The relationship between depth psychology and Eastern spiritual disciplines is commonly misunderstood. Sigmund Freud viewed all forms of religious experience as the childish "obsessional neurosis of mankind" - illusory, regressive and pathological.

What is happening in the psyche that could make a person so incredibly ... self-centered to say, 'Good-bye brothers, good-bye children, good-bye wife, good-bye flowers, good-bye everything. I'm off to the snowy heights. I want an imageless white liberation and freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth'... what in the world is going on in the psyche that his delusional system can so take hold? (Blue Fire 117, 124-125)

The relationship between depth psychology and Eastern spiritual disciplines is commonly misunderstood. Sigmund Freud viewed all forms of religious experience as the childish "obsessional neurosis of mankind" - illusory, regressive and pathological (19; Clark, Dialogue 140). Defending against separation, an individual returns to an earlier stage of ego development - a participation mystique. As allegedly exemplified by the Buddha, such primary narcissism is a veiled return to the lost mother (Suler 73). This regression predisposes one to potentially dangerous sequalae - psychosis, megalomania and withdrawal from the world. While comparatively open to religious experiences, Carl Jung warned against dangers inherent to eastern religions (Bogart). This Jungian critique echoes Eurocentric poles of Enlightenment devaluation and Romantic infatuation. Continuing a tradition of the west, Jung posited essential differences between these civilizations. Here the west is praised as liberal, egalitarian, secular, modern, rational, male and ascending while the east is devalued as authoritarian, hierarchical, religious, traditional, mystical, navel-gazing, otherworldly, primitive, uncivilized, irrational, morally bankrupt, effeminate and decaying (Clark, Dialogue 162; Clark, Oriental 4; Halbfass 436; Campbell 9, 22, 102, 130, 153, 233, 247, 310; King 32; 33; 55; 112). For Jung, the groups differ fundamentally based on a dichotomy of eastern introversion and western extroversion.

Alternatively, Jeffrey Rubin describes the tendency to overvalue the east as "Orientocentrism" (5). For Jung, the most significant danger of eastern disciplines was this catastrophic potential for psychic inflation - seductive immersion in the unconscious. His warning was particularly ominous for westerners whose historical development required a strong ego. Here, consciousness regresses into unconsciousness leaving the former overwhelmed and without the ego's capacity for discrimination (CW 12: 563). For Jung the goal of eastern spiritual disciplines was not controlled integration of the ego into a higher self. Instead, it advocated a dangerous immersion into the unconscious where the ego ceases to exist (Clark, Dialogue 116, 146). Before Westerners could ever safely practice Eastern philosophies, one must first develop a dialectical relationship with the unconscious. From his perspective, the intuitive east serves to counterbalance the western one-sidedness towards Cartesian rationalism.

In the third generation of Jungian thought, James Hillman furthers this traditional critique of Eastern philosophy reserving particular animosity for the psychological motivation of the Buddha. For Hillman, eastern spiritual practices are a sophisticated form of hysterical conversion - or worse (Blue Fire 117). Hillman's critique focuses particularly on the literal life of the Buddha - "king of charlatanism, the psychopathic behavior of an emptied soul" (Blue Fire 123). In this view, the Buddha was possessed by the archetype of spirit. For Hillman's archetypal psychology, eastern disciplines have a fundamentally different purpose than psychotherapy (Bogart). Eastern disciplines are oriented towards Spirit - purity, simplicity, peaks of timeless impersonal detachment and away from community. In contrast, psychotherapy is oriented towards the vales of Soul - fantasy, complexity and personal history (Peaks).

To demonstrate, when confronted by inevitable interpersonal disputes within the growing sangha, the Buddha invoked the famous metaphor of 'covering mud with straw' (trnastaraka-vinaya). Here, a bikkhu avoids natural conflict - crossing a path without becoming dirty (Hahn 312, 313). Contrasted with the lived dirt, softness, beauty, pain, body, multiplicity and aesthetics of soul - spirit is pure, cerebral, distant, apollonian, abstract and unified invoking heroic eschatological ideas of order, peace, meaning and humanity. While Soul implicitly seeks relationship to Spirit, inherent to Spirit is a belief in its own superiority and independence. Here spirit is fundamentally cold, masculine and escapist transcending above the warm mud of family, femininity and human conflict. In this view, spirit without soul is a disaster precisely because it ignores attachment to others. From the perspective of Hillman, Buddhism abandons the vales of the feminine, body and soul for disembodied masculine peaks - a "gigantic head floating in space" (Book of Dead 15; Puer 58). Soul lives through and within the pathologies of family and attachments whereas the Buddha must necessarily abandon his family, son and attachments for liberation. The archetype of soul needs spirit but spirit archetypally evades soul.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a corpse is offered as the Buddhist metaphor for the ideal, liberated non-dualistic state of mind (26). Hillman would likely emphasize this as exactly the point - life abandoned. Here, he suggests the Buddha contributes to the "age of psychopathy" precisely because of the avowed detachment from living people - in preference of doctrine (Blue Fire 124). Siddhartha abandoned his family abruptly - just as his mother left him. Mahamaya died giving birth to the future Buddha leaving him with a "sorrow he could not forget" (Hahn 71). The Buddha left his childhood home - difficult, unappealing, oppressive, stifling, cramped and dirty (Rubin 12, 14). Hillman questions the psychological motivation of the Buddha. Here the Buddha ironically founds a philosophy where the goal is to abandon one's attachments. He escapes into spirit and conveniently ignores how it was Svasti's milk which restored his strength as well as how the feminine earth served as his conquering witness against Mara (Hahn 107). After initial defeat, Mara pledges to tempt the Buddha through his life. In the archetypal perspective, is Mara's ongoing temptation paradoxically - the temptation of Spirit?

Upon careful discrimination - there arises serious limitations and ironies in these criticisms of Eastern disciplines. First, 'eastern' philosophies are anything but monolithic and defy simplistic classification ranging widely from Indian Vedanta to Japanese Zen. Moreover, there is an admitted resonance between traditional depth psychology and many aspects of various eastern perspectives. Mark Epstein approaches the discourse - not by suggesting an artificial synthesis but by demonstrating the existing similarities of depth psychology and Buddhism (Epstein 17, 23, 111). Both Freud and Buddhism understood unhappiness as endemic to the human condition. Both disciplines prioritize a methodology of doubt - invoking a deconstructing hermeneutic of suspicion. Like the psychoanalytic unconscious, Buddhism posits that 'things' are not as they seem and the key to liberation is becoming more aware. We attain enlightenment and release from the endless chain of suffering only when we reconcile with the unseen repressed material by a careful sustained attention. Like analytic free association, unpleasant material is welcomed as the focus of attention and as a paradoxical source of healing. Both value a nonjudgmental openness and dispassionate interest over identification, fear and moralistic condemnation. Freud sought to sublimate dangerous libido and the Buddha converted persecutors to his protectors - aspects of the enlightened mind rather than demons.

Despite his critique, Jung himself is frequently inconsistent in his views on eastern philosophy. Jung fears and yet is attracted to the east. To exemplify, he considers the atman to be an "exact parallel" to the notion of the Self (Clark, Dialogue 146, 159). More importantly, while Jung makes stark warnings about the general dangers of eastern disciplines, his critique is noticeably more muted on the specific subject of Buddhism (Clark, Dialogue 119). In fact, Jung ironically indicates how he is particularly enriched by Buddhism and attributes his fundamental insights to their Tibetan Book of the Dead (CW 18.1580; Clark 60, 167). Jung indicates that the "aim of psychotherapy is exactly the same as Buddhism" (Meckel 110). He describes Zen as a "goldmine" for psychology with particular fondness for the use of paradoxical koans to transcend rational thought into experience (Clark, Dialogue 130; Jung, Zen 12). In fact, Buddhism is more analogous to Jungian notions of psychology than any western religious belief. Both fields share a common rejection of dualistic worldviews, a lived appreciation for the immediacy of experience and a de-emphasis on the ego - as metaphor for centralized subjective control of psychic life. Each values direct phenomenal experience over abstract intellectualization. Both seek an internal detachment from the blind immediacy of literal reality as a method to approach suffering (Blue Fire 47, 146). In each perspective, victory over suffering is paradoxically only attained when the ambition for victory is relinquished (Blue Fire 77; Epstein 38). Taken as metaphor, the Buddhist wheel of life is the equivalent of neurotic suffering and Tantric images are psychological archetypes (Epstein 17, 161; Moacanin 98). Both Jung and the Buddha eschewed metaphysics (Moacanin 102). For Buddhism, truth is ultimately beyond words and explanation (Vimalakirti 110). Similarly, for Hillman the primary phenomenological reality is image and imagination is prioritized over thinking and language.

Hillman's archetypal psychology tends to see the 'transcendent' goal of Buddhism as anti-therapeutic and anti-psychological - seeking a void to separate the "monk from the human community and also from nature" (Puer 60; Paris 4). However, Mark Epstein views this as a tactical misunderstanding. For Epstein, Buddhism should be appreciated a method of inquiry that strengthens the observing ego and uproots narcissism. He sees a common mistake among western psychologists to misread Buddhism as advocating escape from samsara - the wheel of life (40). Here, the Jungian understanding of meditation reveals an implicit limitation. While Samatha meditation seeks a peaceful bliss, Vipassana meditation strives for deep concentration and liberation. Contrary to Jung and popular opinion, Buddhism is not just a mystical retreat into the safe confines of a mother - an infantile universal oneness, primary narcissism or participation mystique. The transcendent goal of Buddhism is not escape but a changing perception of this experience to fully appreciate the impermanence of reality. Bare attention to the psyche brings not only the potential for an escapist delight but also potential for a terrorizing immersion.

The Jungian and Archetypal critiques are uniquely problematic on the issue of suffering. Eastern disciplines are generically accused of attempting to rid the world of suffering while overlooking the need for it to be endured (Clark, Dialogue 77). Jung says the "Oriental wants to get rid of suffering by casting it off... But suffering has to be overcome, and the only way to overcome it is to endure it' (Letters I:236). Hillman expounds upon this valuation of pathology - positing the numinous value within the symptom and honoring the potential within pain (Archetypal 60; Schenk, Sunken 28). From this archetypal perspective, it is the pathological which moves us from the transcendent to immanent - from spirit into soul. In contrast, Epstein emphasizes how Buddhism requires pain to be endured and tolerated through nonjudgmental awareness. Rather than escaping pain, the goal of liberation is within suffering (Epstein 119). Thus, here the Buddha's notion of suffering appears misrepresented. Hillman himself references the Buddha stating - "whatever is, as the Buddha said, is decay" (Blue Fire 149). Moreover, Jung and Hillman overlook internal Buddhist discourse. The Mahayana, and ultimately Vajrayana, critique of original monastic Theravada Buddhism clearly echoes Hillman's own warnings about the archetype of spirit. Here the ascetic goal of the transcendent arhat is transformed into the compassionate engagement of the boddhisatva. From the perspective of Mahayana, the Theravadin ideal of arhat is self-indulgent (Rubin 19). For Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha advocates mindful observation - but without terrorizing immersion or distanced abstraction (1080). In this sense, the Buddha's renunciation was not only of his sheltered royal lifestyle but equally his rejection of escapist asceticism - the Middle Way. For the Buddha, one must not avoid but confront suffering in order to overcome. Rather than flight into the clouds, the Boddhisatva returns to society for a life of compassion - best exemplified by the metaphor of a lotus growing only in mud (Hahn 140; Vimalakirti 95). Particularly for the radical non-dualism of Tantra, nirvana is found within the soulful vales of samsara instead of the snowy peaks of spirit (Epstein 18). Ironically, such an embodied nirvana echoes Hillman's notion of Soul.

Besides confusing a vulgar escapism with transcendence, the depth psychological critique of Buddhism makes problematic axiomatic presumptions. Jung clearly predicates 'essential' differences between western and eastern psychologies. Richard King suggests this "essentializing" tendency fails to recognize the instability of simplistic binary oppositions and hides a, frequently unrecognized, subordinating stereotype (209). For Edward Said, even though the physical empires are dismantled - western imperialism and racism remain in this complex hegemonic discourse (Clark, Oriental 26; 8). We are here eerily reminded of Jung's problematic tendencies towards simplistic nationalistic stereotypes -notorious in his comparison of essential Jewish and Aryan psychologies (CW10.353-4). Moreover, for Buddhism, note how Jung and Hillman are willing to make global conclusions about individual and collective psychologies based solely on 'texts' as sufficiently accurate representations (Clark, Dialogue 163, 164).

Furthermore, Jung envisions the east and west as mutually complements of introversion and extroversion. Such dichotomies equally serve to support interests of either rationalistic devaluation or intuitive infatuation. The more important issue is how such a dualistic 'complementary' structure is itself a hermenutic of exploitation - allowing the west to again usurp and appropriate the east for its own needs - as tool of collective self-reflection. For Donald Lopez "Tibet is rendered into a service society for the white race, that originally belonged to it but in the meantime had been lost" (qtd. in Germano 166, 171). Ronald Inden concludes that all such binary essentialisms in Orientalist discourse should thus be discontinued (2). Moreover, Jung readily asserts equivalents between individuation and eastern notions while overlooking implicit differences. For example, liberation for Jung prioritizes the individual's self-healing while emancipation in the Mahayana tradition is contingent on others (Clark, Dialogue 169; Rubin 19). Similarly, western individuation seeks a balance between conflicting psychological forces in a complexio oppositorum while Buddhism seeks to transcend conflict into a full non-dualism. While the integration of polarity is fundamental to Tantric Buddhism, Jung simply appropriates non-duality as analogous to his notion of complementary opposites (Moacanin 80). For Clark, Jung is ultimately "wed" to western dualism (Dialogue 148, 173-174). However, Buddhist non-dualism holds to an ultimate obliteration of subject-object differentation while Jung sees conflict as inherently necessary to both psychological life and civilization.

Jung's argument of complementary positions foreshadows a contemporary twist on this theme. Rubin suggests Buddhism and psychoanalysis offer fundamentally incompatible views of mind and human existence (47). Instead of introversion and extroversion, Rubin offers another complementary dichotomy - nearsighted and farsighted. Reminiscient of Jung, Rubin is opposed to an "impossible" synthesis or syncretism. However, Rubin believes Buddhism and psychoanalysis can mutually correct their respective shortcomings. Focusing particularly on Vipassana meditation, Rubin offers that Buddhist subjectivity is nearsighted, atomistic, ahistorical, and thus prone to serious ethical lapses (66). He believes the strong, coherent, farsighted self valued by analysis is a necessary precondition to later Buddhist disidentification. However, Rubin attempts to avoid simplistic cultural prejudice by merely seeing each perspective as "alternating positions of being" rather than hierarchical stages (75).

Unfortunately, Rubin repackages the 'essentialist' position in a more subtle argument while also ignoring substantial Jungian contribution to this dialogue. For many such commentators on eastern - psychoanalytic dialogue, all of psychoanalysis is commonly represented by drive theory, object relations and Kohut's Self-psychology with little attention to Jungian or Archetypal commentary (Suler 41). In this Freudian bias, there rests an axiomatic moral presumption that the self (ego) exists and should be strengthened (9, 22, 64). Attempts to engage depth psychology with Buddhism focus on reconciling the eastern no-Self with the Freudian ego, or necessary Kohutian narcissism - by either suggesting complementary opposites (Rubin) or positing that the conflict is illusory (Epstein). However, this discourse conveniently ignores an entire history of Jungian and post-Jungian scholarship, which prioritizes relativization of the ego. For David Brazier, Buddhism offers an ethical view of life more psychologically healthy than traditional western moralities of prohibition (36). In contrast, for Rubin, the shadow of Buddhism is an ethical problem, which requires a complement. However, in expecting Buddhism to meet a western humanitarian, individualistic morality - Rubin has unwittingly revealed an unstated Eurocentric and hierarchical bias. More importantly, Epstein criticizes Rubin's prerequisite for a stable Self -which is only later abandoned (98). Such a position does not take seriously the fundamental Buddhist insight into the nature of the empty Self and instead, replaces it with a mental gymnastics of sequential but necessary illusions.

It is this notion of emptiness (sunyata) which is Buddhism's most distinctive characteristic. Emptiness is commonly misunderstood as a positivized absence - an emptying out of the mind's contents. However, true emptiness insists that no such mind exists which can be emptied. The Self is fully appreciated as an illusory metaphor - there is no particular 'real' substantive agent (Epstein 41, 90). The western existential issue of self-identity is inherently flawed because the question itself presumes a conceptual substantiation of Self. The Self is the illusory metaphor by which we are constantly seduced into literalism. So-called 'hard' factual reality is ultimately always the simultaneous display of a specific fantasy (Hillman, Archetypal 32). Emptiness is a pure absence which cannot be erroneously positivized into a presence without the introduction of falsity. Buddhism posits the mind itself is imagination and any attribution of "thingness" is a defense against a direct experience of reality. The focus of attention shifts from finding an illusory true self to clearly experiencing the manifestations of a false Self (Epstein 73, 87, 138).

For Epstein, the central construct to Buddhism is appreciating our tendency to think of the Self as a fixed spatial metaphor (138, 206; Rubin 27). Here Buddhism takes imagination back onto itself in a manner strongly analogous to archetypal psychology. Jung prioritized the image and psychic reality. However, he consistently wavered between a phenomenology of belief and Kantian limitations on the potential for knowledge (Clark, Dialogue 128, 140, 150). Jung remained ambiguous and even contradictory on whether psychic reality was an ontological primary reality or merely a methodological restriction. For Jung the metaphor of Self is still positivized as a 'being' (Meckel 125). In contrast, Archetypal Psychology gives full ontological primacy to the metaphorical nature of reality. Both Buddhism and Archetypal Psychology see themselves more as method towards truth than fixed dogma (Hahn 213). For Hillman, Soul is a mediating perspective rather than a thing-in-itself (Blue Fire 20). While Jung could not conceive of human consciousness without an ego, Hillman more fully completes the project of relativization - encouraging even an "animal" consciousness (Moacannin 94; Clark, Dialogue 170; Blue Fire 9, 25, 32, 62, 68).

Here we find deep and ironic resonance between the Buddha and Hillman. Buddhism emphasizes the paramount need to recognize reality as our projections and Hillman envisions consciousness as a paradoxical realization of our constant immersion in unconsciousness. For the Buddha, we are nothing more that a combination of five skandhas - aggregates (Meckel 129). Hillman reminds us how Soul - existing between Spirit and Matter - is as much 'real' as literal reality. Similarly, the Buddha rejects both essentialist-literal and nihilistic-annihilationist perspectives of Self for a further standpoint of no-Self (Mechel 130). For Archetypal Psychology the language of Soul is metaphor. We live within metaphors and are never beyond fantasy structures (Archetypal 33). All human activity is, at first, an act of imagination. A phenomenon, even literal reality, cannot be observed unless the observer has a metaphor through which to see it. Schenk says we are "always in a metaphorical existence, living thru a larger other, a perspective, ideal, frame of mind, mood, text, place, god" (Schenk, Dark 47). We hear a definite Buddhist echo in Hillman's own description of Soul - an "emptying out, the creation of a negative capability, or a profound listening" - a reflective mediating perspective rather than an object (Blue Fire 20, 154). Likewise, in recent eastern scholarship - "the sense of a world to be transcended has been replaced with the idea of a world that needs to be viewed without distorting illusion" (Clarke, Jung 177). For both Buddhism and Hillman, ignorance is an illusory literalism and the phenomenological reality of perspective, fantasy and metaphor is prioritized.

Despite these similarities, key differences remain. Tantric visualization practices are defined by tradition while Jung's active imagination is purely individual. Similarly, Jung does not specifically emphasize compassion or Eros as it is in Tibetan Buddhism (Moacanin 103). Most importantly, despite a compassionate 'return to the world' offered by Mahayana and Vajrayana, in Buddhism samsara can eventually be overcome. Bypassing misconceptions about transcendent escapism, the ultimate goal for Buddhism remains to be happy and not suffer. As previously indicated, Jung traditionally embraced suffering and conflict. However, interestingly, in his dialogue with Hisamatsu - Jung wavered. After initially negating the possibility of escape, Jung surprisingly suggested humans could ultimately free themselves from suffering (Mechel 111). In contrast, for Hillman soul must simply be embraced deeply with simultaneous recognition of our participation in a sometimes tragic, but always-mythic drama. For Hillman life is the goal and there is no escape. In Buddhism emptiness 'solves' the problem of life but for Archetypal Psychology there is no problem to solve. Happiness is the primary goal of Buddhism but it remains an incidental dramatic byproduct for Hillman. While the former seeks a "pregnant void" of emptiness, the latter seeks a "pregnant immediacy" of the phenomenon (Epstein 190; Schenk, Sunken 36). Buddhism allows a final culmination of enlightenment both desired and feared by Jung - but overtly rejected by Hillman. Buddhism opens one to experience but simultaneously offers hope for getting beyond that experience. Archetypal Psychology opens to a never-ending stimulation of further images.

© Barry Mills M.D. 2003
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