Rev. Danny Fisher

I received an email recently from Michael Goldberg, executive producer and director of the D.T. Suzuki Documentary Project. The Project has recently produced a 77-minute documentary film about the life and work of D.T. Suzuki entitled A Zen Life – D.T. Suzuki.

The film includes interviews with (among others) Gary Snyder, Huston Smith, Mihoko Okamura, Albert Stunkard, Elsie Mitchell, Robert Aitken Roshi, Donald Richie, and Wm. Theodore de Bary. It also utilizes rare footage of Thomas Merton, John Cage, Erich Fromm, and Suzuki himself.

I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m very excited to do so. Obviously, Suzuki was especially important in terms of all the work he did to transmit Zen Buddhist teachings to the West. In the email I received from Goldberg, he goes even further in terms of articulating the far-reaching effects of Suzuki’s work:

D.T. Suzuki was highly successful at getting Westerners to appreciate the Japanese mentality, and Japanese to understand Western logic. The effect he had on Western psychoanalysis, philosophy, religious thinking, and the arts was profound. His numerous writings in English and Japanese serve as an inspiration even today…Gary Snyder calls D.T. Suzuki “probably the most culturally significant Japanese person in international terms, in all of history.”

A Zen Life – D.T. Suzuki can be ordered at http://www.martygrossfilms.com. For public showing permission or other information concerning the D.T.
Suzuki Documentary Project, please email the Project here.