Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

Buddhism in transformations and symbols of libido

Transformations and Symbols of Libido (Jung 1912/1991), a work that made decisive
Jung’s break with Freud and became a turning point in the development of his
thought, reveals Jung’s ongoing and deepening understanding of Schopenhauer’s
ideas. He points out that libido is not confined to the sexual, but manifests itself in
many ways, like the will in Schopenhauer (ibid.: 130). Did Jung not find an answer
to the question how the blind will could be converted to its self-denial in the idea of
the sacrifice of libido, the title of the final chapter of the book? Here he seems to be
overcoming the Kantian subject-object dichotomy. Libido is not passively
symbolized, but actively becomes symbols through its own self-sacrifice. Does this
transformation of libido not echo the self-denial of the will in Schopenhauer?
Interestingly enough, Jung’s references to Buddhism in this work show that he was
especially interested in its symbolism. The tree under which the Buddha was
enlightened, for example, was for him the symbol of Mother, and so his meditation
under it was the introversion of libido as the return to Mother’s uterus that is its
origin (ibid.: 332).

Septum Sermones ad Mortuos

In search of a spiritual orientation during the time that followed his break with Freud
in 1912, Jung needed to find historical representations of his own recent inner
experiences that he called a confrontation with the unconscious. Gnosticism became
such a representation. According to his autobiography, he studied it from 1916 until
1926.
His 1916 writing Septum Sermones ad Mortuos is, in his own words, what Philemon
(Jung’s alter ego in this text) might have said (Jaffé 1965:190). Aniela Jaffé, the
compiler of the autobiography, notes that, drawn to Gnostic thinking in paradoxes,
Jung identified himself with the Gnostic writer Basilides (early second century AD)
and took over some of the latter’s terminology (ibid.: 378). Perhaps Jung had also
been acquainted with Gnosticism earlier than 1916, maybe through Schopenhauer’s
references to it in his main work.
Noteworthy is ‘Alexandria, the East touches the West’ in the title of this
quasi-Gnostic writing. There is historical evidence for a connection between
Alexandria and India (Fields 1986:17–18). Conze (1975) points out similarities
between Gnosis and Buddhism. Although Kennedy argued in 1902 that the ‘negative
theology’ of Basilides in Alexandria was ‘Buddhist Gnosticism,’ de Lube denied a link
between Gnosticism and Buddhism.

Pleroma or Creatura?

Septem Sermones ad Mortuos makes us suspect that Jung was familiar with some basic
Buddhist ideas. In the name of Basilides, he opens his sermons with these words: ‘I
begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no

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