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The Buddhist Society is delighted to welcome you to join Prof. Richard M. Jaffefor this year’s first public lectureat 6.30pm on Friday 6th March 2026
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Friday 6th March at 6.30pm Held at The Buddhist Society in person
and online through Zoom Link below
Free to attend – all welcome – no booking required
Join Zoom Meeting
https://thebuddhistsociety.zoom.us/j/89631603320
Meeting ID: 896 3160 3320
In the 1950s, D. T. Suzuki gave a series of free-wheeling lectures at Columbia University that formed the basis of the postwar Zen boom in America.
Weaving together his understanding of classical Buddhist texts with Christian mysticism, psychology, and twentieth-century European and American philosophy, Suzuki captivated audiences drawn from the New York intelligentsia and art world-including Carolyn Brown, John Cage, Arthur Danto, Sari Dienes, Erich Fromm, Phillip Guston, Ibram Lassaw, and Dorothy Norman— and catalyzed public interest in Buddhism.
Drawing on archival research in Japan and the United States, editor Richard M. Jaffe has collected and analyzed the lectures in full for Columbia University Press. In this talk, he will speak about the place of the lectures in the history of American and global Buddhism. He will also touch upon the interesting archival research story of the production of the lectures manuscript.
Richard M. Jaffe is professor of religious studies at Duke University. He is the general editor of the Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki Published in association with the Buddhist Society Trustand the author of Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism and Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism.
