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man, D.T. Suzuki, introduced Zen to the West. He did a pioneer job, but he was not a Zen master, or even a man of Zen. He was a great scholar, and his impact spread through all the countries to the intelligentsia. He immediately had a great appeal.
As the old religions are crumbling, particularly in the West... Christianity is just a name, the empire is crumbling. They are trying to hold onto it, but it is not possible. It is falling apart and a vacuum is growing every day, bigger and bigger, like an abysmal depth which creates nausea.
Jean-Paul Sartre's book, NAUSEA, is very significant. Once you see the bottomless pit, this meaningless life -- that you are utterly arbitrary, unnecessary, accidental -- you lose all dignity. And for what are you waiting? -- there is nothing to wait for, only death. This creates a great anxiety: "We are worthless... nobody needs us... existence is care-less."
At that very moment D.T. Suzuki appeared on the horizon in the West. He was the first man to talk about Zen in the Western universities, colleges, and he attracted immensely the intelligent people, because they had lost faith in God, they had lost faith in the Holy Bible, they had lost faith in the pope.
Just today, almost a dozen German bishops have come together to make a declaration that the pope is going beyond his limits, that his continuous preaching against birth control is bringing humanity to a point where half of the world is going to die from starvation; the pope should not be listened to anymore.
Now, this is pure rebellion. These one dozen bishops in Germany have formed a committee, and they are collecting more and more bishops to rebel against the pope, and they are declaring that he is not infallible. The whole of history shows that the popes and archbishops are fallible. So this whole idea of the pope being infallible was making him an absolute dictator. Now it is intolerable.
The beginning of this century was the start of a boiling up of energy against all old religions, particularly in the rich countries of the West. Poor countries don't have time; they don't have even food enough, no nourishment. Their whole time is
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