She took lay ordination and was given the name Seiren (Blue Lotus, significantly, a symbol of the compassion of the bodhisattva Kannon). She read avidly, studied the Zen arts of tea ceremony and flower arranging and spent what leisure she had between teaching commitments visiting temples and historic sites around her. When ‘Mrs David-Néel’ (pioneering scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Alexandra David-Néel, 1868–1969) visited Japan in 1917, they travelled together to Kyoto and Nara, visiting an exhausting number of key Buddhist sites, including Kōyasan, the sacred mountain monastic centre of Shingon Buddhism.
Beatrice, like David-Néel, was attracted to Shingon’s esoteric teachings. From early in her life in Japan Beatrice studied with Shingon scholars who came to her Tokyo home once a week, where they read texts together (Hioki 2023). Articles on Shingon were among her earliest publications. The first, ‘The Basic Concepts of the Shingon Sect’ was published in the short-lived journal, The Mahayanist, in 1915; ‘Fudō the Immovable’, an iconographic and doctrinal introduction to the important Shingon deity Fudō Myōō, appeared in Paul Carus’s journal, Open Court, the same year. (Though it appeared under Suzuki’s name, a revised version by Beatrice in Eastern Buddhist in 1932 suggests we can confidently attribute it to her.) As she observed in that paper: ‘The Shingon ritualism is quite an absorbing study for those who are interested in occultism generally’ (BLS 1923: 133).
Beatrice began publishing on Japan soon after arriving. The first pieces were on Japanese culture (1912a; 1912b). In 1914 she published papers on Zen, referred to above (BLS 1914a; 1914b; 1914). Another appeared in the Open Court in 1919 (BLS 1919). Her diary mentions beginning a book on Japanese country life, and that she had sent off a proposal for a book of translations of Imperial poetry to Macmillan. Beatrice unquestionably saw writing as her vocation and increasing Western understanding of Japan as a mission. Her diaries carry frequent complaints of household matters keeping her away from ‘her work’. She nevertheless had time for ‘revising Tei’s proofs’ and other initiatives in the promotion of Buddhism. In 1915, she became involved with the Mahayanist, the short lived journal of a small group of Westerners who had come to Japan to study Mahāyāna Buddhism (Yoshinaga 2013). Her skills were known and in demand. In May 1916 she wrote, ‘Mr Yamakami and Mr Shimizu came to see about writing a Buddhist book’ (Hioki 2023: 37).
Two major events that would impact the rest of Beatrice’s life occurred in July 1916. The Suzukis adopted a baby boy, Alan Masaru, and Beatrice sailed to the United States to sort out her mother’s financial affairs. Emma subsequently moved to Japan and lived with them until her death in 1927.
Beatrice maintained her broad interest and support for all religions through her life and was active among Baha’i and Theosophy circles in Japan, no doubt encouraged by Emma. They both joined the Tokyo Lodge of the Theosophical Society when it was formed in 1920, but then moved to Kyoto in 1921, where, in May 1924, they became founding members of the Mahāyāna Lodge (Algeo 2005). At monthly meetings, often at the Suzuki home, papers on Buddhist or Theosophical subjects were read. Membership was not large, in part, Beatrice observed in a letter to Adyar (28 November 1928), because Theosophy didn’t come as something new to the Japanese but as a variant of their own religion, so they do not feel the call to look elsewhere. The Mahāyāna Lodge, Beatrice wrote, therefore focused more on ‘Universal Brotherhood’. Beatrice also formed the Ananda Society, named after one of Sakyamuni’s principal disciples, offering students from Ōtani University where she and Suzuki both taught, the chance to improve their English while learning more about Mahāyāna Buddhism and the world’s religions in conversation with the Suzukis and other Ōtani scholars (Yokogawa 2009). Both societies encompassed religious diversity. Theosophy’s claims on Buddhism go back to the founders, Madame Blavatsky and Henry Steele Olcott, but the distinctly Buddhist naming of the Kyoto lodge suggests where Beatrice’s interests lay.
By the time the Eastern Buddhist Society was founded in 1921, Beatrice herself was clearly committed to Mahāyāna Buddhism. Buddhism’s encompassing, non-conflictual nature was a factor, but what lifted Mahāyāna Buddhism above other religions for her was, as we have seen, its integrated teaching of the shared Buddha nature of all things and the Bodhisattva path of practice for laypeople. The lived experience of modern Japan was no doubt also a factor. She was immersed in a society with a long tradition of Buddhism in practice. And, as mentioned above, in the Buddhist reform movements from the 1890s – in which both Shaku Sōen and Suzuki were prominent – the practice of compassion took on a modern transformation. As reported in ‘What Buddhists are Doing in Japan’, an article in the progressive Buddhist journal the Young East, it was applied to public health and education, education for women, workers’ rights, political action for institutional reform and for world peace (Takakusu 1925). After years of searching, Beatrice had discovered in Japanese Mahāyāna what she had long been seeking, a philosophy that gave coherence to her long held convictions, a path to spiritual development that encompassed her commitment to animal welfare, her desire for social action, and utilized her skills in writing. This Mahāyāna was not ‘old thought’ but a religion for a modern world.
4.1 Buddhism between the wars: the opportunities and constraints of context
The majority of Beatrice’s writings on Buddhism appeared in the two English language journals published in Japan in the period between the two great wars: the Eastern Buddhist, and the Young East. Both were responses to the geopolitics of the time, though in the case of the Eastern Buddhist, it was rather that the political climate gave impetus and support to a project of presenting Mahāyāna Buddhism to the West that began at least as early as 1888 with the launching of an English language journal, Bijou of Asia (Snodgrass 2004; Yoshinaga 2012). The problem, in brief, was that although Japan, as an ally of Britain during the War of 1914–1918, became one of the five permanent members of the League of Nations when it was formed in 1919, and therefore recognized as a world power, Western powers nevertheless still regarded it with some suspicion. As an Asian nation it was not truly ‘equal’. One reason for this was that it remained largely unknown because very few in the West could speak or read Japanese. In an attempt to address the issue, in 1921 the Japanese Foreign Ministry created an information network of English language publications centred on the already existing English language newspaper, the Japan Times. The aim was to give Japan an international voice in world affairs, make it better known, understood, and consequently, respected. It was an opportunity for progressive Buddhists such as the founders of both journals, to renew their efforts. Though the Eastern Buddhist and the Young East differed in their content and approach, both were founded in the belief that because Buddhism was such a fundamental part of Japanese culture and society, Japan, and indeed the East in general, could not be understood without some knowledge of it. As committed internationalists, they also shared a belief that Japan, as a good global citizen, had a right and a duty to help solve the problems the world faced at this time, and they believed that Japanese Buddhism held the solution. As they saw it, its teachings of the shared Buddha nature of all beings and practices of compassion were key to overcoming the rivalries and tensions of race, religion, and nation that were tearing the world apart (Snodgrass 2015). Beatrice wrote extensively for both journals; the Eastern Buddhist from its first issue in 1921, and the Young East from 1934.
4.2 The Eastern Buddhist: inserting the Mahāyāna into Western knowledge
The Eastern Buddhist Society, hosted by the Jōdo Shinshū associated Ōtani University, was founded in April 1921. Its executive committee consisted of Beatrice, Suzuki, and several prominent Buddhist scholars. The constitution of the society reproduced in the editorial of the inaugural issue placed it firmly in the interwar context. The society’s objective, echoing the mission of the delegation to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and of Shaku Sōen’s American lectures in 1906, was ‘to expound the spirit of Mahāyāna Buddhism and disseminate its knowledge among non-Buddhist people’. This had also been the aim of D. T. Suzuki’s book, Outlines of Mahāyāna Buddhism (D. T. Suzuki 1907). The editorial in the first issue of Eastern Buddhist once again repeats the need to address the neglect of Mahāyāna Buddhism by Western scholars and to correct the misunderstandings that persisted as a consequence of this. The ‘misunderstandings’ had been made very clear by the critical response to the Chicago delegation (Snodgrass 2009). It was not simply that Western scholars had neglected the Mahāyāna. The overriding problem was that though Western interest in Buddhism had been growing since the 1890s, Western approval was not for any lived Asian practice, but for ‘Pure Buddhism’, a reified product of orientalist scholarship defined by the search for the very words of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni as revealed through a philological analysis of the Pāli canon. The result, a philosophical humanism that had more to do with debates over Christianity in an age of science than any Asian reality, was regarded as the ‘real Buddhism’, and Mahāyāna, a later development, was dismissed as an aberration. There was no place in this Buddhism for development over time, cultural interpretations, for Buddhas other than the historical Shakyamuni, for Bodhisattvas as compassionate saviours, for ritual, or for images. As Beatrice commented to her audience at Nagoya, explaining the need for Japanese to write about their beliefs in European languages, ‘Many people in foreign countries think we are heathen idol-worshippers’ (BLS 1933a: 5). The need to address these misperceptions persisted throughout the period and was a constant in the writings of both Suzukis.
The international politics of the early 1920s gave revived impetus to the mission more than two decades after the Chicago delegation. The editorial in the inaugural issue of the Eastern Buddhist articulated the need for such a journal in terms of the war and its aftermath. The flaws in Western society that had given rise to the Great War, the ‘world catastrophe’ as the editorial put it, had not been resolved. It spoke of Japan’s international obligation and commitment to global citizenship: ‘Japan, as a modern nation, cannot stand apart from the rest of the world’. Japan needed to contribute to the task of establishing world peace. Sharing knowledge of Eastern Mahāyāna was part of the solution: ‘We have suffered too much from sordid industrialism and blatant militarism. Some higher idealism must be infused into our lives’ (Eastern Buddhist 1:1, 1921c: 80). The Eastern Buddhist desire to overcome Western ignorance of Mahāyāna Buddhism also aligned with the government agenda of promoting East-West understanding because, as the editorial continued, it is ‘a living force molding the destiny of the East’ and has ‘deeply affected the Oriental outlook on life […] without some knowledge of Buddhism the East may remain forever an enigma to the West’.
There was a clear convergence of Japan’s program of soft diplomacy with D. T. Suzuki’s ongoing mission. The Suzukis and friends had been thinking of such a work for a decade – that is, since Suzuki had returned from his apprenticeship with Paul Carus, eleven years working on the Open Court publications, and, significantly, since his marriage to Beatrice (Hioki 2024b), but the plan gained momentum and significant support in the aftermath of the Great War. Key forces were a resurgence of Western interest in Buddhism, and the imperative for Japan that its society and culture, not just its religion, be better understood internationally. Buddhism and Japanese culture were entwined in the mission. Beatrice’s writings on Japanese culture were central to the project both in illustrating Buddhism as it manifested in Japanese culture, and in explaining the richness, beauty, and sophistication of that culture.
With the founding of the society, the Suzukis left Tokyo and Kamakura and moved to Kyoto. Both were employed to teach at Ōtani University – Beatrice as professor of English language. Suzuki’s life-long friend, Ataka Yakichi, by then a wealthy industrialist, provided financial support and a very substantial, architect designed house conveniently near the campus. They were thus provided with a secure income and conditions conducive to the venture. It was the start of a highly productive period for both Suzukis.
Much of the work that would later appear in D. T. Suzuki’s books first appeared as articles in the Eastern Buddhist. Beatrice contributed articles, poems, book reviews, editorials, reports on Buddhist activities abroad and maintained an active correspondence with readers. Some pieces appear under her Buddhist name, Seiren. The editorial work involved would have been daunting. Her diaries record her work reading drafts, preparing copy for print, proofreading, but one can only guess at the editorial discussions involved in ensuring that the ideas of the many Japanese expert contributors were accessible to a non-specialist Anglophone audience. The Eastern Buddhist aimed to showcase and report on new research and scholarship, so its articles were typically academic. But it also aimed to reach non-Buddhists, and it was in this that Beatrice excelled.
Beatrice’s personal experience and knowledge of the potential Western audience was invaluable in addressing the central aim of overcoming the prevailing misconceptions and prejudice against Mahāyāna Buddhism. Crucially, if they were to build upon the existing and growing Western interest in Buddhism, Eastern Buddhism needed to be presented in relation to what was already known. Beatrice’s contribution to the inaugural issue ‘What is Mahāyāna Buddhism’ (1921c) spoke directly to this problem. She addressed the question of the relationship of Mahāyāna Buddhism to the more familiar Theravāda construct of Western scholarship, ‘Pure Buddhism’, by explaining that just as Christianity exists in many different forms because of developments over time and place, there is no one Buddhism. There is not even just one form of Theravāda Buddhism. As in Christianity, the many forms nevertheless share fundamental beliefs. All schools of Buddhism, she reassures the reader, ‘claim the great Buddha Sakyamuni himself was the inspirer of their doctrine, and to represent the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching, if not always the letter of what is sometimes called primitive Buddhism’ (BLS 1921c: 62).
The overall thrust of the article is to position Mahāyāna within and against the already familiar ideas of Theravāda, beginning with the key differences, the fundamental fact that even the apparently shared terms, Buddha and Bodhisattva, carry profoundly different connotations. In Mahāyāna the Buddha is not just a man but ‘a manifestation of Dharmakaya the Absolute’ ((BLS 1921c: 64). But as Beatrice wrote, ‘the greatest difference of all […] the jewel in the crown of Mahāyāna Buddhism’, was the doctrine of the Bodhisattva, the development of which had given rise to the very terms Hinayāna (small vehicle) and Mahāyāna (great vehicle; BLS 1921c: 64–65). As Beatrice explained, obliquely addressing the assumption that the term ‘Hinayāna’ is derogatory, the division and the terms are ancient, dating back to the second-century council under King Kanishka, and simply refer to the relative number of disciples that each vehicle (yāna) can convey to salvation. As Beatrice wrote:
In the Hinayāna the goal held out to everyone is that of Arhatship. An Arhat is a man in whom the evil passions are all extinct […] and who seeks salvation or enlightenment by meditation and a pure life for himself and himself alone. But in Mahāyāna the end is not that of individual saintship and entry into Nirvana, but instead, in some future existence to become oneself a Buddha, a saviour of all beings. Such a being who is on the road to Buddhaship is a Bodhisattva (he whose essence, sattva, has become intelligence, bodhi.) The bodhisattva in distinction from the Arhat has a universal sympathy and compassion for others so great that he voluntarily renounces Nirvana in order to become a helper, the way-shower, the helper of others. (BLS 1921c: 65)
Beatrice reinforced the message of the early Indian origins of the Mahāyāna by quoting Asanga, the fourth century Indian founder of the Yogacara school – or, in her words, ‘the greatest teacher of the psychological school of Buddhism’ – on the key features of the Mahāyāna (1921c: 66) emphasizing its concern with ‘the furtherance of universal welfare’. She then presented them as summarized by Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), a pioneering figure in Meiji Buddhist reform, and in the formulation of ‘New Buddhism’, showing the continuity of the principles into modern Japan.
1. Salvation or enlightenment is for all. All may become Bodhisattvas and ultimately attain Buddhahood and Nirvana. 2. Bodhisattvas voluntarily renounce Nirvana in order to work for the enlightenment of their fellow beings. 3. Everything in the universe is a manifestation of the Dharmakāya. 4. The world suffering of Hinayāna Buddhism may be converted through union in the Dharmakāya and through enlightenment. 5. While not ignoring ethical precepts, the emphasis in Mahāyāna is laid upon meditation for wisdom in individual deliverance and upon loving kindness in stepping in the footprints of the Buddha. (BLS 1921c: 68–69)
The essay concluded with a restatement of the opening point, the shared roots of Hinayāna and Mahāyāna in the teachings of the Buddha, listing the foundational teachings they have in common.
The idea of the impermanency of all things, karma, rebirth, the law of cause and effect, the middle path, the prevalence of sorrow and ignorance, the possibility of attainment and the reality when attained of Nirvana, which is the dispersion forever of sorrow, suffering, and ignorance. (1921c: 69)
Her overall message was that Mahāyāna Buddhism, like the later denominations of Christianity, differed from Theravāda, but nevertheless, held to key tenets of the Buddha’s teaching, and was a legitimate form of Buddhism.
Beatrice’s contribution to the second issue focused on the Mahāyāna concept of Bodhisattva, specifically addressing the difference between Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and ‘gods’ as understood in the West (BLS 1921a). Together these articles spoke to the legitimacy of Mahāyāna as the Buddha’s teaching, where it sat in the spectrum of the various forms of Buddhism in the world and presented a general outline of its teachings. That is, she established an overview of how the new information on the Mahāyāna presented in the Eastern Buddhist related to existing Western knowledge of Buddhism.
In the third issue, Beatrice contributed a report on ‘The New Buddhist Movement in Germany’ (1921b) one point of which was that the extensive interest in Buddhism in Germany at that time was testament to the timeliness of the Eastern Buddhist mission, testament to the growing Western interest in Buddhism, and Western endorsement of Buddhism’s contemporary relevance in its application to current world problems. ‘The writer is convinced that the future of man in the West will develop for the best only if Buddhist teachings are observed’ (BLS 1921b: 231). The review also provided an opportunity to point to the limitations of Western reliance on the Theravāda, and consequently, of the need to make Mahāyāna better known: the book was
an admirable exposition of Hinayāna Buddhism written with earnestness and sincerity. With much the Mahāyānist would heartily agree but not all […]. The Mahāyānist feels that the Hinayānist does not penetrate deeply enough into the truth of Buddhism. (BLS 1921b: 232)
As she had written in the first issue, ‘Mahāyāna regards the Hinayāna as an incomplete presentation of Buddhism, true as far as it goes, but not going far enough’ (BLS 1921c: 65).
Beatrice’s subsequent articles in the Eastern Buddhist were typically on the lives and teachings of the founders of the major Japanese sects, her translations of Buddhist poems, and her accounts of Buddhism as observed in its rituals, history, and the art and architecture of famous temples. They are engagingly written and relate to proven aspects of Western interest in Japanese culture. Though they might appear less ‘academic’ than the papers of the Japanese scholars in the Eastern Buddhist they were nevertheless based in serious study of Buddhism and its texts. The translation and analysis of the sacred texts, which she began from the time she arrived in Japan, informed her writings, but in contrast to European Buddhist scholars of the time, the philologists, the texts themselves were not the subject of them. Her interest was in lived Buddhism, past as well as present.
Looking at her work in the context of the Eastern Buddhist, which aimed to introduce international readers to the totally unfamiliar field of Mahāyāna Buddhism in Japan, I see it, once again, as providing a framework for the more specialist papers, explaining through specific examples, the history, diversity, development, and relationship of the various schools of Japanese Mahāyāna. The articles on the lives of the saints, for example, introduce the history and teachings of the major schools. The paper on ‘Hōnen Shōnin and the Jōdo Ideal’ (1922) explains the development and main teachings of the Pure Land schools, without which the non-specialist would struggle to understand the more doctrinal papers. Her translation of the Songs of Shinran Shonin, disciple of Hōnen and founder of the Jodo Shinshu, is accompanied by a biography of the man and an account of his teachings as these are expressed through his poetry, and how they differ from other schools (BLS 1939b).
Beatrice’s paper on Fudō Myōō, a popular and important Shingon deity (BLS 1923) demonstrates the fusion of her textual study and accessible introduction of key Buddhist ideas. It introduces the Shingon school, the iconography and the function of Fudō as a manifestation of the Universal principle. It opens by addressing the Western misunderstanding of the fearsome appearance of many esoteric Buddhist images. Fudō, in his various forms, holds an upraised sword and is surrounded by flames, but though fearsome, does not represent evil. He is fierce because his function is to defend against all obstructions to Enlightenment; fierce only against inequities and enemies of Buddhism. The paper speaks of his many manifestations, each appropriate to the task at hand; the specifications in sacred texts on how he should be depicted to best convey specific teachings; the variations that have resulted from folklore and popular belief. It is groundbreaking in its attention to iconography, solidly based in textual reference and scholarship, demonstrating the importance of the visual representations in embodying the profound teachings of the Mahāyāna, and as aids to practice.
The paper prefigured her later work on the ritual and doctrinal significance of the Shingon mandara (BLS 1936e; 1937c). The first part of the two papers on the Taizōkai mandala begins by clarifying the misunderstanding of the multiple deities of the Mahāyāna: ‘The theory of the Mandara teaches us that the universe is really the form of Mahāvairocana (Dainichi), the One Reality, and reflects his virtues and powers’ (BLS 1936e: 1). All other forms of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and other beings depicted in the mandara are emanations of his being and symbols of his activities and virtues. They are not idols to worship, but expressions of abstract principles, aids to understanding, ritual, and practice.
It is a mistake to think of the different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of Shingon from a polytheistic standpoint and consider them as separate Buddhas or gods. They are simply different manifestations or representations of the One Buddha to give believers forms for meditation. (BLS 1936f: 1)
Throughout Beatrice’s writings, she balances the presentation of new knowledge against past misunderstandings.
4.3 The 1930s: Beatrice and the Avatamsaka Sutra
Beatrice’s most prolific period of publication began in 1932, the year of her first monograph, Nōgaku, a study of the classical theatre of Japan published in the Wisdom of the East series. The book testifies to Beatrice’s passion for Nō and her devoted study of it guided by Japanese experts. It was warmly endorsed by Iwao Kongo, the head of the Kongo School of Nō in Kyoto. A long introductory essay explained the centuries long history of Nō drama, its cultural importance, the spectacular costumes, complexity and depth of its aesthetic sophistication, and, most significantly, its relation to Japanese religion, both Shintō and Buddhism. Though the form had its origins in Shintō, Nō plays, as expressions of Japanese religious beliefs, ‘are saturated with the spirit of Buddhism’ (BLS 1932: 45). Since the introduction of Ryōbu-Shintō sometime in the eighth century, she explained, the Shintō kami (gods) were encompassed within Buddhist cosmology, and consequently, ‘the gods and the Buddhas are really one’ (1932: 37). Once again we see Beatrice’s interest in Buddhism as it is lived and expressed in Japanese culture.
In Nōgaku, full translations of several of the plays offer access to the poetic beauty of the form, but a number of others are, as Beatrice put it, ‘simple presentations of the story’ (Preface), essentially brief summaries of the plot; narratives she then unpacked to illustrate Buddhist beliefs embedded in Japanese culture. A substantial portion of the introduction (1932: 42–45) is given over to a summary of the more prevalent of these: the interpenetration of the two worlds (the material and the ideal), the efficacy of reciting the sutras, of chanting the Nembutsu (invocation to Amida Buddha), and belief in the benevolence of Kannon. Chief among those that she regularly referred to in her writings was ‘the idea that all may attain Buddhahood including plants, trees, and animals’ (1932: 43).
In the play ‘Basho’ the banana plant is enlightened. In ‘Kochō’ by devotion to the Hokke sutra, a butterfly also attains, and says: ‘How wonderful it is that, by virtue of the supreme sutra (the Hokke), sentient and non-sentient beings without discrimination can attain Buddhahood.’ (BLS 1932: 43)
The section continues with examples of the spirit of the wistaria attaining salvation in the play ‘Fuji’; the spirt of the iris flower attaining rebirth in the Western Paradise in ‘Kakitsuba’, and in ‘Yuki’, the snow being led to salvation by the light of the beneficent Buddha. The introduction concludes with a succinct list of the chief characteristics of Mahāyāna Buddhism for the benefit of the Western readers, for without some knowledge of Japanese religion, she wrote, Nō could not be fully understood (1932: 44–45). The book spoke directly to the Suzuki mission of making Japan, its culture and its religion better understood: As Beatrice wrote, ‘[t]o know something of Nō is to know something of Japan […] a clue to the psychology and sentiment of the Japanese’; ‘it is the very spirit of the arts of Japan’ (1932: 13).
Beatrice also delivered the Nagoya lecture in October 1932 (published as Buddhism and Practical Life, 1933a). It is a remarkable statement of the Bodhisattva path as a guide to lay practice in everyday life based on her study of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Kegon Kyō in Japanese). A footnote to her paper ‘An Outline of the Avatamsaka Sutra’ mentions that it was written as D. T. Suzuki was translating the sutra into English (BLS 1934a: 46). Since the translation was published in four parts starting in the first issue of the Eastern Buddhist, she must have written it no later than 1920 or 1921, over a decade before its publication. The title of Suzuki’s paper (D. T. Suzuki 1921a) states it is an epitomized version of the sutra. As he explained in a footnote, it was an abridged version to meet the needs of ‘prosaic moderners’ who ‘ask for something concise and directly to the point’ (1921a: 1). It was rendered in verse, as was the original. While one can only surmise how much Beatrice may have been involved in decisions to make it amenable to ‘moderners’, the style of verse suggests that she was deeply engaged in its production, taking on the task of transposing the philosophical content of the sutra as translated by Suzuki from the highly specialist Chinese Sanskrit hybrid of the original text, into English verse. Writing poetry was one of Beatrice’s particular talents. That they should have worked together on it is not at all surprising. Translation is frequently the result of such collaboration, but such a task would have required a significantly greater level of engagement with the content than simply the ‘revising of Tei’s draft’ as she routinely did. It could explain the depth of knowledge apparent in the two papers that she wrote on the sutra during the process.
The Avatamsaka sutra, which she described as ‘one of the supreme works of the world’, clearly had a profound impact on her. The second article, ‘The Vows of Samantabhadra’ (1940h), which reads as part two of the first, was presumably written at the same time, though appears only to have been published in the posthumous collection of Impressions. It was based on the Gandavyuha section of the Avatamsaka and is pivotal in understanding what Buddhism meant to Beatrice. The vows were not only the basis of the lecture in Nagoya but inspiration for much that she subsequently wrote.
As the title states, the paper is an account of the Ten Vows made by the Bodhisattva ‘Samantabhadra (Fugen Bosatsu in Japanese) the Bodhisattva who represents primarily Universal Kindness’ (BLS 1940h: 52), and the vows he made teach the path to Awakening through a life of compassionate action for the benefit of all beings. The paper begins with an unadorned list of the vows:
1. To pay respect to all the Buddhas. 2 To praise all the Tathāgathas. 3. To make offerings to all the Buddhas. 4. To confess all karmic hindrances. 5.To join with others in their happiness or merit. 6. To ask the Buddha to revolve the wheel of the Dharma. 7. To ask the Buddha to stay in the world for all time. 8. To study Buddhism in order to propagate it in all ways. 9. To benefit all beings according to their condition. 10. To turn over accumulated merit to others and to suffer for others. (BLS 1940h: 52)
The body of the text is her interpretation of them, transposed to contemporary relevance, explaining how the ancient vows could be followed by modern people in ordinary, secular life (BLS 1934a). The first three vows, she wrote, ‘are closely connected and can be summed up in one – to revere the Buddhas, to praise and to make offerings, all these are forms of reverence’ (BLS 1940h: 52).
Though Beatrice chose to use the word ‘reverence’ rather than ‘worship’, these first vows would be a challenge for many Western readers, raising the familiar questions of idolatry, pantheism (the mention of ‘Buddhas’ in the plural), and confronting the widespread rejection of ritual. She therefore opened with a long explication of the various manifestations of the One Absolute, and the apparent profusion of deities in the sectarian practices of the various sects in Japan – the Shin sect take Amida as the highest form of worship; the Nichiren and Zen, Shakyamuni, the Shingon Mahavairochana (BLS 1940h: 52–53). On top of this, ordinary people make a personal choice, fully aware that each of the bodhisattvas represents some aspect of Mahavairocana. As those questioned by Beatrice responded:
‘Of course’ one would say, ‘there is only one Buddha, but I like to think of him in the form of the compassionate Kwannon,’ or ‘Yes, there is indeed only Mahavairocana, but the wise Monju Bosatsu is the form of him I like to contemplate,’ or ‘Somehow to think of the Buddha as the kind Jizo Bosatsu seems to bring me nearer to him. What does it matter? They are all the same.’ (BLS 1940h: 53)
Having addressed Western misunderstanding of the nature of the many divinities in Mahāyāna Buddhism and assumptions of ‘idol worship’ among Japanese, Beatrice then challenged the contemporary tendency ‘to turn aside from all ceremony, worship and devotion’ as ‘superstition, cramping to the spirit’ (1940h: 53) arguing for the human benefits of giving reverence: inculcating humility, building a sense of intercommunication with the Buddha, setting an example to others. ‘Love and worship are needed to perfect man’s character’ (1940h: 54). ‘Offerings are to be regarded not so much as something to please the Buddha, but as an act of self sacrifice upon our part by which act we give outward expression to our respect and reverence’ (1940h: 54). (Beatrice would expand this discussion of the first three vows into the paper ‘Reverence on Buddhism’ [BLS 1935b], mentioned below.)
The other vows receive an equally full explication and are similarly written with Western readers in mind. Briefly, to confess, the fourth vow, is to acknowledge wrong and resolve to do away with hindrances and accumulate good karma, to turn to the right path. The sixth and seventh she saw as closely connected: ‘To revolve the wheel of the dharma means that the Buddha by the influence of his spirit through persons will cause the Truth to shine out.’ The Buddha will be in the world. Our part in this, wrote Beatrice, is to practice compassion to all beings, ‘feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, mending broken hearts, and living a life which by its purity and kindness will serve as an example to all’ (1940h: 56). Her reading is a call for compassion: ‘There can be no doubt that compassion is the leading act on our part by which we can ask Buddha to stay in the world all the time and revolve the wheel of the Dharma (1940h: 56).
The most important of the vows for Beatrice was the eighth: ‘To study Buddhism in order to propagate it in all forms’ (1940h: 56). Her explication of it leads into instructions on the various ways one can propagate Buddhism, including by setting an example through one’s own life, telling stories about Buddhism to young children, by delivering lectures and writing books and articles (1940h: 57): ‘Everyone can take this vow. Let us all take and act according to it.’ Publishing was central to Beatrice’s practice. While she continued to write regularly for Eastern Buddhist, she also published in the various other journals including the London Forum, the Middle Way, Buddhism in England, the Aryan Path, Tourist, and Japan Today. An incomplete bibliography lists at least fourteen articles she published in 1936 alone. Taking the opportunity to propagate Buddhism offered by her position as English teacher, she compiled two books of readings on Mahāyāna Buddhism in English for Japanese college students (BLS 1934b).
The article on Samantabhadra’s vows concludes on the other central theme of Beatrice’s practice: compassion towards animals. Citing the Avatamsaka sutra’s vision of the world seen in the radiance of the Absolute Buddha where everything is interpenetrating, mutually conditioned and conditioning, she wrote:
Only in Buddhism do we find the doctrine that animals as well as human beings are manifestations of the one Absolute Truth and that they are one with us in partaking of the nature of the One Absolute Reality and that in time they will attain enlightenment even as we. (BLS 1940h: 57)
And as an example of the manifestation of these ideas in Japanese culture, she cites the traditional stories of the Nō theatre:
There are many beautiful Nō plays composed upon this idea. In ‘Basho’ we see the spirit of the banana plant seeking for enlightenment; in ‘Kocho’ the spirit of the butterfly is searching for salvation and in ‘Yuki’ (Snow) the white snow falling upon the ground is also yearning for final emancipation. This is a unique idea, found only in Mahāyāna Buddhism […]. Herein lies its beauty and its greatness. (BLS 1940h: 57–58)
4.4 The Young East: Buddhism, cultural diplomacy, world peace
From 1934, Beatrice began a series of articles in the Young East, the second English language Buddhist journal mentioned above. The first series ran from June 1925 until March 1930 when financial distress caused it to fold (Snodgrass 2015). The new series, for which Beatrice wrote regularly, began in mid-1934, revived under the auspices of the International Buddhist Society (IBS, Kokusai Bukkyō Kyōkai). The Young East, though founded and edited by internationally renowned Buddhist scholars, took a different approach to the Eastern Buddhist. Rather than publish academic papers on Buddhist doctrine as the Eastern Buddhist was already doing, it aimed to inform readers about modern Japanese Buddhism in practice, by which they meant what Japanese Buddhists were doing to heal contemporary social ills, and what Mahāyāna Buddhism could contribute to world peace. A continuing theme throughout the first series was that the problems of the world arose from prejudices and pride in regard to race, religions, and politics. The solution therefore was to sow the seeds of Buddhism which, through its vision of interconnectedness through the Buddha nature of all beings offered a commitment to an encompassing respect that overrode divisions of race, nationality, and faith. It also directly addressed the problem of the barrier that language imposed on Western understanding of modern Japan, inserting Japanese opinion into international discourse by reporting on social and political developments in Japan and Japanese responses to world affairs. Buddhist scholars contributed to both journals but the Young East also carried articles by leading Japanese statesmen and experts in various aspects of modern life. This, in addition to its overt concern for social welfare and peace, was an important factor in establishing a broad international readership among politicians, diplomats and people of influence. It had contributors and readers across more than ninety world cities.
The journal, with the international readership and known commitment to world peace established by the first series, was a convenient vehicle for the program of cultural diplomacy instigated by the Japanese government after Western outrage at the Manchurian incident caused Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations in March 1933. Once again, Eastern Buddhism and Japanese culture were called upon to promote understanding between East and West as a perceived precondition for world peace. It was work that the Young East had been engaged in from the start, the lifelong concern of its founders who were, like many of the journal’s contributors, committed internationalists.
The content of the second series of the Young East continued to be consciously aimed at an intelligent, non-specialist audience. Both Beatrice and Suzuki were prominent on the editorial committee, taking their places alongside senior Japanese statesmen and scholars of international repute such as the Oxford graduated Professor of Sanskrit, Takakusu Junjirō, and the prominent statesman, Anesaki Masaharu, who had both had published prolifically in English as well as Japanese. Anesaki had been professor at Harvard University and had served on the League of Nations since its founding. Beatrice’s prominence is indicative of her respected position among Japanese Buddhists.
While there is necessarily some overlap with ideas presented in her earlier writings, Beatrice’s Young East papers, written for this new audience, cover, as a set, the key teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism, its principal difference from the Hinayāna in the conception of Bodhisattva, knowledge through Awakening leading to compassion, and the path of the bodhisattva as exemplary lay practice. The Ten Vows of Samantabhadra are prominent and she continued to address common misperceptions. In ‘Buddhism as Escape and Transformer’ (1936b), she challenged the misconception that Buddhism is an austere philosophy, explaining, in reference to Christianity, that both are religions of deliverance and redemption. ‘Buddhism emphasizes as much as Christianity the virtues of purity and love and these virtues are applicable to the lay followers who remain in the ordinary world as the monk who escapes from it’ (BLS 1936b: 9). This essay addressed the Buddhist idea of self, the concept of anāta, commonly translated as ‘no-self’. As Beatrice wrote, it is not a teaching of the dissolution of separate beings, but of interconnectedness, a realization of the state where ‘all sense of separateness is done away with and true Unity prevails’ (1936b: 8). The notion of self was further developed in ‘The Problem of Personality in Shingon’ (1936e).
The paper ‘Reverence in Buddhism’ (1935b) was an expansion of her discussion of the first 3 of Samantabhadra’s vows, which as we have seen challenged the prejudice against ritual, and particularly the practice of making offerings to images. This, she argued, shows reverence, not worship, and is important in fostering humility in the giver, which is itself a virtue in self development. Extending this argument, she explained that the East Asian custom of making offerings to the dead, ‘popularly and ignorantly’ referred to as ‘ancestor worship’ is, instead, an act of reverence and remembrance of family and of the dead. This practice was, for Beatrice who had lost her mother, ‘one of the strong points of Buddhism’ (1940c: 187).
The Young East was the perfect vehicle for Beatrice, who, by this time, had two decades of experience in writing on Buddhism for Western readers. Her papers assumed no previous knowledge of Buddhism, and presented the key ideas in brief, manageable essays, some as short as three pages; the longest nine, each framed to relate to the intended audience. Her approach is clearly demonstrated in the first issue. The title of her paper, ‘Those Men’ (1934c) is taken from a passage in Albert Schweitzer’s Christianity and the Religions of the World (1923: 23–24) in which he speaks of God receiving into His Kingdom ‘those men who have proved themselves to be honest and of good heart.’ The passage, quoted at the head of the paper, provided Beatrice a springboard to expound on Buddhist inclusion. Buddhism, by contrast, she wrote, teaches salvation not just for ‘a few of God’s elect’, but for all; not just for all mankind, but for all beings, ‘even animals and plants and the dust beneath out feet which all contain the germ of Buddhahood’ (BLS 1934c: 17). As she summarized the difference in the concluding paragraph:
In Christianity, beings and God are to a great extent separated, but in Buddhism, all are One in the Dharmakaya and all may aspire to Bodhisattvahood. The Mahāyāna insists upon the identity of all life and regards all beings as on the path of deliverance. (BLS 1934c: 19)
That is, bouncing off the work of the well known and widely read European writer, one likely to be familiar to many of her readers, and with reference to Buddhist sutras, she introduced this and related foundational concepts of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
Schweitzer’s book also inspired Beatrice a second paper, ‘Mahāyāna Buddhism and the Layman’ (1935a). Following the common assumptions of his time, Schweitzer wrote of Buddhism as a religion of monks and ascetics; of retreat from the world. Challenging him provided the opportunity to correct this widely held misunderstanding and to distinguish Mahāyāna teachings from those of the Theravāda, explaining, most particularly, the distinctive Mahāyāna conception of the Bodhisattva. She reinforced the lessons of the earlier paper on the shared Buddha nature of all things as manifestations of the Dharmakaya, and the practice of the Bodhisattva Path. Her key points, in reference to Schweitzer, were that all beings, not just clerics, can achieve awakening, and, repeating the theme of Buddhism and Practical Life delivered in Japan, they can achieve it not in retreat, but through practices incorporated into the ordinary life of a modern layperson. It could be achieved by studying Buddhism, through personal acts of compassion to humans and animals, by helping the sick, as a teacher inculcating ideas of compassion and righteous conduct in children.
While Beatrice responded to Schweitzer’s ignorance of Buddhism, the aim of the articles was to not to criticize either him or Christianity but to inform Western readers, by comparison and contrast with what was familiar to them, of the values of Mahāyāna Buddhism. This becomes particularly apparent in her paper ‘Albert Schweitzer: A Christian Bodhisattva’ (1937b), which opens with the statement: ‘There is a man living today, who although not a Buddhist, seems to me a true Bodhisattva. He is Albert Schweitzer, doctor of philosophy and medicine, author and organist, missionary of the black tribes of central Africa’ (BLS 1937b: 14). She recounts his life and work with great admiration as a manifestation of the Bodhisattva ideal, a great soul ‘working for the betterment of the entire universe’ (BLS 1937b: 19).
Her message could not have been clearer. You do not have to be a Buddhist to live by Buddhist principles; they are universally applicable. Beatrice’s mission was not to convert, but to foster the application of Buddhist principles in the everyday life of all people, whether they be Buddhist, Christian, or a follower of other faiths, for the betterment of society and the sake of world peace. In doing so, she also aimed to foster understanding and respect for Japan, the custodian of Eastern Buddhism.
The longest article of the Young East set is ‘The Place of Compassion in Mahāyāna Buddhism’ (1935c). After a learned and informative exposition of the topic with reference to the work of Suzuki and an extensive account of the Ten Vows of Samantabhadra, Beatrice refers to Count Hermann Keyserling as an eminent example of current, if mistaken, Western criticism of compassion. She presented a full page quote from his Travel Diary of a Philosopher (1926) in which he dismissed compassion as ‘feminine’, ‘non-productive’, and rejoiced in the ‘masculine, productive form of humanity’ (BLS 1935c: 11). Keyserling had written that: ‘Our capacity for progress depends on the fact that in us, for the first time in human history the masculine principle in all its purity has attained control’ (quoted in BLS 1935c: 12).
Keyserling’s derogatory vision of compassion conveniently provided Beatrice with a model against which to juxtapose the Mahāyāna ideal. Summing up his position, Beatrice wrote: ‘According to Count Keyserling, compassion is a fatal superstition and not a supreme virtue […] he is at the opposite pole of the standpoint of Mahāyāna Buddhism (1935c: 11). In Mahāyāna, she explained, the concept of compassion was the reverse of Keyserling’s. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, compassion was active and engaged. One worked for the good of all and transferred what merit was gained to assist others on the path. It was incumbent upon those who attained knowledge – that is, Buddhist Awakening – to work for the good of others. Far from being a barrier to progress, Mahāyāna compassion, the compassion of the Bodhisattva, was the basis of the extensive and wide ranging social reform being carried out by Buddhists in Japan at the time, the principle driving the internationally recognized progress of modern Japan.
Writing in 1935, Beatrice echoed the foundational message of both the Eastern Buddhist and the Young East: Mahāyāna Buddhism’s view of compassion and its concomitant recognition of the Buddha nature of all beings was the key to world peace. In reply to Keyserling, she wrote:
If we are on the point of overcoming compassion then indeed the world is to be pitied. On the contrary, the practice of compassion is the lesson most needed in the world today. War between nations and hatred between individuals could not exist if all practiced compassion […] the only antidote to all the trouble, turmoil, and suffering endured by man and other beings. (BLS 1935c: 12–13)
In the winter of 1936, as peace was becoming increasingly fragile, she wrote of Mahāyāna Buddhism as the ‘Lighthouse in a Storm’ (BLS 1936c).
At the present time all over the world preparation for war is going on and is bound to overtake us [...] only by postulating the oneness of humanity can progress be made. […] We must overcome ego, avert the storm’ (BLS 1936c: 8, 10).
4.5 Consolidating the vision: Beatrice’s final book
Beatrice’s final work was the book Mahāyāna Buddhism: A Brief Outline (1939a, written in response to a request from the British Buddhist Christmas Humphreys for an accessible book on Mahāyāna Buddhism for Westerners. The first edition had limited circulation. Beatrice received a copy while she was under treatment at St Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo in late November 1938. Although there was presumably some circulation in the months after its printing, all remaining stock was burned in the London conflagrations of 1940. It was, however, reprinted after the war (1948 and 1959). It remains available and still attracts positive reviews on Amazon. Like all of Beatrice’s writings on Buddhism, it is deliberately non-technical and assumes no previous knowledge. She herself described it as ‘a little book’, a ‘Primer’ one ‘which, unpretentious though it is, yet aims at giving readers the main points of Mahāyāna, in the hope that thereby an interest will be created in the reader which will lead to the study of the worthier and larger works’ (Preface, 1939a: xvii). To this end she appended an annotated list of selected readings in English, French and German, and the names of the Japanese scholars she had consulted in writing it. The result is an informed and authoritative presentation of Mahāyāna Buddhism curated for Western readers. A concluding section ‘What Mahāyāna is Not’ (1939a: 132) – polytheism; nihilism; degenerate Buddhism; pessimistic – bluntly dispels common misconceptions, a core part of the Suzuki mission from the start. The final paragraph is a message for the times:
Enlightenment within rather than without is the goal of Mahāyāna, for without Enlightenment there is blind groping in the dark. Yet when Enlightenment comes, compassion will stream forth; men will learn to love their fellow beings, and wars, the exploitation of men and animals, and anger, hatred, and lust will come to an end. This is the teaching of Mahāyāna Buddhism. (BLS 1939a: 134)
Beatrice wrote until the end of her life. She took her notes on Shingon to St Luke’s Hospital hoping to complete the book there, but her strength failed her. She died on 16 July 1939. The last prewar issue of the Eastern Buddhist (vol. 7: 3–4) came out that same month. It included Beatrice’s translation of ‘The Songs of Shinran Shōnin’ (BLS 1939b). D. T. Suzuki did not revive the journal until 1949.