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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 8.1 (2025): 1–32; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.08.01.01
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Asia-European Exchanges Mediated through Buddhism, Buddhism and Medicine: New Perspectives)
Tao and Zen in Early Twentieth-Century Britain: An Inauthentic Religion?
T. H. BARRETT
Emeritus, SOAS, London
tb2@soas.ac.uk
Abstract: In April 2024 I was asked to provide a short account of the Daode jing in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain to complement a workshop concerning the influence of Daoist texts in Germany at that time. I was not surprised to discover that several translations (or perhaps better, representations) of the Daode jing during this period were strongly influenced by Theosophist ideas, since this is now becoming well known. But I also noted that those who represented Japanese or pan-Asian thought in English also made frequent reference to Daoist texts and sought to discover why this might be. One longer term outcome of this association seems to have been that in the mid-twentieth century Anglophone world at least Zen and Daoist classics were frequently both mentioned by the same writers. The understanding of Zen Buddhism in the English-speaking world was therefore skewed towards a comparatively recent Japanese interest in Daoist texts that may not have accurately reflected earlier Japanese or Chinese views.
Keywords: Laozi, Zhuangzi, D. T. Suzuki, Shiga Shigetaka, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac
About the Author: Tim H. Barrett is Emeritus Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He studied Chinese at Cambridge and Buddhist Studies at Yale, and spent much of his career publishing on the history of the religious traditions of East Asia, primarily with regard to China. His books include Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist, or Neo-Confucian? (1992), Taoism Under the T’ang (1996), The Woman Who Discovered Printing (2008), and From Religious Ideology to Political Expediency in Early Printing (2012).
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