Jung and Tibetan Buddhism. (Masters essay. April 2021).
Introduction
Buddhism is a vast religion, over 2500 years old, containing a plethora of traditions, spanning a multitude of countries and practiced by over 500 million people worldwide.
Whilst not as important to Jung as Christianity, his interest in Buddhism ran deep, spanned much of his adult life and eventually, out of all the Eastern religions, was the one that meant the most to him (Clarke, 1994. Coward, 1985). Jung paid more attention to the Mahayana tradition, (often referred to as the ‘greater vehicle’) than Hiniyana (‘lesser vehicle’), especially Tibetan Tantric and Japanese Zen (Clarke, 1994: 122). In this essay, I concentrate largely on Jung’s writings on Tibetan Buddhism.
I start with a brief discussion of Jung’s background including the important role religion played in his life, his religious upbringing, the various profound religious experiences he had and how all these factors shaped his later approach to, not only Buddhism, but to religion in general. To provide further context, I then trace the history of Jung’s encounter with Buddhism, from his early exposure to Buddhism via philosophy, his writings on Buddhism, his trip to India and up to his final year when he was still studying the Dharma. Next, I select for discussion some of the aspects of Buddhism that Jung appreciated as well as some about which he had reservations, positing that throughout his engagement with Buddhism his attitude towards it was largely ambivalent. Finally, I provide a brief overview of those aspects of Jung’s treatment of Buddhism which attract most criticism.
In conclusion I argue that, whilst Jung’s understanding of Buddhism was inevitably imperfect and that aspects of his thoughts now seem outdated, he laid early foundations upon which the dialogue between Western psychology and Buddhism continues to be built. I posit that, despite his reservations about Buddhism, particularly about Westerners adopting Buddhist practices, Jungian psychology, paradoxically, has been helpful in the integration of Buddhism in the West at both the individual and the cultural level. At the individual level, I suggest that Jung’s psychology is a useful resource for those who wish to explore their own spiritual path, whether this is within or outside a formal religious context. At the cultural level, I argue that Jung’s contribution has been key in Western psychology’s role in aiding the inter-cultural transition of Buddhism into modern Western society. Finally, whilst Jung’s shortcomings must not be overlooked, I argue for the continued development and refinement of the dialogue, which he helped to initiate, beyond simplistic comparisons and critiques, citing psychotherapy as an example where ongoing inter-disciplinary study between Buddhism and Analytical psychology is clinically valuable for those practitioners wishing to integrate these two approaches.
Background
Religion was of central importance to Jung and his relationship with it, both professionally as well as personally, was deep and life-long. He was raised in a family which was immersed in religion. His father was a Protestant pastor, there were six parsons in his mother’s family and two uncles, on his father’s side, who were also parsons. Jung’s upbringing, in particular his relationship with his father whom he believed suffered from a superficial and inauthentic relationship with Christianity, was to be deeply formative in his future thoughts on religion (Jung, 1963: 40).
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), Jung also tells us how intensely his childhood was affected by several significant religious experiences (dreams and visions) which, as well as being early archetypal expressions of his own individuation, were also fundamental in shaping his future thoughts on religion.
These childhood events along with his observations of his father’s lifeless relationship with God, led Jung to believe in the primacy of experience in religion. Jung argued throughout his life that religion must involve direct, transformative experiences of what he called the ‘numinosum’ which he describes as something that, ‘seizes and controls the human subject who is always rather its victim than its creator. The numinosum – whatever its cause may be – is an experience of the subject independent of his will … [it] is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness’ (CW11: 6).
In his definition of religion, as well as his emphasis on subjective experience, he is also careful to differentiate between ‘religion’ and ‘creed’ saying, ‘A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors’ (CW10: 507).
Jung came to believe that Christianity had become stale and was no longer able to contain the natural human propensity for meaning, something which Jung believes is ‘an authentic religious function in the unconscious’ (CW11: 3). A consistent thread throughout Jung’s writings on Buddhism is that its emphasis on subjective experience appealed to him greatly (Clarke, 1994: 121) and, in this regard, Jung thought that Buddhism offers ‘a helpful training … thus remedying an often regrettable defect in the various brands of Christianity’ (CW18: 1577).
Throughout his texts, Jung maintains that his treatment of religion, including Buddhism, is psychological and empirical, in which he ignores ‘metaphysical or philosophical considerations’ restricting himself solely to ‘the observation of phenomena’ (CW11: 2). In addition, Jung not only applies his psychological concepts to religion, but he also uses religious ideas to inform his psychological theories, an approach which Peter Homans describes as ‘a double movement of reduction and retrieval of meaning’ (Homans, 1995: 183).
Again, Jung’s approach to Buddhism was no different. He was particularly interested in Buddhism’s psychological interiorisation of the Buddha, as an image of the Self, as well as its increased emphasis on the responsibility of the individual to find his or her own path which he thought was similar to his process of individuation. As this essay goes on to discuss, Jung discovered other useful parallel ideas in Buddhism which both validated and contributed to many of his key psychological concepts. However, as will be seen, there were also some Buddhist ideas about which he had serious doubts.
Jung’s encounter with Buddhism
Whilst all of Jung’s major texts on Buddhism were undertaken from 1935 onwards, when he was aged 60, he had been aware of Buddhism at a much younger age. Deidre Bair, in Jung a Biography, says that Jung’s relationship with Buddhism was already underway in 1901, whilst on holiday in Paris, when he ‘thought often of the Buddha, whom he knew from reading Schopenhauer’ (2003: 79). Jung had discovered Schopenhauer as a teenager. Later, as a university student, he also developed a deep affinity with Nietzsche and these philosophers, both of whom drew heavily on Buddhist thought, were significant influences on Jung’s thinking at the time. Jung was encountering Buddhism during a milieu which was already steeped with ideas from the East which had been flowing into the West since the 16th century and, according to Clarke, this long line of Western thinkers on Buddhism was at a new peak with Schopenhauer, followed by Nietzsche, being amongst the most influential (1994: 34).
It was in Jung’s book Symbols of Transformation, published in 1912, where the first real evidence that he had been studying Buddhist ideas directly can be seen and in his later book Psychological Types, published in 1921, there is further evidence still of Jung’s growing interest in, and knowledge of, Buddhism.
In 1935 he wrote a psychological commentary to Evan-Wentz’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a text which was particularly relevant at the time as it was seen as being very influential for the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the West.
In 1938-9, Jung undertook a three-month trip to India which he treated with a mixture of enthusiasm as well as skepticism. For example, whilst visiting the stupas of Sanchi, where the Buddha was reputed to have delivered his famous ‘fire sermon,’ Jung later recounted that he felt ’overcome by a strong emotion of the kind that frequently develops in me when I encounter a thing, person, or idea of whose significance I am still unconscious’ (1963: 308). Jung’s fervency on this trip was countered with equal measures of reservation such as his refusal to engage with ‘the so-called ‘’holy men’’’ of India preferring, instead, to hold on to his ‘own truth’ (1963: 305). In addition, Jung’s prevailing interest in, and preference for, European alchemy was also evident describing his trip to India as ’an intermezzo in the intensive study of alchemical philosophy on which I was engaged at the time.’ (1963: 305). Throughout Jung’s engagement with Buddhism, this ambivalent attitude towards it remained an enduring theme.
However, not long after his India trip, in his paper East-West Psychological Comparisons (1939), Jung was once more showing his predilection for the Buddha describing him as a ‘true genius’ (CW10: 1004). In the same year Jung also published his psychological commentary on Evan-Wentz’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.
Jung went on to write essays entitled The Dreamlike World of India (1939), What Can India Teach Us (1939), The Psychology of Eastern Meditation (1943), The Holy Men of India (1944), Concerning Mandala Symbolism (1950) and The Discourses of the Buddha (1956). By this stage in his writings, Jung was concentrating more on the Mahayana school and his interest in Buddhism had arguably surpassed that of Chinese Taoism and Indian Yoga which had predominated so far. In addition, unlike his earlier works which were sometimes filtered views of Buddhism through philosophers such as Schopenhauer, these later works were a product of Jung’s own direct reading of translated original sources and, as such, were more accurate (Coward, 1985; Clarke, 1994).
Jung remained interested in Buddhism for the rest of his life. In 1956 he wrote of ‘the immense help and stimulation I have received from the Buddhist teachings’ (CW18: 1580) and just a year before his death he was still studying the Dharma ‘trying to get near to the remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself’ (Letters, Vol. 2: 548).
Jung’s appreciation of Buddhism
As already mentioned, Jung discovered that Buddhist thought not only validated much about his own Analytical psychology but also provided him with further insights into it saying about the Bardot Thodol, for example, that ‘For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights’ (CW11: 833).
Like Jung’s own approach, Buddhism locates the source of religion in the human psyche and, unlike Christianity and other monotheisms, does not project on to external transcendent deities. Proclaiming the obvious parallels with his own concepts, Jung says of the Bardot Thodol, ‘the whole book is created out of archetypal contents of the unconscious mind … The world of gods and spirits is truly “nothing but” the collective unconscious inside me’ (CW11: 857).
Jung saw the Buddha as a real-life, human embodiment of the Self and a role model that all humans could follow, unlike Jesus who was confused by his association with God. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung said that, whilst on his visit to India, he had ‘grasped the life of the Buddha as the reality of the self which had broken through and laid claim to a personal life. For Buddha, the self stands above all gods, an unus mundus which represents the essence of human existence and of the world as a whole’ (1963: 309).
As mentioned earlier, Jung also saw parallels between the Buddhist path to enlightenment and individuation, believing that Buddhism’s emphasis on interiorisation, like his own approach, distances itself from the externalism and literalism of Christianity and other monotheisms. Jung thought that the Buddhist eight-fold path places more emphasis on individual responsibility, including self-awareness, intention, action, effort and meditation, which he believed led to results which are comparable to the individuation process (Moacanin, 1986; Clarke, 1994). As Young-Eisendrath states, Buddhism appealed to Jung because there are no ‘’’superior Masters’’ … beginning with the Buddha himself, all teachers attempt to help their students become ‘’a
lamp unto yourself’’’ (2008: 250).
For Jung, individuation seeks wholeness, rather than perfection, which requires open acknowledgement and acceptance of the negative aspects of oneself (the shadow), as well as the positive. Images of wholeness, therefore, must accommodate good as well as evil and in Buddhism he saw two images, namely the Buddha and the mandala, which accorded with this view (CW12: 22). Jung thought that the Christ figure was too good and Christianity’s propensity to project evil on to the image of the Devil was an enduring problem.
Jung’s reservations about Buddhism
In several ways, therefore, Buddhism was a source of ‘immense help and stimulation’ for Jung and he considered the Buddha to be one of the ‘supreme helpers on the road to salvation’ (CW18: 1580). However, as I have already mentioned, Jung also had several reservations.
Jung’s most serious misgiving was concerned with the adoption of Buddhist practices by Westerners, which he believed to be ill-advised. He had many issues with Christianity, but deep down he believed that it was the tradition within which Western man and woman was rooted and that the challenge for the West was the revitalisation and renewal of the Christian myth.
He also postulated that the West’s attraction to the East was merely a metaphor for this transition saying, ‘It seems to be quite true that the East is at the bottom of the spiritual change we are passing through today. Only, this East is not a Tibetan monastery full of Mahatmas, but lies essentially within us. It is our own psyche, constantly at work creating new spiritual forms and spiritual forces’ (CW10: 190).
Jung also posited that the West, by and large, possesses an extroverted attitude towards life in comparison to the introverted East, believing both to be one sided. Jung says, ‘In the East the inner man has always had such a firm hold on the outer man that the world had no chance of tearing him away from his inner roots; in the West, the outer man gained the ascendancy to such an extent that he was alienated from his innermost being’ (CW11: 785). Jung also thought that these fundamental differences in psychological types meant that ‘original Buddhist writings contain views and ideas which are more or less un-assimilable for ordinary Europeans’ (CW11: 877), for instance, going as far as presenting the instructions contained within The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation in reverse, so that it was more compatible with the Western, extroverted mind.
Jung believed that rather than being deceived by Western extroversion and the seduction of the East, which is merely a deep calling from the unconscious, we need to turn within. Instead of imitating the East, Jung says ‘It would be far more to the point to find out whether there exists in the unconscious an introverted tendency similar to that which has become the guiding spiritual principle of the East. We should then be in a position to build on our own ground with our own methods. If we snatch these things directly from the East, we have merely indulged our Western acquisitiveness, confirming yet again that everything good is outside, whence it has to be fetched and pumped into our barren souls’ (CW11: 773).
Another serious reservation Jung held was concerned with the Buddhist notion of enlightenment or ‘nirvana’. For Jung, the problem of perfection in religion was fundamental and, whilst he valued the similarities between the Buddhist eight-fold path and his own process of individuation and Buddhism’s emphasis on psychic wholeness, he did not believe that nirvana or full enlightenment, the ultimate objective of the Buddhist practice, is achievable. Moacanin claims that ’Unlike Buddha Jung does not perceive the possibility of an end to suffering. In his view happiness and suffering represent another pair of opposites, indispensable to life, and one cannot exist without the other’ (1986: 85). Happiness and suffering, in Jung’s view, are psychic opposites which cannot exist independently and between which there is always a dynamic interplay and, therefore, no possibility of final psychic equilibrium. ‘Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world’ for Jung ‘is and must remain an illusion’ (CW16: 400).
Jung had other, albeit lesser, concerns with Buddhism. For example, he was reluctant to accept the central Buddhist concepts of death, rebirth and karma. Of death and rebirth, he preferred to interpret, instead, as symbolic of the day-to-day renewal and growth that characterises the spiritual quest, saying ‘No one who strives for selfhood (individuation) is spared this dangerous passage’ (CW11: 849). Neither did he fully accept the concept of Karma because ‘it includes metaphysical assumptions for which I have no evidence’ (Letters, Vol. 2: 289). Elsewhere, however, he articulates a somewhat different view saying ‘our life is not made entirely by ourselves … even complexes can start a century or more before a man is born. The main bulk of it is brought into existence out of sources that are hidden to us. There is something like karma’ (Letters, Vol. 1: 436).
Jung’s critics
Jung was the first prominent psychoanalyst to undertake a serious study of Buddhism and his critique of such a far-flung religion, whilst admirable, was understandably imperfect. In addition, given the rapid increase in popularity of Buddhism in the West since Jung’s death, some of his ideas now ‘seem antiquated and out of touch with reality’ (Young-Eisendrath, 2008: 249). Inevitably, Jung’s writings on Buddhism have attracted comment and criticism for several reasons, some of which I have selected for discussion below.
Firstly, Jung’s use of blanket terminology such as ‘the East,’ ‘Eastern traditions’ and ‘Oriental philosophy’ is problematic, as is Jung’s use of the word ‘Yoga’ which he applied generically to all Eastern thought and psychological practice (Coward, 1985: 3). A further problem, in the case of Buddhism, is Jung’s occasional conflation of the two major schools of Hiniyana and Mahayana. Whilst Jung’s vernacular was not dissimilar to that of other scholars and commentators of the day, critics point to it as evidence of a naive and stereotypical approach to the East, that his conflation of all the various countries, cultures, religions and traditions as ‘the East’ or ‘the Orient’ is a Western construct and, for some, a form of racism (Said, 1978).
In a similar vein, Clarke (1994) argues that Jung was caught up in a milieu in which the West’s attitude to the East was intensely romantic, typified by ‘Orientalism’ a fantasy that the East possessed a wisdom that was lacking in the West. Clarke also claims that this encouraged the view that West and East represent ‘radically disengaged mentalities between which lie deep epistemological chasms’ and that this produced a form of ‘cultural enclavism’ and an attitude of Western superiority over the East (1994: 16-17).
Next is the inevitable accusation of psychological generalisation in Jung’s claim that the West is extroverted and the East introverted and that, in addition, he exaggerates the extent to which individuals are rooted in their own culture. Critics say that Jung’s warnings about Westerners adopting Buddhist practices, based on these assumptions, have been disproven by a modern global society where ‘All the evidence suggests that … the techniques of Buddhism … can be successfully integrated into Western culture’ (Clarke, 1994: 159).
Another common criticism directed towards Jung is that he did not fully understand Buddhist meditation. He sometimes conflated it with other Eastern practices by viewing the practice of meditative concentration and absorption (samadhi) as being an unconscious state. ‘There is no doubt’ argues Jung ‘that the higher forms of yoga, in so far as they strive to reach samadhi, seek a mental condition in which the ego is practically dissolved’ (CW11: 775). According to Michele Daniel, whilst this understanding of Buddhist meditation is clearly incorrect, elsewhere in his writings Jung demonstrates a more accurate understanding which does not profess it to be a complete dissolution of consciousness. ‘This confusion found in Jung’s writings regarding the notion of nirvana’ says Daniel ‘was a direct result of the flawed translations of Tibetan texts made by Evans-Wentz’ (2007: 223).
This leads to the criticism directed at Jung for his textual sources. Not only did he use a relatively narrow, and selective, range of Buddhist texts, some critics believe that translations were also problematic. The Buddhist scholar Lopez, for example, claims that the translations of Evans-Wentz ‘are fraught with problems: errors in translation … misstatements of fact … and unjustified flights of interpretation.’ He goes further, arguing that Evans-Wentz, whilst purporting to be a student of Tibetan Buddhism, was in fact ‘guided generally by his lifelong allegiance to what he [Evans-Wentz] termed Yoga and Theosophy’ (2001: G).
Jung’s relevance today
More than anything, in his writings on Buddhism, and religion in general, Jung is criticised for his psychological approach, including a reductionist tendency which presents religious themes as mere representations of his psychological concepts. Critics also cast doubt as to the plausibility of some of his key theoretical concepts, such as the collective unconscious and archetypes and, in addition, argue that his psychological approach to religious systems, which are based on metaphysical foundations, is invalid (see Clarke, 1994: 158-178).
However, as already mentioned, Jung’s psychology, for some, can help to make sense of religion and spirituality. Others also point out that, despite Jung’s insistence that his treatment of religion, including Buddhism, is psychological and empirical, there is also a very clear metaphysical dimension to Jung’s writings. Main, for example, claims that the metaphysical aspects of Jungs writings are self-evident and argues that this dual secular and sacred approach, rather than being problematic, results in a ‘rich and distinctive double perspective’ (2013: 366).
For some, therefore, psychology can be a valuable additional or alternative resource, allowing contemporary people to explore their own spirituality, either within or outside of organised religious contexts. For example, the Buddhist scholar and former monk Stephen Batchelor, cites his four years in Jungian analysis with Dora Kalff, who was a Buddhist herself, a former student of Emma Jung and the originator of sand play, as playing an important part in his own spiritual journey which led him, eventually, to the development of secular Buddhism in the West (2011: 49). Batchelor’s approach to Buddhism is a good example of Jung’s own double perspective mentioned earlier. ‘If ‘’secular religion’’ were not considered a contradiction in terms’ says Batchelor, unaware that in some Jungian circles it may not be, ‘I would happily endorse such a concept’ (2011: 240).
At the collective, cultural level, some argue that Jung, despite his warnings over Westerners adopting Buddhist practices, paradoxically has aided the integration of Buddhism into the West. Clarke, for example, claims that Jung’s writings on Buddhism created ‘a paradigm of inter-cultural cross fertilisation’ which, he says, has helped ‘the extraordinary development of interaction between the West and Buddhism in recent decades’ (1994: 119).
Urgyen Sangharakshita, the founder of Triratna Buddhism which is one of the largest and longest standing Buddhist orders in the West, is an example of a major Buddhist figure who utilised Jungian psychology, not only in his writings, but also in his teaching of Buddhism to Westerners. One example is his likening of the Buddha’s enlightenment beneath the Pipal tree to the individuation process, in which he equates the victory over Mara, Buddhism’s evil one, with integration of the Shadow, the appearance of Vasundhara, the Earth Goddess, as the Anima, Brahma as representing the archetype of the Wise Old Man and, finally, Mucalinda as the archetype of the Young Hero (2009: 71-74). Jungian approaches to myth, images and archetypes appear throughout contemporary Triratna texts and study programs in order to help communicate Buddhist teachings to Western students.
Whilst Jung’s shortcomings in his critique of Buddhism should not be ignored, neither should the role he has played in the integration of Buddhism in the West or the value his psychological model has provided to those individuals seeking to understand and pursue their own spiritual path. It is important that the dialogue, which Jung helped to initiate, is developed and refined beyond simplistic comparisons and critiques.
Jung was a psychotherapist whose principal goal, like the Buddha, was to understand and treat human suffering. Jung said, ‘It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first drew me to the world of Buddhist thought, but my professional interests as a doctor. My task was the treatment of psychic suffering, and it was this that impelled me to become acquainted with the views and methods of that great teacher of humanity whose principal theme was the chain of suffering, old age, sickness and death’ (CW18: 1575).
Psychotherapy, therefore, is one highly relevant area within which continued dialogue is important, particularly for those practitioners who wish to integrate these two approaches. Already, there have been several inter-disciplinary studies which have contributed to the further refinement of theoretical concepts, such as Molino (1998), Unno (2006), Daniel (2007), Young-Eisendrath (2008a, 2018), Stein (2019), Morgan (2019) and there have also been excellent developments in the integration of Buddhist approaches with Analytical psychology in the context of clinical practice, such as Glaser (2005), Saffran (2003), Preece (2006, 2010), Young-Eisendrath (2008b) and Stein (2017).
Conclusion
This essay is an attempt to evaluate Jung’s understanding of Buddhism. Firstly, I establish the contextual background out of which his approach to Buddhism, and religion in general, initially grew. Then I provide further context by discussing Jung’s historical encounter with Buddhism, followed by a short selective, overview of those aspects he felt positive towards as well as those he had reservations about.
Following a brief critical review, I conclude that, whilst Jung’s understanding of Buddhism is inevitably imperfect, that he established an early dialogue which has been, and must continue
to be, developed and refined beyond simple comparisons and critiques. I argue that Jung’s contribution has been helpful at both the individual level, in terms of providing a useful psychological resource for people to explore their own spiritual path, as well as at the collective level, in terms of aiding the inter-cultural transition of Buddhism into modern Western society.
Finally, I propose that ongoing inter-disciplinary study, between Buddhism and psychotherapy, is especially useful in the clinical field for those practitioners with an interest in both approaches.
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