Jung and Buddhism

In the course of its introduction to European civilization, Buddhism has been interpreted by its Western translators in a wide variety of ways, ranging from wild distortions to increasingly accurate and subtle translations. One of its earlier and better-known interpreters has been Carl Jung, and the school of psychodynamic psychology that he founded has continued to engage Buddhism both as a psychology/practice and as theory. Insofar as they bring considerable conceptual and theoretical background to bear on the issue, Jung and Jungian thought present significant commentary in the interpretation of Buddhism -- particularly Zen and Vajrayana -- and are therefore of importance in understanding and clarifying some of the distortions that arise in the encounter.

In addition, it appears that contemporary popular religious vernacular has to a significant extent borrowed its terminology from psychology. If nothing else, the constant references to the “ego” and its influences all originate with Freud. As the first serious interpreter of Buddhism within the field of psychology, Jung has given this aspect of the encounter a particular refraction; and as an influential and currently popular form of psychotherapy, Depth Psychology has actively engaged in the larger and growing dialogue between Western and Buddhist civilizations. In addition, Depth Psychologists comprise a growing number of practitioners of Theravadan, Japanese, and Tibetan forms of Buddhism. In this, they have a kind of double-edged role, in both translating Buddhism into psychodynamic psychology and psychotherapy, and in influencing the western practice of Dharma itself. There are, for example, more than a few psychotherapists who have been given formal approval as successors to Korean, Theravadan, and Japanese teachers.

This may represent the historically consistent way that Buddhism has entered new cultures, by way of adopting dominant modes of expression and clarifying and modifying them. In this, Vajrayana would seem to present (at least superficially) a compatible form of Buddhism to Jungian psychology. Jung was quick to draw parallels between Yidams, Dakinis, and the archetypes; and between Buddha-nature and the Self. These comparisons have been elaborated by subsequent writers, and a dialogue of sorts between Depth Psychologists and Tibetans seems to have been established. The validity of some of these parallels is the focus of this paper.

This paper will therefore follow the chronology of some of Jung’s writings on the subject (particularly his introductions to translations of Buddhist texts), and then examine some of the work of his successors.

In discussing the nature of the self, Jung turns to ( or is approached by) Zen, as in his introduction to Suzuki’s work, his interchange with Hisamatsu, and in commentaries by Masao Abe. Later elaboration on other archetypes and the Tibetan pantheon of tutelary deities is for the most part found in writings of Jung’s successors. Two major questions can be asked: how accurate was Jung himself in understanding Buddhism, and how relevant is Depth Psychology to a ‘western’ understanding of Buddhism, and to its assimilation into European civilization?

A significant part of the problem in negotiating this interface is that each system is experiential, and each system makes truth claims. This is not often explicit in Jung’s writing, as for instance in his argument that Westerners must take a different approach from “Easterners” to the same goal, and therefore utilize different techniques. That is the argument that “this is how it is for us;” and it is an undercurrent in Jung’s analyses which serves to use Buddhism as a vehicle for the validation of Depth Psychology, rather than an open investigation of their mutual limitations and strengths. This sharp distinction between “East” and ‘West” appears to serve Jung both in his argument that Buddhism is by and large not for Europeans (whereas by inference, Depth Psychology is) and in allowing his sweeping generalizations about the radically “introverted East” which Said has criticized as Orientalism. It is clearer in his apparent disinterest in actually investigating his source materials at any length. As Jungian analyst J. M. Spiegleman points out in a panel discussion, “Jung’s position on this is, which I think is subject to real criticism. . . was that he refused. . . for example he went to India and wouldn’t even talk to those masters because he was trying to protect his own alchemy. He took Western alchemy to India, he talked a little bit, but he was trying to protect that treasure. So he could have talked to some pretty big people, which how great for us all if he would have done that, but he didn’t.” (Vreeland, 1996). We have in addition Jung’s own assertion that “we do not assume that the mind is a metaphysical entity or that there is any connexion between an individual mind and a hypothetical Universal Mind. Our psychology is, therefore, a science of mere phenomena without any metaphysical implications.” (Evans-Wentz, 1954) While Jung here (unknowingly) takes issue with Evans-Wentz’s neo-Theosophical distortion of Buddhism rather than Buddhism itself, his assertion that he represents a science which is free of metaphysics seems polemical. It serves to establish a truth claim in the guise of an objective investigation, and risks creating a Buddhism that becomes an alien, subjective ‘other’ with which he contrasts his own presumably value-free psychology.

This position is argued in Jung’s forward to Suzuki’s “Introduction to Zen Buddhism.” The question immediately posed by Jung is whether Buddhism is comprehensible to Westerners; that is, if it is accessible at all:

Oriental religious conceptions are usually so very different from Western ones that even the bare translation of the words often presents the greatest difficulties, quite apart form the meaning of the terms used. . . . The original Buddhist writings contain views and ideas which are more or less unassimilable for the ordinary Europeans.
(Meckel and Moore, 1992)

The question here is whether this is because the translation is inadequate, or the perspective is inaccessible. Jung seems to argue for the latter, that “Satori . . . designates a special kind and way of enlightenment which is practically impossible for the European to appreciate.” (1992) Jung declares it to be ‘opaque,’ saying “The following may serve as a further example: A monk went to Gensha, and wanted to learn where the entrance to the path of truth was. Gensha answered him, “Do you hear the murmuring of the brook?” “Yes, I hear it,” answered the monk. “there is the entrance,” the Master instructed him.’ ” (1992) However, this is opaque only if one has no experience with Buddhist meditation. Jung sees this as an example of an inscrutable psychology, when in fact it is a simple ‘pointing out’ by Gensha, with no philosophical or psychological intent. It is a statement of the obvious, but it is obvious only when one experiences a certain state of mind. This is the equivalent of arguing that the taste of an orange is opaque because one has never tasted it. Rather than admitting that the taste is unknown, one insists that the taste is incomprehensible. Jung, however, does not admit to his limited experience, but instead appropriates this koan into his own framework where it becomes an example of alien thought processes. He then compares koans to European mystics’ experiences of hallucinatory visions, and states that “Many of the Zen anecdotes . . . not only border on the grotesque but are right there in the middle of it, and sound like the most crashing nonsense.” (1992) It appears to be nonsense because the anecdotes are state-dependent, a fact which Jung seems to acknowledge at one point. He states that satori is “ an experience of transformation, often occurring amid the most violent psychic convulsions. It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently. It is as though the spatial act of seeing were changed by a new dimension. When the Master asks “Do you hear the murmuring of the brook?” he obviously means something quite different from ordinary “hearing.’ ” (1992) Gensha most certainly is seeing differently, but the hearing he refers to is quite ordinary. It is the quiescent mind of the hearer that matters here, and it is a quiescence that does not depend on one’s introverted civilization for access to it. This is where Jung is brought up short by his own lack of direct experience (certainly of quiescence), and his failure to acknowledge it. Lacking this, he relies on his own model for his interpretation of the experience, making Zen not only exotic and bizarre, but also a species of inferior (unconscious) mentality:

Now if consciousness is emptied as far as possible of its contents, they will fall into a state of unconsciousness, at least for the time being. In Zen, this displacement usually results from the energy being withdrawn from conscious contents and transferred either to the conception of emptiness or to the koan. As both of these must be stable, the succession of images is abolished and with it the energy which maintains the kinetics of consciousness. (1992)

Mahayana Buddhism is quite clear about both the impossibility of emptying consciousness of its contents, as well as the undesirability of trying to. In its emphasis on the Prajnaparamita literature, Zen stresses the inseparability of form and emptiness which means that emptiness cannot be found outside of form. It is rather that emptiness is the essential --and discoverable -- nature of all form. Images are not "abolished" but allowed to manifest and disappear spontaneously. Emptiness is by definition not a "concept", since concepts obscure emptiness. It is, rather, that emptiness is 'full.' This is best illustrated by Keizan Zenji, who wrote that

Though clear waters range to the vast blue autumn sky How can they compare with the hazy moon on a spring night? Most people want to have pure clarity But sweep as you will, you cannot empty the mind. 

In introducing his notions of consciousness, the unconscious and the psyche, Jung moves to a discussion of the nature of the self. In doing so, he approaches a Buddhist perspective insofar as he recognizes the radically limited, constricted field of ego-consciousness, and its reliance on deeper (or more subtle) levels of the mind or psyche. But he diverges in that he invariably posits the real existence of an ‘other’ which lies behind appearance and experiences itself through phenomena. In the context of his discussion of Zen, this essentially Judaeo-Christian notion is introduced in his comment on the famous koan “Joshu’s Mu” (or “Wu” here). In appreciating the fact that “Nature herself” answers the monk’s question “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” with Joshu’s answer of “Mu!” Jung goes on to introduce a very non-Buddhist interpretation. He reads “wu” as “wu-wu” (as in bow-wow) and comments “. . . how much wisdom there is in the Master’s “Wu,” the answer to the question about the Buddha-nature of the dog! One must always bear in mind, however, that there are a great many people who cannot distinguish between a metaphysical joke and nonsense. . . “ (1992). This would unfortunately seem to include Jung himself. Joshu was by no means indicating an essence, an essential dog-ness being expressed in the “Wu.” “Wu” or “Mu” in the koan has no meaning whatsoever, apart from the Chinese particle of negation. Its use in the koan demonstrates a specifically Ch’an (Lin-chi) technique by which the student can achieve quiescence and thereby a sudden glimpse his own Buddha-nature, in which both self and not-self are “mu.” (cf., R.H. Blyth, Mumonkan). Joshu was not known for his jokes.

It seems from the above and other interpretations, that Jung conflated Atman with Buddha-nature. He was in part explicitly misled in this by Evans-Wentz, who as Reynolds points out in Self Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness, misinterpreted translations of Tibetan texts in his own idiosyncratic blend of Theosophy and Vedanta. However, such a conflation would seem consistent with Jung’s definition of the self, consciousness and the ego. These distinctions are brought into better relief in his dialogue with Hisamatsu.

This was a failed exchange, as Jung recognized, chiefly because the terminology being used was not adequately defined. However, Jung does clarify some of his suppositions in the exchange, and they can be seen as distinct from Buddhist notions. When asked for his understanding of the Zen “No Mind”, Jung states “It is the ‘unknown.’ But it is the unknown which excites and disturbs me psychically; it is the unknown which influences me positively or negatively. I am aware that it is, but I don’t know what it is.” (p. 104) In other words, it is that which is not available to or accessible to knowing, but it does exist. It exists as the collective unconscious, independent of consciousness or the ego, as the deepest part of one’s being. This is a dualistic position. As Masao Abe points out,

It would therefore be appropriate to say that in Jung, the collective unconscious, as the depth of the self, is seen from the side of the conscious ego as something beyond, or as something “over there,” though not externally but inwardly. It is in this sense that the unconscious is unknown. In contrast to this, according to Zen, the self is not the unknown, but rather the clearly known. More strictly speaking, the knower and the known are one, not two. The knower itself is the known, and vice versa. Self is not regarded as something existing “over there,” somewhere beyond, but rather is fully realized right here and now. (Reynolds, 1989)

Hisamatsu asks “Is ‘I-consciousness’ different from ‘Self-consciousness, or not?” and Jung replies that the Self is unknown, “for it indicates the whole, that is, consciousness and the unconscious. It cannot be known to Jung because the “ego is like a light in the darkness of night.” Jung has defined consciousness as identical with ego, and that which is not ego, as instinctual. As instinct, it is a ‘given’, preceding consciousness which is itself a developmental achievement. Thus, without ego there can be no consciousness, and the states of mind described in Buddhist literature must therefore be unconscious states, since they are allegedly experienced without ego. This is the genesis of Jung’s notion that Buddhism and “Eastern” thought in general is other-worldy, dream-like, and completely introverted.

Since the “I” consciousness arises from an undifferentiated universal psychic state, suffering precedes it: “An instinctive life of worries, joys, pains, hate and love exists before consciousness in the proper sense develops.” Suffering is thus posited in a dialectical relationship with ego, and is necessary in order to the ego/consciousness to expand its reach, and to find meaning. This leads Jung to state that “We need suffering. Without it, life is no longer interesting;” (Meckel and Moore, 1992) a statement which to Buddhist ears must sound completely absurd. Jung’s position is an exact converse of Buddhism, which states that the “I” consciousness is an in-born (deluded) intuition, and is the root of all suffering. Consciousness-as-conceptualization is therefore the sphere of the klesas. Jung concludes that Hisamatsu’s ‘self’ “means “something like klesa in the Yoga Sutra,” whereas his own definition of self corresponds to Atman or Purusa. This is a central point of difference, and one which Jungians seem to prefer to gloss over.

At this point it is necessary to clarify what Jung meant by “Self,” since the term is used by both sides but with radically different meanings. This is not easy to do, as Jung himself acknowledges that he is describing something which basically does not lend itself to precise definition. Since wholeness consists in part of that which is not known, an attempt to describe it runs up against the fact that it is by definition not finally available to description ( as opposed to being ineffable). For this reason, as Thomas points out, “Jung constantly sought figures, analogues and metaphors that were dynamic and specific enough without making pretensions to conceptual closure.” (Thomas, in Meckel and Moore, 1992) One of these analogues is Christ wherein “The self expresses itself through the conscious ego in just such a way as God seeks to become flesh through Christ.” (1992) The parallel to atman here is clear, and it is a designation which both Jung and Jungians seem to find central. Enlightenment must mean the breaking through of this Self into consciousness, and the subsequent transformation of both ego and unconscious. By way of contrast is the story of Bodhidharma’s reply to the Emperor of China's question about the acquisition of merit: "I have endowed these many temples and libraries for the Dharma. How much merit have I acquired?" Bodhidharma replied, "None." Shocked, the Emperor continued, "Why not?" “ Vast emptiness, no holiness.,” was the reply. When the Emperor asked "Who are you?" Bodhidharma replied " I do not know." In the same vein, the Sixth Patriarch’s comment upon seeing a statue of the Buddha was: “A poison dart in my eye!” We may take that comment as the Sixth Patriarch's wariness about conceptualization of any kind, particularly in reference to absolute reality. This same refusal to grant ontological status to a Self is reflected in the more popular phrase "If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him." As Maezumi roshi stated in a lecture, "you don't have to say all that. Just 'Buddha!'"

Thomas breaks down Jung’s various meanings for Self into a schema of six facets. Some of these can be seen as at least somewhat compatible with some aspects of Buddhist notions, while others are less so.

The Self as “goal” reflects Jung’s idea that the self is not a given which arises with consciousness; it is instead latent within human unconsciousness, and must therefore be sought after and worked for to attain. In this sense, it can be seen as analogous to the seed of the unrealized Buddha nature which is latent within all sentient beings. The attainment of this goal is to Jung ‘individuation,’ wherein one strives to integrate both the primordial unconscious and the ‘deracinated’ ego through an unending developmental process. Thomas compares this “constantly changing, unstable pattern of feeling, thought, etc.” to the Bodhisattva whose quest is for the attainment of the goal of Nirvana. Thus, “Bodhisattvahood itself is described as the ideal goal of wholeness, completion of potentiality, at-one-ment. . . . This is exactly Jung’s description of self as goal.” (1992) The analogy does not hold, however, insofar as Buddhism recognizes an absolute as opposed to conventional reality. In the absolute sense, the Bodhisattva is him/herself “the most beautiful of delusions.” (Taizan Maezumi Roshi, lecture). There is no goal to be attained, and no one to attain it. There is no center, there is only a circumference.

The Self as Center of Opposites describes the Self as the “desired midpoint of the personality, that ineffable something betwixt the opposites.” The self here is expressed symbolically as a bridge or boundary, or a midwife.

As a Uniting Symbol, the self represents the resolution of the tension created by the opposites. The idea here seems to have two possibilities: that the self is either that which resolves the dialectical tension between polarities, that is, an agent and as such a reified ‘structure’ much like the ego in Freudian psychology; or as an expression of the dialect itself, which is to say, of the nature of mind as Jung sees it. In this latter sense, it is not reifiable, but appears only as a symbol.

This second perspective seems to be developed in the fifth aspect of Self as Agent. Thomas sees Jung’s emphasis on the proper role of ego in relation to self as of central importance here. If ego is experienced as the only agent within the psyche, then “inflation and disaster” inevitably follow. (1992) This is typical of the extroverted attitude which denies the existence of an unconscious, interior life capable of exerting decisive influence on what looks like a detached, objective rationality. With the reorientation of the ego in the process of individuation, the ego’s relationship to the unconscious becomes obvious. This is the goal of all psychodynamic psychotherapy; the difference in Depth Psychology is that an “ego-self axis” is established which allows for a relationship of mutuality between consciousness and the unconscious. The ego is therefore included within the self, which acts upon it in an ideally reciprocal fashion. Although self here is not described as a structure, it still bears the marks of an insubstantial ‘thing’ with permanent, that is, eternalist properties. It is rather like God, which may be beyond knowing, but its existence in and of itself is not questioned.

The parallel Buddhist concepts here are of self and of nirvana, but the analogy does not hold. For Madhyamaka, the self or ego is a conceptually created entity superimposed upon changing mental and physical states (Williams, 1989). Its ontological status is much the same as that of a mirage: when seen from a distance, it appears to be one thing, but when approached its actual character is revealed. When placed at a far enough remove, the viewer unknowingly imputes the existence of water or trees to a phenomenon which inherently has no such constituents. However, this cannot be understood until the mirage is more closely investigated. It then resolves into a series of other refractions, any and all of which will have the same tendency to evaporate if examined closely enough. Upon regaining 'ordinary' distance from the phenomenon, the mirage reappears. Thus, the mirage continues to exist, but its nature is now understood as merely a representation by the observer, who will not again mistake it for what it is not. Both the nature of the mirage/self and the fundamental process of conceptual imputation will have been ascertained. It follows that if the ego cannot be said to exist in any inherent, independent way, how can it be in a developmental relationship with a separate, independently existing unconscious or Self? Madhyamaka denies the existence of any Ultimate, inherently existing reality, saying only that the characteristic of reality “is to be not dependent on another, calm, not differentiated by verbal differentiations, beyond discursive thought, without diversity.” ( p. 68) Non-duality is not the same as Jung’s conjunctio oppositorum, wherein opposites are united. This is a point which Jung misses entirely. Nirvana is the “calming of all representations, the calming of verbal differentiations, peace.” ( p. 67)

The fifth aspect of Self is as archetype. In this sense, the self “seems to operate from an archetypal base and present itself as an image which seeks fulfillment in consciousness and action.” (Thomas,. 226) As in its function in the dialectic, it is seen as “the organizing archetype or the archetype of order.” Jung states that it is “the real organizing principle of the unconscious.” ( p227) One is reminded here of Einstein’s faith that “God does not play dice with the universe.” The Buddhist correlate here would appear to be karma, but again the parallel does not hold. As Reynolds puts it, “To the first question found in the catechism, “Who made the world?,” the Buddhist teachings unhesitatingly reply, “It is karma that has made the world.” ( p. 88) Karma, however, is not intentional, nor does it seek anything other than its expression. It is simply the law of cause and effect. We should also keep in mind that insofar as all phenomena are mirage-like, karma itself when seen from the absolute view is illusory itself. Nothing is organized, because nothing is really happening. As a central tenet of Buddhist thought, it offers the clearest difference from Jung’s position. In terms of intention or organization, on the relative (as opposed to absolute) level it is without intention and ineluctable. Far from establishing useful dialogues with it, individual sentient beings are completely driven in relationship to it. It does not operate exclusively within the human domain, although given the right conditions, it can constellate in human form. In this sense, the individual self is karma itself rather than atman. This, however, does not close off possibilities of convergence. We are left with asking what it is that is aware of karma. While we cannot say that there is a self that is aware of its objects, we still are aware. There is no observer, but there still is the observation, even as the object observed dissolves. It can never be known in any definitive way, and is the mysterious aspect of being which Tibetan Buddhism refers to as 'presence.' It may well be that awareness is a correlate to the archetype of the Self. While it cannot be represented as the center of anything (as Thomas would have it), much less as the organizing principle behind experience, awareness does suggest a possible avenue -- far too long for this paper -- worth exploring.

The Self as superordinate system is explained by Thomas as a comparison of the self to the structure of an atom: it is an abstraction which is posited for heuristic reasons rather than directly experienced. “It is at once a hypothetical center (and unity) and a total content of personality. . . . In an ideal sense the self and the conscious ego hold one another in mutual regard.” (p.227) Thomas quotes Whitmont as saying “The Self as a predisposition which is ‘empty’ in itself actualizes as representational images and as patterns of emotion and behavior.” (p. 228) This second description is reminiscent of the Alaya or Kunzhi, “the receptacle or storehouse of consciousness.”(Reynolds, p. 111) Much as the Self is seen as the non-substantial container from which patterns emerge, so the Kunzhi, the “base of everything” functions to store all karmic traces created by intentional actions. Reynolds points out that the Kunzhi is not merely a passive “dust bin of the mind,” but instead is dynamic in that it “organizes, integrates and structures the individual’s experience of himself and his reality.” (p.111) Thus, there appears to be a convergence of thought on this point, insofar as the Self as it functions within the unconscious can be seen as the equivalent of the Kunzhi. The two systems differ, however, in the same consistent way as before. Jung takes the Self to be the ultimate reality, the final goal, and as a psychological cognate of the metaphysical term “God.” From the Buddhist (Yogacara) perspective however, the “tainted mind takes the substratum consciousness [Alayavijnana] as its object and mistakenly considers the substratum consciousness to be a true Self.” (Williams, p. 90) In as much as Alaya consciousness is a consciousness, the term consciousness “always implies a dualistic distinction between subject and object. Therefore, consciousness is an awareness or knowing of something that is separate or discursive. It is a subject knowing or apprehending something, whether external or internal, as an object that is apprehended.” (Reynolds, p. 111) It is therefore mistaken. This Tibetan definition is fully consistent with the Japanese critique of Jung offered by Abe above.

In exploring Jung’s definition of the Self, one can see his consistent emphasis on the duality between the knower --consciousness -- and the known, the Self. As consciousness integrates more of the unconscious, it becomes transformed and in turn transforms the unconscious by way of its coming into consciousness. Thus, while its precise identity is beyond knowing, the self still is seen to exist as “other” which acts upon ego/consciousness. As Jung states, “The limitation of an individual ego as the knower of the Self means that there will always be both external and internal contents left unknown.” (Coward, in Meckal and Moore, p. 258) As we have seen, the closest analog in Buddhism is the Yogacara notion of the Alayavijnana, or Kunzhi, which Coward claims “is seen to parallel Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious.” (p. 256) The Jungian argument would therefore seem to be that the “True Self” or Buddha Nature is contained within the Alayavijnana just as God or Self is within the collective unconscious, and realized through individuation; that is, the reorientation of ego into the “ego-self” axis. However, this parallel collapses when examined more closely. In Yogacara the mind of enlightenment is achieved through the purification of defilements which are produced by conceptualization. This is diametrically opposed to Jung’s idea that the klesas are pre-egoic, instinctual, and therefore to be modulated utilizing the ego or conceptual mind. Where Jung holds to the ego’s ability to conceptualize as the singular capacity that leads to individuation, Buddhism sees that same capacity as the primary obstacle to enlightenment. This is possibly the key point that differentiates these two systems. In addition, where Jung posits the Self as the ultimate reality and goal, Yogacara recognizes that to take the Kunzhi as the Self is a mistake. It is in fact the conceptual mind’s inherent tendency to create generic, non-experienced categories that leads to the mistaken apprehension of an independently existing self, where in fact none exists. From the Buddhist perspective, Jung’s “active imagination” as a means to further the integration of unconscious symbols into consciousness is therefore seen as only the imputation of a self which does not essentially exist. It is, in fact, actively imagined into existence.

Having clarified some of the distinctions between Jung’s psychology and Buddhism, we can discuss his analysis of Tibetan texts in his “Psychology of Eastern Meditation,” “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” and the introduction to the Tibetan Book of Great Liberation.

In his discussion of the Amita-yur-Dhyana Sutra, Jung approaches the Sutra as one would an alien world. As a product of Indian culture, he would have the reader appreciate what he feels is “an attitude of mind and a vision quite foreign to the European” ( p. 31) Whereas for the European, reality is the world of appearance, for the Indian, reality is the soul; in India the world is therefore a facade, and Indian reality “comes close to being what we would call a dream.” (p. 32) With the kind of generalizations that helped inspire Edward Said, he writes that “We believe in doing, the Indian in impassive being. Our religious exercises consist of prayer, worship and singing hymns. The Indian’s most important exercise is yoga, an immersion in what we would call an unconscious state, but which he praises as the highest consciousness.” (p.33) While these generalizations are dubious at best, they serve Jung’s purpose of establishing a dialectical basis for his interpretation of the Sutra. The East is introverted, withdrawn, and passive, while the West is extroverted, aggressive, and active. This polarity is behind the rest of his analysis, so that for instance samadhi is defined as “‘withdrawnness,’, i.e.., a condition in which all connections with the world are absorbed into the inner world.” (p. 35) Consonant with their supposed predilections, Jung claims that all of Indian meditative technique is aimed at replacing the outer world with the psychic world which becomes concrete reality.

This established, Jung can then argue that if we wish to understand this (Indian) polar opposite of our own way of thinking, “we can do so only in the European way.” This must entail an understanding of the meaning of the content of the symbols presented in the Sutra’s Tantric visualization. By comprehending the significance of a symbol, one is led on a series of associations which lead to the psychic sphere. Symbols have a power inherent within them to give meaning to conscious experience; meaning which rises “from unknown depths.” Thus, for example, a translucent stone of lapis is to be visualized, and “through its transparent layers one’s gaze penetrates into the depths below.” (p. 39) The transparency is to be seen as having meaning, that is, that the meditator “can penetrate into the depths of the psyche’s secrets. There he sees what could not be seen before, i.e., what was unconscious.” (p. 43) What the yogi sees is a banner, which represents an image of the source of consciousness itself. Jung seems to be saying that the archetype itself is what allows consciousness to integrate psychic content; that the inherent meaning of the symbol transforms experience by giving experience meaning; i.e., making it conscious. Symbols are therefore mediating structures between consciousness and the unconscious, and provide avenues through which the self may approach the ego complex within consciousness.

Dhyana is an important term to clarify here. To Jung it is an intentional abaissement du niveau mental which allows the unconscious to take on form. After sinking below the chaotic level of the personal unconscious, the immutable realm of the collective unconscious becomes visible, “which in contrast to the chaotic disorder of the kleshas is pervaded by the highest order and harmony, and, in contrast to the multiplicity, symbolizes the all-embracing unity of the bodhimandala, the magic circle of enlightenment.” (p. 45) This, Jung says, the “Indian assertion of a supra-personal, world-embracing unconscious that appears when the darkness of the personal unconscious grows transparent.” The term, however, denotes rather the opposite meaning that Jung gives it. Dhyana refers to the absorption of awareness into an object for the purpose of achieving a quiescent state of consciousness. or samadhi. These absorptions are the inverse of a lowering of the mental level. They are states of mind in which distractions and all mental formations -- including order and harmony -- are absent, leaving the mind clear, pliable, and extraordinarily alert.

Buddhism makes no assertions about a supra-personal, world-embracing unconscious. In fact, as we have seen it tends to deny them. Jung appears to have taken a Tantric visualization and produced Plato. . As Reynolds points out, “Buddhism does not assume that the mind is a metaphysical entity or that there is a connection between an individual mind and a hypothetical Universal Mind; all this represents the speculations of Evans-Wentz, in line with his understanding of Neo-Platonism and Vedanta.” ( p. 110) Tantric visualizations are not exercises of free association, they are techniques designed to focus attention and lead to quiescence. So far as Jung was unfamiliar with his subject matter and relied on the very unreliable Evans-Wentz for his interpretations of the Tibetan, we should not look to Jung for an understanding of the text.

His understanding of the problems Westerners are likely to encounter in beginning a Buddhist practice, however, are prescient. For the Westerner this form of yoga leads immediately and most importantly to a confrontation with what Jung designates as the personal unconscious. He argues that insofar as this confrontation is merely proof of Christian doctrine regarding man’s originally sinful nature, it has been (until Freud, at least) culturally taboo, leaving one unable to deal with the kleshas, or mental afflictions. This has therefore been historically avoided, leaving Western civilization only the most “limited kinds of parallel yogas such as in the Jesuits’ Exercita.“ The closest the West has come to a yoga is Freudian psychoanalysis, a comparatively recent development, and one which deals exclusively with the kleshas. The particular definition given by both Freud and Jung of the kleshas as instinctual has had a distinct influence on the limitations of psychoanalysis in providing a bridge to Buddhist psychology, which seems (at least in theory) to be more amenable to the academic study of cognition.

Jung argues that for Europeans the kleshas represent a “moral conflict” thereby making it exceedingly difficult to overcome them. We insist, in other words, on taking these things personally, and when encountering negative emotions, assuming that they represent something veridical about who we are as individuals. It is taken as demoralizing proof, as it were, of original sin. In both Freud and Jung, this notion is transposed to the instincts, but the meaning remains: they represent the essentially dual nature of man as animal and spirit. This is in distinction to Buddhism which sees them not as ‘sin’ but as hindrances, and the essential nature of humans as enlightened and compassionate. Thus, Jung states that “an ethical dilemma divides us from our shadow,” which is to say our need to see ourselves as morally decent people makes it next to impossible for us to deal directly and objectively with our capacity for evil. So long as we avoid looking “as little as possible into this dark corner” (p.44) we can go no further into the depths of the mind. For it is the kleshas that first arise as consciousness is focused on inner rather than outer experience, and if one is overwhelmed by the intensity of this encounter with fear, anger, lust, etc., the yoga practice itself will only function to damage individual stability. This is one reason why Jung suggests that Westerners read the Bardo Thodol backwards: because for us, the encounter "with the mind is first characterized by our “abysmal fear of the lurking horror, our personal unconscious.” While his generalization about the ease with which “Easterners” practice yoga is insupportable, his point is nonetheless well taken. The cultivation of personal insight and the understanding of projective phenomena has not been typical of European culture. One need only compare historical India’s traditional tolerance for diversity with European hostility to it to understand Jung’s point.

The visualizations are therefore of no use to us until we can objectively understand the nature of the kleshas and overcome them; i.e.,, integrate the shadow. This entails an ethical struggle wherein we come to see that in Jung’s words “the last amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself, -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved.”

The important point here is not that Jung indulged in his distinctions between Europeans and Indians in a kind of Orientalism that is embarrassing to contemporary readers. What is of note -- and one infers this from Jung’s writing -- is that the cultural elites of traditional India and of 19th and 20th century Europe, those who created and shaped social and cultural forms, are different in some significant ways. As Weber pointed out in the Spirit of Capitalism, Protestant obsession with production, rationality and the mastery of the external world as an antidote to spiritual anxiety has left us with no systematized methods for dealing with precisely those elements of experience which obscure our capacity to recognize the source and nature of experience. His description of Western capitalist society as “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a kind of civilization never before achieved” ( p. ) is what Jung is speaking to. In contrast, those individuals in Buddhist societies who choose to practice Dharma have a culturally sanctioned methodology for doing so, as is evidenced by the Pali Canon and everything that followed. It is this unquestioned authority and efficacy of the methodology that allows the practitioner to “traverse the shadow world of our personal fantasies;” not, as Jung would have it, the fact that “the spirit of India grows out of nature” (p. 44). The notion that the Indian mind is unapproachably ‘other’ and exotic is both irrelevant to the practice of meditation and simple Orientalism at its worst, and it draws attention away from the value of what Jung has to say.

We can say that there are two major themes which appear in Jung’s work on Buddhism. One is the unfortunate Orientalist tendency to generalize without foundation in order to use his subject matter as a canvas on which to paint his own theory; the other, his understanding of the need for insight and the cultivation of a proper attitude as preliminary requirements to undertaking the study of the psyche/mind.

In his commentary on the Bardo Thodol both themes are evident. Jung reads the text as a direct statement of the psyche itself “which has the divine creative power within it which makes the metaphysical assertion . . . Not only is it the condition of all metaphysical reality, it is that reality.” p. 83) The text is thus a statement directly from the psyche about its own nature. It is therefore fundamentally a psychological work. In the wrathful and peaceful deities one sees the psyche reflected in the contradictory “both-and” quality of their being simultaneously both illusory and real: “The ever-present, unspoken assumption of the Bardo Thodol is the antinomial character of all metaphysical assertions” rather than the “niggardly European “either-or.” (p. 82) Jung’s main point is that the existential world is “given” by the nature of the psyche. It does not exist in some objective way independent of the observer, however much one is accustomed to seeing it that way. “It is so much more straightforward, more dramatic, impressive, and therefor more convincing, to see all the things that happen to me than to observe how I make them happen. Indeed, the animal nature of man makes him resist seeing himself as the maker of his circumstances.” ( p. 85) Although we do not appreciate the fact, it is the psyche and its capacity for consciousness that gives shape to and illuminates the entire world of experiential phenomena. Jung does not appear to be questioning the reality of all objective phenomena, however. His is not a Yogacara position; he is speaking of the subjective interpretation of psychological experience and of projection of psychic contents. It is this unthinking tendency to see one’s idiosyncratic way of organizing reality as objective reality itself that must be seen through before the nature of the psyche can be appreciated.

This forms the basis for his analysis of the Bardo Thodol. In his own psychological, reductionist use of the text he states that “in the initiation of the living, however, this “Beyond” is not a world beyond death, but a reversal of the mind’s intentions and outlook, a psychological “Beyond” or, in Christian terms, a “redemption” from the trammels of the world and of sin.” ( p. 85) He has thus replaced a Tibetan description of direct reality with the metaphor of a Western initiation rite. After this point, his analysis of the text has rather little to do with the meaning or intention of the text itself, but it is a useful analysis of a Westerner’s approach to yogic practice.

He thus points to the difficulty Westerners have in accepting the view of reality proposed (as he sees it) in the text. It is a world view which runs counter to fundamental Western metaphysics, which are grounded in the assumption of the insignificance of the individual and the individual soul in relation to the immensity of a God which is “other.” “Somehow,” he says, “we always have a wrong attitude to these things.” (p. 84) The basis for this wrong attitude is the difficulty Westerners have in granting to the psyche its primacy; it is therefore from the world of objects and mistaken objectivity that one must be liberated. Thus, it from this world of given things that the dead man liberates himself, and Jung interprets the text as offering instruction on how to do it; that is, to recognize that it is the psyche which gives rise to one’s experience of the world, not the obverse. This to Jung is the crucial “great reversal of standpoint.”

Jung ascribes the difficulty in making this reversal to “the animal nature of man [which] makes him resist seeing himself as the maker of his circumstances.” By animal, Jung refers to the instinctual, purely physical, and ultimately reductionist tendency to see all experience as rooted only in biology or in tangible physicality. Such a position even in its most sophisticated formulations always reduces the mind to physical processes, and conscious to epiphenomenal or even non-existent status. In an elegant (mis)use of the text to criticize Freudian reductionism, Jung points out that “Freud’s theory is the first attempt made by the West to investigate, as if from below, from the animal sphere of instinct, the psychic territory that corresponds in Tantric Lamaism to the Sidpa Bardo.” ( p. 87) As Jung would have it, Freud could go no farther because he was in the thrall of this instinct, as expressed in his insistence that all psychic processes are driven by their biological/sexual bases, and could be reduced to that level. Thus, “anyone who penetrates into the unconscious with purely biological assumptions will become stuck in the instinctual sphere and be unable to advance beyond it, for he will be pulled back again and again into physical existence.” (p. 87) He will, in other words, reincarnate psychologically in undesirable intellectual realms. Insofar as the Buddhist description of the animal realm identifies it in part as characterized by stupidity and an inability to understand priorities, Jung’s argument offers a very pleasing additional dimension.

Unfortunately, however, Jung does significant violence to the text itself. After offering a startlingly acute analysis of the difficulties inherent in Western approaches to the practice and understanding of the text, he proceeds to commit these same errors himself. For example, based on the text he was given he states that “Thus far the Bardo Thodol is as Dr. Evans-Wentz feels, an initiation process whose purpose is to restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth.” (p. 86) Evans-Wentz, as Reynolds points out, is an unfortunate source to rely on. In a brief biography in his Appendix to his translation of Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness, Reynolds describes him as basically fraudulent in his use of Tibetan material, influenced not by any sustained contact with Tibetans, but by his immersion in Theosophy and Vedanta. Evans-Wentz used Tibetan texts as a field in which he could propound his own theories while exploiting the authority of another culture’s tradition.

Thus, what for Tibetans is simply a description of reality gained through yogic vision has been transformed into a ‘teaching’ about metaphysics. As such, Jung can do with it as he will, and in the same unfortunate tradition of intellectual colonialism he condemns, he reverses the order of the text, as “This knowledge also gives us a hint of how we ought to read the Bardo Thodol -- that is, backwards.” (p. 88) Since in Jung’s view this is primarily a psychological treatise, it can be modified so as to conform to Western psychology and his own critique of that psychology. To a Tibetan, this is the rough equivalent of proposing that since the laws of physics are understood through the mind, they are subject to psychological reevaluation or re-interpretation. One can then feel free to suggest that “one is perfectly free, if one chooses, to substitute Christian symbols for the gods of the Chonyid Bardo.” (p.93) This may be a plausible thing to do, but one wonders if Jung really understood the nature of function of tutelary deities in Tibetan description of the bardo state. Given his translator, it is safe to guess that he did not.

In the same vein, karma and reincarnation are declared to be impossible to prove and therefore open to being reframed as purely psychological phenomena. “Karma implies a sort of psychic theory of heredity based on hypothesis of reincarnation, which in the last resort is an hypothesis of the supratemporality of the soul. Neither our scientific knowledge nor our reason can keep in step with this idea. There are too many if’s and but’s.” (p. 88) Jung must have been clearly aware when he wrote this that the same charges were being made against his own psychology, and the implausibility of the collective unconscious. The centrality of karma and reincarnation to Buddhism is thus reduced to the category of Platonic archetype, a reductionism which Jung rightly condemns when he criticizes Freud. Jung chooses to disbelieve reincarnation as it is inaccessible to direct proof, yet insists on the ‘scientifically’ validated existence of archetypes and the collective unconscious. By science, he can only mean correlation, since he offers only patterns across cultures as data rather than identifiable causal agents. His problem is that by definition, the unconscious is not knowable; it can only be inferred through the appearance of contents within consciousness. Without direct (conscious) experience of the source of this material these claims do not rise to the level of knowledge through inference; they are no more than speculative. It thus appears that Jung is making an arbitrary choice regarding what it accept or what to reject as valid and reliable information. The choices seem to be based on a lack of familiarity with the material; in making them, he joins the ranks of ‘armchair anthropologists’ like Frazer, Freud, Goodenough and Spencer; all of whom projected colonialist Victorian values and European civilization’s shadow onto alien cultures.

In light of the limitations Jung dealt with both in terms of unreliable translations of Buddhist texts and the fact that he was writing about it at a time when it was virtually unknown in Europe, it is of interest to see if Jungian thought regarding Buddhism has changed within the last forty years. The question is whether what appear to be irreconcilable differences between the two systems have been acknowledged, or if Jungians continue Jung’s tradition of selecting only what is appropriate to their own perspective. How, for example, to evaluate R.C. Zaehner’s (Meckel and Moore,p.3) claim that “it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Jungian psychology is a re-emergence of some aspects of Buddhism and Taoism in modern dress.?” The question posed by this statement is whether Depth Psychology has acknowledged valid differences and similarities, or whether this reflects the final expropriation of Buddhism as no more than Jungian psychology itself.

In the very limited range of this paper, there does not seem to be much of a shift from Jung’s original position. Writers such as Peter Bishop, James Thomas, Harold Coward, Mokusen Miyuki, Radmila Moacanin and Marvin Spiegelman all continue to explore the importance of cultural difference, the problematic nature of the introduction of Buddhism into European culture, and most importantly to shy away from profound differences between the two systems in the attempt to find convergence.

Thus, Peter Bishop cautions in “Jung, Eastern Religion, and the Imagination” ( in Self and Liberation) that “studies on Jung and Zen fail to bring out the issue of pre-structured meditational imagery.” (p. 174) The problem is in how Eastern ideas are used at random in the West, reducing Buddhism to a series of techniques. Vajrayana, he says, is particularly vulnerable to this reduction; which can lead to “a stress on psychic powers, magical masters, spiritual technocrats, mystical astronauts and religious athletes. . . . . The myth of inner progress can easily be substituted for the myth of outer progress.” This is a trenchant observation, and a critique of those tendencies which Weber identified as having roots in Calvinism and its transmogrification into capitalism. As such, it is in line with Jung’s critique of “Eastern” yogas in Western living-rooms. The problem, however, is that it leaves the Tibetans as passive, non-existent on-lookers in the issue, as if they have no opinions or experience in the matter. A reading of Patrul Rinpoche’s critique of the state of the Dharma in Tibet in the last century will reveal the same concerns. The Buddha himself warned about the “eight worldy dharmas,” and recognized that his Dharma was difficult, exceedingly subtle, counter-intuitive, and not easily understood. If the depth of Buddhist thought on precisely these issues is considered, Jungian psychology may have little new to offer beyond a different vocabulary.

When considering practice itself, Bishop states that “It has been the task of esoteric (religious, occult, hermetic) language through the ages to transform and re-educate cognition. The symbol calls for a response and a commitment.. . . . The use of riddles, koans, and other forms of paradox, to block the rational mind, and hence to force the intuitive, the imaginative leap, are common.” (p. 177) This is a statement which ignores the fact that in Zen, for example, language is considered inadequate and an obstacle, and koans are used only in the context of deep shamatha practice. The point is not to block the rational mind, much less to make imaginative leaps. Cognition is not to be re-educated, it is to be abandoned altogether. To acknowledge this, however, is to risk exposing a gulf between the two systems that simply may not be bridgeable.

This is acknowledged by Coward, who in his comparison between the collective unconscious and the Alayavijnana, states that “Although Jung would agree that psychic processes such as over-attachment to thinking as opposed to intuiting and ignorance of contents of the unconscious are obstacles to individuation of the archetypes, he would never agree that the perfect enlightenment implied by Bodhicitta is humanly attainable. This is one of those points where Jung draws the line in his acceptance of the claims of Eastern Yoga.” (p. 258) In light of the sometimes dubious bases on which Jung placed his acceptance, drawing this line in reality must unravel his acceptance entirely. If Bodhicitta is not attainable, then none of the system of thought which leads to it is valid. So long as the full corpus of Buddhist thought remains unrevealed, it can be interpreted and psychologized. “Drawing lines” is another way of concealing irreconcilable truth claims.

Radmila Moacanin draws the same conclusions as Thomas regarding the collective unconscious and the Alaya in her article, “Tantric Buddhism and Jung: Connections, Similarities, Differences” (1992) In her description of the unconscious, however, she says that “the unconscious may be a valuable guide in pointing the way to one’s true destination, a destination that is true to one’s self and not falsified by prejudices of the conscious mind.” (p. 277) It has the capacity to perceive, be purposeful, and feels and thinks as does the conscious mind. She then, however, claims that “The notion of store consciousness clearly corresponds to Jung’s concept of the unconscious” (p. 278) and quotes Lama Govinda as a Buddhist source. This is problematic in two ways. A reading of Yogacara and an understanding of karma would reveal that the Kunzhi does not correspond to Jung’s notion of the unconscious, insofar as the unconscious is seen as intentional and developmentally inclined. It is in fact just the opposite; “In the context of Buddhist teaching, it is quite clear that there is no law of inevitable progress operative in our world. Samsara, as conditioned existence, is cyclical in structure. . . “ (Reynolds, p. 95) Moacanin, however, would have it otherwise: “For the Buddhist there is pressure toward Buddhahood, which is man’s quintessential nature, and for Jung it is the urge towards wholeness.” (p. 280) Moacanin has borrowed Jung’s use of Evans-Wentz and subsumed Kunzhi into Theosophy. Her almost exclusive use of Govinda as her Buddhist source is revealing as well. Neither Reynolds nor David Lopez has anything kind to say about Govinda: Lopez points out that

throughout his career Govinda seems to have drawn on a wide variety of Western-language sources but never on untranslated Buddhist texts. . . . . he cites Martin Buber, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Heinrich Zimmer, and Evans-Wentz. Nonetheless, he represents himself as a spokesman for Tibetan Buddhism in ways that are above all reminiscent of the Theosophy of Evans-Wentz.” (Lopez, 1998 )

Lamentably, it appears that Evans-Wentz continues to be the referent for a significant amount of Jungian discussion of Buddhism, possibly because he presents a version of it that does not conflict with Depth Psychology, and is easily understood and appropriated by Jungian psychologists.

Lastly, the writings of Marvin Spiegelman and Mokusen Miyuki represent more of the psychotherapist’s perspective on the dialogue. In their book, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, the authors see themselves as carrying on in the spirit of Jung’s essays on Buddhism. Spiegelman writes that “A present reader can only be dumbfounded by the perspicacity and perception demonstrated by Jung in his commentaries on Tibetan Buddhism, India . . . and Zen Buddhism.” (1994 ) It appears, however, that Spiegelman is also referring to Jung’s commentaries on Evans-Wentz rather than on Buddhism when he praises Jung. His references to Buddhism are full of unexamined allusions to Theosophy, as in his belief that

the psyche is trying to incorporate all the religions and ethnicities of the earth in order to create a large synthesis. This goal, I hope, does not aim at replacing any of them, but towards building a larger temple of the soul where all individuals and groups might find a treasured place. ( p. 11)

Jung himself was not this enthusiastic about the notion of One Mind: he states in fact that “we do not assume that the mind is a metaphysical entity or that there is any connexion between an individual mind and a hypothetical Universal Mind” in his introduction to Evans-Wentz’s Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation.

In his commentary on the “Ten Ox Herding Pictures,” Spiegelman introduces the same conflation of Self and Buddha-nature, stating that “It is the Self of the Buddhist, or that Self of the Jungians, which is the center and higher authority within, or the totality of his being. . . “ ( p. 51). He goes on to claim that the Ox represents “the God within,” a statement certain to confound Zen Buddhists. This is some 58 years after Jung first attempted to understand Buddhism from a psychological perspective; not much appears to have happened in the interim. Commenting on another Ox Herding picture, he says

Now he knows it by the “sound he hears,” not by what he reads. He listens, it seems. Does he hear the voice of God? Does the Self speak to him personally, now, just to him and to no other? . . . I think so, particularly when Kaku-an tells us: “when the eye is properly directed, he will find that it is no other than himself.” So Kaku-an sheds the light that the eye must look in the proper place. Is that not into one’s being, one’s fantasies and dreams, affects and strivings: Was it not the ox itself that was driving him to the ox? (p. 58)

Spiegelman is not praising the practice of shamatha and vipassana here: he is describing Jung’s use of active imagination. It is as if nothing has happened in the field of Buddhist scholarship since 1936 to challenge Jung’s interpretation of Buddhism. This seems to represent most clearly a certain tendency in Jungian thought about Buddhism that refuses to acknowledge that Buddhism really is alien; not necessarily to Westerners who wish to understand it, but to Depth Psychology and the premises on which it rests. He does acknowledge important differences, as when he says

Jung is a representative of twentieth century Western spirituality focused on the individual. For example, as we work in analysis we don’t have a path, we don’t have a direction, we have none of those things, and our relationship to the psyche is quite different. We allow it to determine the path we go. (Vreeland,1996) 

He goes on to state, however his belief that “underneath all this, that it’s no different. . . that [Buddhist] path is not one that we do, so far. It could well be that it could happen.” (1996) The problem, of course, is that ‘underneath’ it may very well be entirely different, and that if it happened, it might have to happen as Buddhism, not Depth Psychology.

Miyuki states that “The Zen teaching of “no-mind”. . . and the Shinshu teaching of “naturalness” ... are both directed to the realization of this total personality and can be considered as examples of the way in which the Japanese mind has transformed the other-worldy Buddhism of India into a pragmatic system for dealing with everyday life.” (p. 119) Zen’s “true man” is no-personality, as expressed by Bodhidharma when asked who he was: “I do not know.” This is a distinction which simply is not compatible with Jungian notions of individuation. While he does not explain his meaning of “other worldly” one can guess that he refers to Jung’s analysis of Indian culture as withdrawn and introverted.

In his debate with Spiegelman in 1996 (Vreeland, 1994) Tenzin Wangyal, Rinpoche gives poignant voice to the Tibetan experience of exile and Western appropriation of Buddhism:

People study for thirty of forty years, very intensive training as they learn all these things. Now when you bring this to the West, the difficult part is everyone is taking pieces out of it. The psychologists take pieces away and sometimes they don’t mention about it, and the healers take pieces away, and all people, even scientists take pieces away. The medical community takes pieces away; it’s like taking away from that and somehow it’s hard in some sense, the whole thing is tearing apart, not only the culture is being ripped apart, but also the knowledge, because it’s in pieces. On the other hand when I think about it, as long as it benefits anybody, this is the word of the Buddha and people should use it and integrate it together and learn it. 

I conclusion, it is interesting to pick up a piece of the dialogue between Jung and Hisamatsu. As Masao Abe points out

Towards the end of the conversation, however, Jung clearly agreed with Hisamatsu on the need of overcoming even the collective unconscious for a complete cure of the patient. According to Tsujimura Koichi, who acted as interpreter for the dialogue, Jung’s affirmative response surprised people in the room, for if the collective unconscious can be overcome, then Jung’s analytical psychology must be fundamentally reexamined. (p. 136)

It is curious that this statement was apparently never taken up by either Jung or his successors interested in Buddhism. One can only speculate that to have done so would have meant precisely what Abe states: the possibility that in order to find convergence with Buddhism, Depth Psychology would have to give up central tents of its own system, such as reliance on conceptualization, the notion of self, the dialectic, and the centrality of content. The possibility of finding convergence is certainly limited when Depth psychologists don't attend to subjects such as emptiness, dependent origination, karma, or the lack of inherent existence as they are explained in the very large and challenging corpus of Buddhist literature. In failing to really see that Buddhism is fundamentally very different from Western thought, we risk both underestimating the difficulties inherent in the dialogue and making facile and superficial comparisons. Perhaps when Western psychology can understand the Buddhist view that all reality is conceptually designated by the mind, and that the mind itself is not inherently real, a conjunctio of civilizations can begin.

REFERENCES Blyth, R. H. (1966) . Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. Four, Mumonkan, Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1954). The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation. New York: Oxford University Press. Lopez, Donald. (1998.). Prisoners of Shangri-La. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Meckel, D, & Moore, R. (1992). Self and Liberation. New York: Paulist Press. Reynolds, John. (1989). Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness. New York: Station Hill Press . Spiegelman, J.M. & Miyuki, M. (1994). Buddhism and Jungian Psychology. Tempe: New Falcon Publications, . Vreeland, A. (1996). Common Ground. Transcript. Dallas: C. G. Jung Society of North Texas. Dallas . Weber, Max. (1951). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Glencoe, N.Y.: Free Press. Williams, Paul. (1989). Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. New York: Routledge.


by Ron Sharrin

The Gift of Spiritual Giving

Giving and Receiving 

The concept of ‘Spiritual Giving’ is often misunderstood by those who are drawn to a spiritually oriented life. Although such individuals have embraced many of the principles of Spiritual Giving, they have yet to assemble them into a practice that will produce a tangible form of prosperity in their lives.

For example, most people have heard it said that “it is better to give than to receive.” Yet, we are seldom offered an explanation as to what this means, or why it is so. Without such understanding, many who say that they believe this to be true, will seldom put this platitude into practice. Or, if they do, they will often embrace the false nobility of an impoverished life.

This occurs because of an error in their dualistic thinking that has caused them to believe that if it is good to give, then it must be bad to receive . However, the deeper understanding of this Principle is that giving must precede receiving.

For example, if a farmer does not give his fields the seed that they need to produce a crop, then he can hardly expect to receive a bountiful harvest at the end of the growing season.

God is Our Source

Another Principle that is often embraced by spiritually oriented individuals is the understanding that ‘God is our source.’ Yet, in times of need, we consistently turn to the world as the source of our prosperity. We will look to family, friends, employers, bankers, politicians and the generosity of others to resolve our financial situations.

However, what we often fail to see is that our prosperity does not come from what we get from others. Our prosperity comes from what we get from God, thru others . And, what we get from God thru others, is the result of what we give to God, thru others.

Therein lies the secret of true Spiritual Giving. The way to increase what we get from God thru others, is to increase what we give to God thru others.

“No gift is truly given until it is given back to God,” -Meister Eckhart

Charitable and Spiritual Giving

Another area of misunderstanding that often arises, is the failure to distinguish between ‘charitable giving,’ and true Spiritual Giving.

Charitable giving is an activity of our soul that is rooted in compassion, and based upon the needs of others. The word compassion literally means to ‘suffer together.’ Consequently, when we see others ‘in need,’ we feel their suffering, and are moved to alleviate it by giving them whatever assistance we can. This is a good thing to do.

However, true Spiritual Giving is an activity of our Spirit, that is rooted in Joy, and is based upon our Love for others. In this case, we are giving for the pure Joy of giving, as a gesture of Love, which we experience as Gratitude. Therefore, we could say that Spiritual Giving is ‘Gracious Giving,’ which is giving in a mood of gratitude.

In essence, ‘charitable giving’ is a gift of compassion, and ‘Spiritual Giving’ is an offering of appreciation.

“If the only prayer you ever said was ‘Thank You!’ that would be sufficient.” -Meister Eckhart

Forms of Spiritual Giving

There are two basic forms of Spiritual Giving in which we can choose to engage, these are the giving of Tithes and the giving of Offerings.

The ritualistic practice of Tithing is the giving of ten percent (10%) of our income to the sources of spiritual inspiration in our lives. In other words, we give 10% of our income to God, thru the people and places for whom we feel grateful.

An ‘Appreciation Offering’ is simply a gift of any amount that is given to God, thru the people and places for whom we feel gratitude.

The underlying Principle that becomes active in our lives through the practice of Tithing and the giving of Offerings is the ‘Law of Gratitude,’ which states:

Whatever we are Grateful for, will increase.

It is important to realize that when we Tithe, the Law of Gratitude will produce a ‘tenfold return’ on our giving. However, when we make an Appreciation Offering over and above our Tithe, this same Law can produce up to a‘hundredfold return’ on our giving. Consequently, the more that we can give to God thru others, in a mood of deep Gratitude, the more prosperous our lives will be.

Where we give to is not nearly as important as the mood in which we give. Whenever we perform an act of Gratitude in the face of fear, our faith is deepened in a way that will produce some greater good in our lives. Consequently, any time that we give anything to anyone, it can be turned into a form of Spiritual Giving by simply being grateful to God for what we have received thru that individual or organization.

The Enemy of Spiritual Giving

It is written that, “All things work together for the good of those who love God,” and Spiritual Giving is the way that we demonstrate our love for God. Furthermore, prosperous conditions are the way that the Divine reveals Itself in the lives of those who love God. Consequently, through Spiritual Giving we are able to bring Heaven to Earth in our experience of life.

However, just as fear is the enemy of Love, it is also the enemy of Spiritual Giving. Furthermore, the spirit of fear is cunning, and will use the appearance of lack in our lives to activate itself within us. Unfortunately, we seldom recognize this fear, for it cloaks itself in a veil of desire to ‘get more money, and other things.’

All of this arises out of a universal error belief in lack. However, we have the ability to draw our deeply repressed fear of lack to the surface, and then release it through the practice of Spiritual Giving.

Whenever we intend to make a spiritual gift in the midst of impoverished conditions, our fear of lack will arise in the form of a ‘universal doubt,’ which says, “I don’t have enough...” Fortunately, it is written that “perfect love casts out all fear,” and perfect love is Gratitude. Therefore, the Gratitude that accompanies our Spiritual Giving will cast out the fear of lack from the flesh of our being.

However, because our fear arises out of a ‘universal belief,’ it may take many ococasions of Spiritual Giving to eliminate it completely from our being. This is why an ongoing practice of Spiritual Giving is so necessary. However, since this practice is inherently a joyous activity, there should be no reason not to engage in giving as often as we can.

A Vow of Prosperity

One of the most misunderstood of all traditional spiritual practices is the dreaded ‘Vow of Poverty.’ Down through the ages, many well meaning souls have chosen to live impoverished lives on the basis of a ‘false notion’ that there is some noble spiritual advantage to being poor.

However, if we examine the life of the Buddha, we will see that he dispelled this myth over 2,500 years ago by living as an impoverished ascetic. It turned out to be a lifestyle that provided no particular spiritual advantage. However, out of his experience he came to realize that our own true nature is revealed by embracing the ‘Royal Middle Way.’ This is the path of prosperous living that lies between the two extremes of decadent self-indulgence and impoverished self-denial.

Jesus reconfirmed the Buddha’s realization by cursing the fig tree that bore no fruit. In other words, it is the Will of God for us to feed each other with the fruit of our giving. “If you love me, then feed my sheep,” were the final words of Jesus to Simon Peter. In this light, we could say that it is good for us to be prospered in doing the work of the Lord, which is Love.

In truth, a ‘vow of poverty’ is a test of faith, to see if we can live a prosperous life by giving away all of what we receive. The key to passing this test is to correctly understand and practice the unselfish art of Spiritual Giving.

As a practical matter, there are very few among us who have the faith to even take this test, let alone pass it. However, every one of us has the ability to start from where we are, and to begin to build our faith in God as our source. We can do this by practicing the Principle of Spiritual Giving on a regular and ongoing basis, in ever increasing amounts. In this way, every time we engage in the practice of Spiritual Giving, we are releasing our belief in lack, and taking a ‘Vow of Prosperity.’

In Conclusion it is a human tendency to look for our good where we hope it will be easy to find. However, our good always lies on the other side of our fear. Consequently, the courageous practice of Spiritual Giving is the means by which we conquer our fear of lack, and thereby reveal the fulfillment of the many Promises of God concerning prosperity and abundance for our lives.

The thief (of fear) comes to steal (my good), and to kill (my inspiration), and to destroy (my dreams). I Am (the Divinity within me that has) come that I might have life and have it more abundantly.

- Lloyd Strom

Life and Immortality

One of the great problems which every philosophy or religious view has to face is the significance of death. Do we just go around once, with death being the end of it all? Are we reborn in an almost endless series of reincarnations, or is there a personal continuation of ourselves after death? Are we mere mortals or immortals?

Part of evaluating a worldview is considering the adequacy of its answer on death. Consider the contrast between atheism and the biblical view of life and death as shown in this chart:

                    ORIGIN  MANKIND  DESTINY 

ATHEIST    Death         Life            Death

                   BELIEVER    Life           Life              Life


According to the atheist, life comes spontaneously out of the cosmic slime. All life springs from inert or nonliving matter. Life comes from non-life through evolution. Our origin, in other words, is out of death. Since there is no life after death, our destiny is death. What then is the point or value of life? Life is merely an unnecessary chance interruption in the midst of cosmic death. For the believer, on the other hand, God is our creator. We are given the gift of life. Our destiny in Christ is eternal life. Death is merely a very temporary interruption in the midst of cosmic life. Notice the radical contrasts between these views of life. No wonder that atheist Bertrand Russell said that his view led to “unyielding despair.” No wonder atheist Albert Camus maintained that, in light of the meaninglessness of this picture of life, the only really serious philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide.

When we contrast major religious options, we also see radically different and contradictory views about our destiny:

RELIGION                  PICTURE               DESTINY 

            Hindu                    Drop in ocean            Absorption 

            Buddhist               Candle and flame           Extinction 

    Believers in Christ          Prodigal son      Restored relationship 

The destiny for Hinduism (Shankara) is transcending this world of distinction and merging yourself with the One, as a drop of water would be absorbed into the ocean. The destiny of Buddhism (Theravada) is to extinguish desire as you might blow out the flame of a candle. In Sanskrit, the word Nirvana comes from a root word meaning to be extinguished—to be blown out. Since in this view there is no self, then there is no self to exist after death. By contrast, believers in Christ have maintained that the human predicament is a broken relationship with God, and its solution is reconciliation with God through Christ. This broken and yet later-restored relationship is then enjoyed for all eternity. The story of the prodigal son illustrates this alienation- then-restoration.

There is not a great difference between Hindu and Buddhist views of our destiny. Absorption and extinction are not very different from each other. Both mean that our destiny leads to a loss of personality or individuality. Whereas note the contrast with the third view—eternal extension of individual, personal relationship of love with God and others forever.

C.S. Lewis on Death and Immortality

Since this issue is so central to our view of life, it is not surprising that C.S. Lewis meditated often on death and immortality. In fact, Lewis scholar Walter Hooper argues that C.S. Lewis’s central theme was that all men and women are immortals. In one of his most famous quotes, Lewis maintains, “There are no ordinary people” because “You have never talked to a mere mortal.” He says:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct O C.S. Lewis on Life and Immortality by Art Lindsley, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, C.S. Lewis Institute (continued on page 2) A Teaching Quarterly for Discipleship of Heart and Mind C.S. LEWIS INSTITUTE This article originally appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Knowing & Doing. KNOWING & DOING 2 all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. 

It is because of the remnants of this view that our society places such emphasis on the value and rights of the individual. The nation, cultural pursuits, the arts, and civilization have their value, but their existence is finite, whereas the life of each individual continues on into eternity. As a nation, the United States has existed for more than two hundred years, but compared to an immortal soul, its time in history is as the “life of a gnat.”

C.S. Lewis manifested this belief by responding personally to everyone who wrote to him. At a C.S. Lewis Institute conference some time ago, a woman who attended brought a copy of a letter she received from Lewis when she was six years old. She had written to him after reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, because the story’s portrayal of Aslan the lion had pointed her to Christ. Lewis’s reply was a beautifully handwritten letter that kindly addressed her comments. Lewis kept up a constant stream of letters, and some collections have been published—The Letters of C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, Letters to Children, Letters to Calabria, and so on. Even though, at the height of his popularity, this correspondence consumed an hour or two of every day and was a task which he did not relish, he answered every letter. Why did he feel a need to individually answer each letter? I believe that it was due to his view that there are no ordinary people.

Lewis also gave away—often anonymously—most, if not all, of the proceeds of his books. He did not raise his style of life. He stayed in the same modest house; he kept his same rather shabby professional garb. He never bought a car and he never learned to drive. He did not travel—never coming to the United States and seldom crossing the English Channel. He put his money in an “Agape Fund” and gave it away, so much so, in fact, that a friend had to advise him to keep a third for taxes. Why would he give away so much of his income, except that he believed he had never met a mere mortal.

Sometimes a person’s deepest belief comes out in casual conversation in the midst of ordinary life. Walter Hooper recalled a discussion he had with Lewis about... ...

a bore whom we both knew, a man who was generally recognized as being almost unbelievably dull. I told Lewis that man succeeded in interesting me by the very intensity of his boredom. “Yes,” he said, “but let us not forget that our Lord might well have said, ‘As ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my bores, you have done it unto me.’”

He sometimes felt that it was his duty to visit such people, because as he did, he was doing it as to Christ. This view of life invests tremendous significance not only to the individual person but also to individual choices. Lewis says that in every choice we pick the beatific or the miserific vision. In Mere Christianity he writes:

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what was before…you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature…to be one kind of creature is heaven; that is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to one state or the other.

Again, the kind of choices we make moves us down the road to a certain kind of destiny.

Destiny and immortality were not always prominent in Lewis’s thinking. When Lewis first came to faith, he did not think a great deal about eternal life but simply focused on enjoying God in this life. He parallels his experience to those who in the Old Testament did not have a clear understanding of eternal life and came to understand deeply that...

...He [God] and nothing else is their goal and the satisfaction of their needs, and that He has a claim on them simply by being what He is, quite apart from anything He can bestow or deny.”

Lewis says that the years he spent before coming to focus more on immortality “always seem to me to have been of great value” because they taught him to delight in God, not just in any thought of reward.

Paradox of Reward

Lewis did come to appreciate the place of reward. In fact he later delighted in it. But, he saw that the paradox of reward might be a stumbling block for some. On the one hand, it seems that true faith in God believes in Him for nothing. It is truly disinterested in what benefits might follow. On the other hand, reward is received for what is done. This might seem to pander to self-interest and a mercenary spirit. Lewis addresses this paradox in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century:

C.S. Lewis on Death and Immortality Tyndale, as regards the natural condition of humanity, holds that by nature we can do no good works without respect of some profit either in this world or in the world to come….That the profit should be located in another world means, as Tyndale clearly sees, no difference. Theological hedonism is still hedonism. Whether the man is seeking heaven or a hundred pounds, he can still but seek himself, of freedom in the true sense—of spontaneity or disinterestedness—nature knows nothing. And yet by a terrible paradox, such disinterestedness is precisely what the moral law demands.

One way to resolve this tension is to realize that self-interest is not the same thing as selfishness. In fact, Jesus appeals to self-interest as a motive for self-denial. In Mark 8:35-36 Jesus formulates his own paradox. This verse, I have been told, is Lewis’s most quoted section of Scripture. Jesus says:

For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Jesus said that if anyone wanted to be his follower, he or she needed to deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow Him. What would ever induce someone to pay that kind of cost? I’ve heard it said that unless there is a sufficient reason why we ought to sacrifice something we like, the cost will always be too great. Jesus gives a sufficient reason why we ought to pay that cost. First, if we try to save our lives by seeking our own pleasure, in our own way, we will lose not only eternal life but also the fullness of life right now. Second, if we “lose” our lives—give them away to Christ and others—we will not only gain eternal life but also the fullness of life in the present. Who wouldn’t, seeing the end result, choose accordingly? Jim Elliot, the missionary martyr, once wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Especially when the things we cannot lose are of immeasurably more value than the things we cannot keep.

Jesus’ argument here is in effect that self-denial is in your self-interest. If you say no to yourself and follow Him, you will gain everything worth having. But this sense of reward or self-interest does not necessarily make our motive impure. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain:

We are afraid that heaven is a bribe and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be interested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love for exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love by its very nature seeks to enjoy its object.

Loving God is not only right but also in the interest of our own joy. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever are not two different purposes or ends but unite together as the greatest purpose of life. We get our greatest delight when we are lost in wonder awe and praise of God.

In that very praising of God we can see why the pursuit of self-interest is not necessarily selfish. When we are lost in wonder awe and praise, we are the happiest we can become, but also the least self-conscious because when we are focused on God, we are not focused on self. This is the same dynamic that we experience in a good friendship. With people we don’t know we might feel self-conscious and wonder how they are responding to what we say and do. But with a really good friend we can lose ourselves in conversation, each conveying their deepest feelings without self-centeredness. Our joy is great, but we are focused on the other and the delight in the discussion we are having. Lewis summarizes this experience:

…the happiest moments are when we forget our precious selves…but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, the animals, the garden, and the sky) instead….

In this experience, we are not self-oriented but extremely happy. We are doing that which is in the interest of our own joy but not selfishly. We are joyous but “disinterested.”

Images of Heaven

The movie Shadowlands indicates that Joy fell in love with C.S. Lewis due to his images of heaven. There is probably more to it than that, but his images are glorious. I remember my professor, Dr. Gerstner, who always conducted his classes by dialecture (dialogue), asking us, “Who has ever been perfect?” We responded, “Jesus” and “Adam and Eve before the fall,” but then we ran out of concrete examples that could survive his scrutiny. When we gave up, Dr. Gerstner said, “You’ve just missed countless millions of people.” We asked, “Whom do you mean?” He responded, “All those who have died and are now in heaven with Christ.” C.S. Lewis shares something of the same insight towards the end of The Silver Chair. The children were at this point in Aslan’s country beyond Narnia. King Caspian lay under a clear stream. They all wept—even Aslan. Aslan told Eustace to get a thorn and push it into his lion paw. As a result, a drop of  blood falls into the stream and King Caspian leaps up no longer old, but a young man. He rushed to Aslan “…and flung his arms as far as they would go round the huge neck; and he gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.” Eustace, afraid to touch the dead, said:

“Look here! I say,” he stammered. “It’s all very well. But aren’t you—? I mean didn’t you—”
“Oh, don’t be such an ass,” said Caspian.
“But,” said Eustace, looking at Aslan. “Hasn’t he— er—died?”
“Yes,” said the Lion...” He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven’t.”

In other words, if our eyes could be opened for just a minute to the eternal dimension in the present, it would change our view of death and of our life. Many more people have died and now live than those who are presently on earth.

My favorite passage in what has become my favorite Narnia Chronicle is at the end of The Last Battle. In the chapter “Farewell to Shadowlands,” the children are afraid of again being sent back from Narnia to England. Aslan assures them that this time they will not have to go. A “wild hope” arises in them. Aslan tells them that their transition from a train to Narnia in the beginning of the book was because there was a real railway accident. Aslan tells them in the final paragraphs:

“Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: This is the morning….” The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And as for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

What a glorious vision. An infinitely creative God creating infinite, wonderful adventures for all eternity.

Encounters with Death

C.S. Lewis had a number of painful encounters with death. His mother died while he was a young boy. He lost friends in the war, particularly his best friend Paddy Moore. He lost his father and finally, most painfully, his beloved wife Joy. Her death caused him to ask deep questions as can be read in A Grief Observed. We will probably get no clear answer as to why people die when they do. But perhaps if we saw it all from their point of view or from an eternal perspective, everything would look different. Lewis writes:

Heaven will solve our problems, but by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. These notions will be knocked from under our feet. We will see that there was no problem.

However, all kinds of problems emerge this side of eternity. It might be interesting to note that when Lewis had to face his own death he faced it bravely and calmly. For instance, when he had to decline a certain lecture invitation that he would have enjoyed, his face grew sad; he paused and said simply, “Send them a polite refusal.” Once close to the end, he passed into a coma from which he was not expected to emerge. When he awoke, Lewis was rather disappointed because he, like Lazarus (raised by Jesus after four days dead), had his dying to do all over again.

How Can We Know?

How can we know that these things are true? It all comes down to the credibility of Christ and to the reality of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. If Christ was raised from the dead, then He provides the guarantee that we will be raised. If Christ is not raised, then as the Apostle Paul said, our faith is futile, we are still in our sins, and we might as well eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. (See I Corinthians 15.) Either Christ was lying when He told us about eternal life, in which case, He ought to be utterly rejected for telling us such an untruth. Or, maybe He was a lunatic who truly believed what He said, but was deluded about his own deity and about eternal life. In this case, He ought to have been confined to an asylum next to a person who believed themselves to be a poached egg. The remaining option is that He is telling us the truth and that He is our risen Lord. His claims were either true or false. If false, He either knew that they were false, or He didn’t. If He knew they were false, He was a liar. If He didn’t know they were false, He was a lunatic. If his claims were true, He is Lord.

Not only is there a strong historical case for the resurrection of Christ (which you can find elsewhere), but there are also plenty of empirical results to back up his claims. Could whopping lies or raving lunacy change people’s lives from insanity to sanity, from slavery to freedom, from hostility to love, from instability to stability, from brokenness to wholeness? Many testimonies bear out the effect of this “lunacy” on real lives throughout history.

However, Lewis’s argument for these things was not experiential. As we will see in future articles, he came to believe that the account of Christ’s life in the New Testament was not mythical but grounded in solid history. Although there are myths that seemed similar to the story of Christ, Lewis came to believe by historical standards that Jesus was the “myth become fact.” He argued against those theologians who believed these stories were mythical.

If Christ died for us, rose for us, reigns in power for us, and prays for us, then our lives are decisively different. It is impossible to truly believe these things without them having a revolutionary effect. Sometimes people have critiqued those whom they felt were so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good. Lewis argues that it is the other way around. Those who are the most heavenly minded are the most earthly good.


by Art Lindsley, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, C.S. Lewis Institute

Detachment and Compassion in Early Buddhism

To people looking at Buddhism through the medium of English, the practice of compassion and detachment can appear incompatible, especially for those who consider themselves to be socially and politically engaged. In contemporary usage, compassion brings to mind outwardmoving concern for others, while detachment suggests aloofness and withdrawal from the world. Yet Buddhism recommends both as admirable and necessary qualities to be cultivated. This raises questions such as the following:

If compassion means to relieve suffering in a positive way, and detachment to remain aloof from the world, how can the two be practiced together?

Does detachment in Buddhism imply lack of concern for humanity?

Is the concept of compassion in Buddhism too passive, connected only with the inward-looking eye of meditation, or can it create real change in society?

It is certainly possible to draw sentences from Buddhist writers which seem to support a rejection of outward concern for others. For example, Edward Conze has written, “The Yogin can only come into contact with the unconditioned when he brushes aside anything which is conditioned.”1 Similarly, G.S.P. Misra writes, “In the final analysis, all actions are to be put to cessation…. The Buddha speaks of happiness involved in non-action which he further says is an integral part of the Right Way (sammå pa†ipadå).2 Taken in isolation and out of context, these remarks can give the impression that the path to Nibbåna implies developing a lack of concern towards everything in saμsåra. But is this inference sound? I would argue that it is not.

This is an issue which touches on the whole question of transferring concepts across linguistic barriers, in this case Påli and English. It calls not only for an understanding of how the concepts are used within the framework of the Påli Buddhist texts, but also for an awareness of how the English terms used in T 2 translation function and whether they are adequate. Inevitably, a dialogical approach between two linguistic frameworks is necessary.

Detachment 

Viveka and viråga are the two Påli words which have been translated as “detachment.” The two, however, are not synonymous. The primary meaning of viveka is separation, aloofness, seclusion. Often physical withdrawal is implied. The later commentarial tradition, however, identifies three forms of viveka: kåyaviveka (physical withdrawal), citta-viveka (mental withdrawal), and upadhiviveka (withdrawal from the roots of suffering).

Kåya-viveka, as a chosen way of life, was not uncommon during the time of the Buddha. To withdraw from the household life, renounce possessions, and adopt a solitary mendicancy was a recognized path. The formation of the Buddhist monastic Sangha was grounded in the belief that going out from home to homelessness (agårasmå anagåriyaμ pabbajati) could aid concentrated spiritual effort. Yet to equate the renunciation which the Buddha encouraged with a physical withdrawal which either punished the body or completely rejected human contact would be a mistake.

The Buddha made it clear that the detachment of a noble disciple (ariyasåvaka)—the detachment connected with the path—was not essentially a physical act of withdrawal, let alone austerity. Kåya-viveka was valuable only if seen as a means to the inner purging and mental transformation connected with the destruction of craving. This is illustrated in the Udumbarika S¥hanåda Sutta in which the Buddha claims that the asceticism of a recluse who clings to solitude could lead to pride, carelessness, attention-seeking, and hypocrisy, if not linked to the cultivation of moral virtues and the effort to gain insight through meditation.3

A further insight is given in the Nivåpa Sutta, which weaves a lengthy story around the relationship of four herds of deer with a certain crop, representing sensual pleasure, sown by the hunter (Måra) for the deers’ ensnaring. Both the ascetics who crave for pleasure, and those who deny themselves any enjoyment in an extreme way, are destroyed. Referring to the latter, the Buddha says:

Because their bodies were extremely emaciated, their strength and energy diminished, freedom of mind diminished; because freedom of mind diminished, they went back to the very crop sown by Måra—the material things of this world.4

The message of the sutta is that ascetic withdrawal can reduce the mind’s ability to discern. It can also lead to the repression of mental tendencies rather than to their rooting out and destruction.

The detachment of which Buddhism speaks, therefore, is not an extreme turning away from that which normally nourishes the human body. Neither is it a closing of the eyes to all beauty, as is clear from the following:

Delightful, reverend Ónanda, is the Gosinga sal-wood. It is a clear moonlit night; the sal-trees are in full blossom. Methinks deva-like scents are being wafted around…5

This is an expression of delight uttered by Såriputta, an arahant, on meeting some fellow monks one night.

One must look away from external acts and towards the area of inner attitudes and motivation for a true understanding of the role of detachment in Buddhism. Physical withdrawal is only justified if it is linked to inner moral purification and meditation. In this light, citta-viveka and upadhi-viveka become necessary subdivisions to bring out the full implications of detachment within Buddhist spiritual practice. Upadhi-viveka, as withdrawal from the roots of suffering, links up with viråga, the second word used within Buddhism to denote detachment.

Viråga literally means the absence of råga: the absence of lust, desire, and craving for existence. Hence, it denotes indifference or non-attachment to the usual objects of råga, such as material goods or sense pleasures. Non-attachment is an important term here if the Påli is to be meaningful to speakers of English. It is far more appropriate than “detachment” because of the negative connotations “detachment” possesses in English. Råga is a close relation of upådåna (grasping) which, within the causal chain binding human beings to repeated births, grows from taˆhå (craving) and results in bhava—continued saμsåric existence. The English word “non-attachment” suggests a way of looking at both of them.

The Buddhist texts refer to four strands of grasping (upådåna): grasping of sense pleasures (kåmupådåna), of views (di††hËpådåna), of rule and custom (s¥labbatupådåna), of doctrines of self (attavådupådåna). All of these can also be described as forms of råga or desire. To destroy their power over the human psyche, attachment to them must be transformed into non-attachment. Nonattachment or non-grasping would therefore flow from the awareness that no possession, no relationship, no achievement is permanent or able to give lasting satisfaction; from the discovery that there is no self which needs to be protected, promoted, or defended; and from the realization that searching for selfish sensual gratification is pointless, since it leads only to craving and obsession. Phrases which overlap with attachment in this context and which can help to clarify its meaning are: possessiveness in relationships, defensiveness, jealousy, covetousness, acquisitiveness, and competitiveness. Through non-attachment, these are attenuated and overcome. There is nothing yet in this description which points to a lack of concern for humanity or the world. The emphasis is rather on inner transformation so that destructive and divisive traits can be destroyed, making way for their opposites to flourish.

To take attachment to sense pleasures as an example, many suttas mention the peril involved. The person attached to sense pleasures is likened to a “wet, sappy stick” placed in water. As such a stick cannot be used to light a fire, so the one addicted to sense pleasures cannot attain the “incomparable self-awakening” (anuttaråya sambodhåya).6 He is one with whom Måra can do what he likes.7 He is like one holding a blazing torch, which must be dropped if burning and pain is to be avoided.8 In fact, it is stressed that attachment to sense pleasures destroys the mind’s ability to think clearly and objectively. Viråga, on the other hand, is linked to the practice of mindfulness (satipa††håna) and to seeing into the truth of things. For Buddhists, therefore, non-attachment or detachment (viråga) does not mean a withdrawal from striving for truth but a movement towards seeing the true nature of things more clearly. In contrast, saråga (attachment) leads to biased and false perceptions, since objects are sensed through a net of predispositions towards attraction and aversion.

Seeing the truth through non-attachment can operate both at a mundane and a higher level. At a mundane level, for instance, if greed always arises when an opportunity for gaining quick wealth is glimpsed, wealth will never be seen 5 objectively as it really is—as transient, subject to change, and no answer to the search for happiness. Because of råga, neither the consequences nor the alternatives will be appreciated. In fact, if any decision has to be made, the alternatives will not be seen clearly as long as the mind is clouded by råga. Dishonesty and the manipulation of others in order to gain what is craved might result.

With reference to the higher stages of insight, satipa††håna, viveka, and viråga are intertwined. Found in many suttas are words such as the following:

He (the monk) chooses some lonely spot to rest on his way—in the woods, at the foot of tree, on a hillside… and returning there after alms round, he seats himself, when his meal is done, cross-legged… (kåya-viveka)9

Putting away the hankering after the world, he remains with a heart that hankers not, and purifies his mind of lusts.10

Aloof from the pleasures of the senses, aloof from unskilled states of mind, he enters and abides in the first jhåna… (citta-viveka and viråga).11

The ultimate results of such practices are the four jhånas or absorptions; the verification, by direct vision, of the doctrine of karma; insight into the Four Noble Truths; and eventually, the knowledge that release from rebirth has been gained. Viråga is, in fact, a prerequisite for attaining nibbåna and the treatment of the word in the texts implies that the two are almost synonymous.

At this point, it is worth looking at how the word “detachment” has been used in the Western tradition. In colloquial usage, to say that a person is detached can be derogatory, implying that the person is not willing to become involved with others or that he or she is neither approachable nor sympathetic. This current usage must be borne in mind. Three strands of meaning, however, emerge from most dictionary definitions. Primarily, detachment refers to the action and process of separating. Flowing from this has come the military usage to describe the dispatch of a body of troops. More relevant to this study, however, is the third body of meanings connected with detachment as an attitude of mind. “Aloofness” and “indifference to worldly concerns” are phrases used to describe this attitude. Although these might appear to conform to the above-mentioned contemporary 6 connotations, we find linked with this (in Webster’s Dictionary, for example) “freedom from bias and prejudice.” Thus, in both the Western tradition and the Eastern, “detachment” is linked with clarity of perception, nonpartiality, and fair judgment.

Voices supporting this come from the Christian mystical tradition and the contemporary scientific world. Classical Christian mysticism saw indifference to worldly and material concerns as an essential component of the movement towards God. Fulfilling God’s will with total love and obedience was accompanied by detachment from the worldly. In modern scientific research a similar quality is emphasized. A commitment to truth is recognized but so is the necessity for a mind detached from the results of research, detached from the wish for a particular outcome. For it is known that if the scientist is searching for one particular scientific result, he might unconsciously manipulate the experiments or observations in order to obtain that result.

Therefore, when looking at the implications of “detachment,” it is worth taking into account Western usage as well. The socially active person can be quick to look down on those who appear either distanced from or untouched by the social, economic, and political crises facing the world. But they should remember that detachment can have a positive fruit even in relation to social activism: the ability to see the truth more clearly and to judge more impartially.

To return to the Buddhist tradition: The Buddha was once faced with the remark that the most worthy person is the one who speaks neither in dispraise of the unworthy nor in praise of the praiseworthy. The Buddha disagreed with this. He replied that, because of his ability to discriminate, the person who speaks in dispraise of the unworthy and in praise of worthy is best.12 The Buddha rejects the self-distancing which refuses to take sides or to speak out against what should be condemned. He criticizes the desire to keep the truth inviolate and unspoken through a wish not to become involved with society. Viveka and viråga therefore do not imply the kind of withdrawal which is unconcerned with what is good or bad for human welfare.

The fruits of non-attachment are not only linked with the gaining of knowledge, the “incomparable self-awakening,” but are also related to creating a 7 just and harmonious society. The Mahådukkhakkhandha Sutta makes a direct connection between attachment to sense pleasures and the movement towards chaos in society. Greed for the possessions of another leads to disputes and contentions at the level of both the family and nation, until “having taken sword and shield, having girded bow and quiver, both sides mass for battle and arrows are hurled and swords are flashing.”13 In the same sutta, theft, adultery, and vicious corporal punishment are likewise attributed to sense pleasures and attachment to them.

In other texts, attachment to views is spoken about as a cause of disputes, especially in the religious community. Yet the point drawn is relevant to the whole of society. The result of a person asserting, “This is the very truth, all else is falsehood,” is dispute. And: “If there is dispute, there is contention; if there is contention, there is trouble; if there is trouble, there is vexation.”14

Therefore, far from implying lack of concern for the welfare of others, detachment from such things as sensual desires and the urge to assert dogmatic views is seen as essential to it. We are back to the four strands of grasping and the need to root these out.


Compassion


Karuˆå is the Påli word translated as compassion. Contemporary writers have spoken of it thus:

It is defined as that which makes the heart of the good quiver when others are subject to suffering, or that which dissipates the suffering of others.15

Compassion is a virtue which uproots the wish to harm others. It makes people so sensitive to the sufferings of others and causes them to make these sufferings so much their own that they do not want to further increase them.16

This (compassion) isn’t self-pity or pity for others. It’s really feeling one’s own pain and recognizing the pain of others… Seeing the web of suffering we’re all entangled in, we become kind and compassionate to one another.17

The above definitions vary. Yet central to all is the claim that karuˆå concerns our attitude to the suffering of others. In the Buddhist texts the term often refers to an attitude of mind to be radiated in meditation. This is usually considered its primary usage. Nevertheless, the definitions of Buddhist writers past and present, as well as the texts themselves, stress that it is also more than this. Anukampå and dayå, often translated as “sympathy,” are closely allied to it.18 In fact, at least three strands of meaning in the term “compassion” can be detected in the texts: a prerequisite for a just and harmonious society; an essential attitude for progress along the path towards wisdom (paññå); and the liberative action within society of those who have become enlightened or who are sincerely following the path towards it. All these strands need to be looked at if the term is to be understood and if those who accuse Buddhist compassion of being too passive are to be answered correctly.

The foundation for any spiritual progress within Buddhism is the Five Precepts. Rites, rituals, ascetic practices, and devotional offerings are all subservient to the morality they stress. Compassion for the life, feelings, and security of others is inseparably linked with the first, second, and fourth precepts.

1. I undertake the rule of training to refrain from injury to living things (påˆåtipåtå veramaˆ¥ sikkhåpadaμ samådiyåmi).

2. I undertake the rule of training to refrain from taking what is not given (adinnådånå veramaˆ¥ sikhåpadaμ samådiyåmi).

3. I undertake the rule of training to refrain from false speech (musåvådå veramaˆ¥ sikkhåpadaμ samådiyåmi).

For instance, the ideal of ahiμså (non-harming) of the first must flow from compassion if it is to be effective. The Vasala Sutta makes this relationship explicit, although the word dayå, usually translated as sympathy or compassion, is used and not karunå:

Whoever in this world harms living beings, once-born or twice-born, in whom there is no compassion for living beings—know him as an outcast.19

(Ekajaμ vå dijaμ vå pi yo påˆåni hiμsati, yassa påˆe dayå n’atthi taμ jaññå ‘vasalo’ iti.)

Important to the exercising of this kind of compassion is the realization that life is dear to all, as shown in the following Dhammapada verse:20

All tremble at violence Life is dear to all Putting oneself in the place of another One should neither kill nor cause another to kill. (Sabbe tasanti daˆ∂assa Sabbesaμ j¥vitaμ piyaμ Attånaμ upamaμ katvå Na haneyya na ghåtaye.)

Here, non-harming and compassion flow both from a sensitivity to our own hopes and fears and the ability to place ourselves in the shoes of others. Compassion towards self and compassion towards others are inseparable.

The Buddha’s teachings about statecraft and government also embody compassion as a guiding principle. The Cakkavatti S¥hanåda Sutta describes a state in which the king ignores his religious advisers and does not give wealth to the poor. Poverty becomes widespread and, in its wake, follow theft, murder, immorality in various forms, and communal breakdown. The culmination is a “sword period” in which men and women look upon one another as animals and cut one another with swords. In this sutta, lack of compassion for the poor leads to the disintegration of society. Lack of social and economic justice leads to disaster. In contrast, the ideal Buddhist model for society, as deduced from the texts, would be one in which exploitation in any part of its structure is not tolerated. Such a society would be rooted in compassion. Compassion is its prerequisite.

To move to the second strand, I have already stated that the word “karuˆå” was most often mentioned in the texts in the specialized context of meditation to denote an important form of mind training. Here the emphasis is on each person’s pilgrimage towards Nibbåna rather than on interaction with other beings.

For example, the Kandaraka Sutta describes the path of a person who “does not torment himself or others.” Moral uprightness is stressed initially but the final stages of the path are seen purely in terms of meditation and mind-training. At this point, no mention is made of outgoing action:

By getting rid of the taint of ill-will, he lives benevolent in mind; and compassionate for the welfare of all creatures and beings, he purifies the mind of the taint of ill-will.21

In this context, the development of karuˆå plays an essential part in the meditation practice that leads towards wisdom (paññå) and the destruction of craving. The importance of this must not be underestimated. The development of a compassionate mind is a direct preparation for right concentration (sammå samådhi) and a prerequisite of Nibbåna:

If from a brahman’s family… if from a merchant’s family… if from a worker’s family… and if from whatever family he has gone forth from home into homelessness and has come into this dhamma and discipline taught by the Tathågata, having thus developed friendliness (mettå), compassion (karuˆå), sympathetic joy (muditå), and equanimity (upekkhå), he attains inward calm—I say it is by inward calm that he is following the practices suitable for recluses.22

Karuˆå is one of the four “brahma-vihåras” or sublime states, along with mettå, muditå, and upekkhå. The higher stages are seen to rest on them because they have the power to weaken the defilements of lust, ill-will, and delusion and to bring the mind to a state of peace. Rarely is meditation mentioned without reference to them.

Yet a distinction must be made between mettå and karuˆå. The two are linked together at one level through the brahma-vihåras. Yet, in the texts, mettå constantly remains a disposition, an interior attitude. Karuˆå is more than this. Significant here is Buddhaghosa’s treatment of the word in the Visuddhimagga. When referring to the brahma-vihåras, he treats karuˆå in a similar way to mettå. Yet, in a later definition, his words can be translated as:

When there is suffering in others it causes good people’s hearts to be moved, thus it is compassion. Or, alternatively, it combats (kiˆåti) others’ suffering and demolishes it, thus it is compassion. Or, alternatively, it is scattered upon those who suffer, or extended to them by pervasion, thus it is compassion.23

Bhikkhu Ñåˆamoli, in the notes to his translation, stresses that kiˆåti here does not come under the usual meaning of “to buy” but is linked with the Sanskrit 11 krˆåti, to injure or kill. Therefore he chooses to translate it as “combat,” unmistakably connecting Buddhaghosa’s definition of karuˆå with action.

In a later paragraph, Buddhaghosa adds that compassion succeeds “when it makes cruelty subside and it fails when it produces sorrow.”24 To Buddhaghosa, karuˆå was both a deliverance of the mind and liberative action or, more exactly, a quality compelling people towards such action. This emphasis on liberative action is seen supremely in Ócariya Dhammapåla’s words about the great compassion (mahåkaruˆå) and wisdom (paññå) of the Buddha.25 The passage is structured in a series of parallel sentences, each one contrasting and comparing the fruits of the two qualities. The following are selected from the longer whole:

It is through understanding (= wisdom) that he fully understood others’ suffering and through compassion that he undertook to counteract it… It was through understanding that he himself crossed over and through compassion that he brought others across…

Likewise it was through compassion that he became the world’s helper and through understanding that he became his own helper.

In the above passage, paññå or wisdom is connected with knowledge and insight, and karuˆå or compassion with liberative action. The two are held in corrective balance, counteracting the view that karuˆå is linked only with the passivity of meditation. For the Enlightened One, karuˆå was what impelled him to remain in society as teacher and liberator. He saw the need of the murderer, Angulimåla, and a destructive life was put on another course.26 For forty-five years, he preached in the face of criticism, opposition, and misunderstanding, in the knowledge that the Dhamma would be understood only by a few. He did not hide the fact that suffering is universal, but made compassion the reverse side of this truth, as is shown in the traditional stories of his encounters with Pa†åcårå,27 Kisågotam¥,28 and the slave girl Rajjumålå.29 He was not slow either to admonish monks who were unwilling to tend the sick among them or to do the tending himself, however distressing the illness was: “Whoever would attend on me should attend on the sick” (yo maμ upa††haheyya so gilånaμ upa††haheyya) has come down the centuries as words he said on one such occasion.30

This ideal was placed before the whole monastic Sangha. Although many members of the Sangha may have failed to reach it, it is certain that some attained a stage where compassionate, loving action had replaced selfishness. In the final stage of the path, there is a sense in which action ceases. Yet it is the kind of action which is dictated by attraction or aversion which must stop, action which has kammic results, not that which flows from a purified mind filled with compassion. The mission he set for himself and for the Sangha was one of compassionate, liberative action. The first sixty arahants were sent out with the words:

Go forth, bhikkhus, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, benefit, and happiness of gods and men. Let not two go by the same way.31

Mahåkassapa is praised because “he teaches the doctrine to others out of pity, out of caring for them, because of his compassion for them.”32 For the above disciples, all that had to be done for their release had been done. They now embodied compassion. Compassion was their nature—Mahå-karuˆå, great compassion, rather than the elementary compassion which the novice on the path attempts to radiate and practice. For these disciples, all desire for selfpromotion and self-achievement had been replaced with outward-moving energy. Therefore, any statement which describes the enlightened Buddhist disciple as distant from society would be false, or, more exactly, would be using inappropriate categories. The strength of the concept of compassion within Buddhism is that it is both a powerful form of mental purification and a form of liberative action.

Final Reflections

This paper began with questions raised by observers about the Buddhist notions of detachment and compassion. They center around two main points: that the two concepts seem to represent contradictory forces, the one moving away from society and the other towards it; that the Buddhist concept of compassion is not active enough, being more connected with personal spiritual growth than the altruistic reformation of society.

Part of the problem is the linguistic framework and the modern connotations surrounding such concepts as “detachment.” The question would not arise in the same form for those thinking exclusively in Påli and using the terms viråga and karuˆå. It would be evident to them that viråga does not imply apathy and indifference but a freedom from passion and attachment that is necessary if actions are not to become biased or partial. For what passes as compassion can cloak emotions of a very different kind, such as anger, attachment, or the wish to interfere.

With reference to the second point, a distinction in terms must be made. There is a form of concern for self which is compatible with and even essential to altruism. The care for oneself which enables one to feel empathy with others can be termed “autism.” Autism is necessary for altruism, since it is necessary to be able to accept and even love oneself before one can show true empathy and compassion for others, before one can feel what they feel. Autism is not egoism. Egoism is the enemy of both autism and altruism. Egoism seeks to use others for the material welfare and gain of self. Its “love” is possessive and manipulative. Egoism has to be destroyed if karuˆå is to develop.

Viråga, viveka, karuˆå and anukampå are inter-related terms within Buddhism. Compassion needs the clear insight that viragå can bring. The challenge for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike is to realize this in our lives. All societies need the active, liberative compassion which seeks to relieve the suffering of others, establish greater justice, and assert the dignity and equality of human beings. Karuˆå should certainly be seen in its concentrated meditative form as a powerful and peace-giving discipline of the mind and an important part of any spiritual path. But it should never be confined to this framework. It breaks the framework as liberative action to relieve suffering and oppression.

Notes
1 Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, 1960, Ch.5.
2 G.S.P. Misra, Development of Buddhist Ethics, p. 44.
3 D Sutta No. 25.
4 M I 156.
5 Ibid.
6 M I 240–42.
7 M I 173.
8 M I 130.
9 D I 67, etc.
10 D I 68, etc.
11 D I 73.
12 A II 100–1.
13 M I 86.
14 M I 499.
15 Nårada Mahåthera, The Buddha and His Teachings (BPS, 1988), p.372.
16 Edward Conze, op. cit., Ch.6.
17 Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight (BPS, 1980), pp.125–26.
18 Harvey Aronson in Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1980) looks at the relationship between karuˆå and anukampå and quotes Buddhaghosa (SA II 169) to indicate that anukampå and karuˆå are similar (p.11).
19 Sn 117.
20 Dhp. v, 130. Trans. by Acharya Buddharakkhita.
21 M I 347.
22 M I 284.
23 The Path of Purification, Bhikkhu Ñåˆamoli trans. (BPS, 1975), IX 92.
24 Ibid., IX 94.
25 From ParamatthamañjËså, his commentary to the Visuddhimagga; quoted at Path of Purification, Ch. VII, n.9. This passage has been studied by Aloysius Peiris in “Some Salient Aspects of Consciousness and Reality in Pali Scholasticism as reflected in the Works of Ócariya Dhammapåla,” 1971.
26 M II 97.
27 See E.W. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends (PTS, 1969).
28 Ibid., 2:257–60.
29 Vimånavatthu, No. 50.
30 Vin I 302.
31 Vin I 20.
32 S II 199–200.