contrasts the West and the East respectively as presenting extraversion and
introversion. This difference was also understood as the conflict of religion and
science.
Jung’s deep appreciation of Buddhism should be understood in relation to the
Jungian concept of the self. When he was invited by the British Government of India,
he had an opportunity of directly experiencing Buddhism in the temple of Sanchi.
He was deeply moved to see its structure where the path leads into a clockwise
circumambulation around the stupa, and statues of the Buddha stood at the four
cardinal points, and to hear the prayer of Om mani padme hum followed by the stroke
of the gong. There is no doubt that he experienced there the reality of what he called
‘self’ in his theory. He knew, however, that this was the experience of something not
new but familiar, though its significance had previously been unconscious. So his
experience of Buddhism in India was the confirmation of what he had known.
The concept of the self provided Jung with a psychological framework for
contrasting and connecting the two world religions from a unifying perspective. For
him both the Buddha and the Christ were an embodiment of the self, though in an
altogether different sense. ‘Both stood for an overcoming of the world: Buddha out
of rational insight; Christ as a foredoomed sacrifice’ (Jaffé 1965:279). Yet, inasmuch
as the two religions are given the possible status of revelations of the self, we might
well raise a question whether Jung’s psychology itself is not functioning as a religion.
In other words, how is the autonomy of each religion acknowledged within his system
as partners in a dialogue?
Psychological commentaries on Eastern spiritual textsIn almost all his psychological essays on Buddhism, as well as other Eastern
spiritualities (Jung 1978a; 1978b; 1978c; 1978d), Jung expresses several characteristic
concerns. He first emphasizes the difference in mentality between the East and the
West, and, as a consequence, warns Western readers not to blindly imitate Eastern
spiritual practices. He rather advises them to firmly stand on Western soil. Then, he
advocates something apparently contradictory, namely, he stresses how much Eastern
spiritualities deserve to be studied. For they seemed to him to suggest a way out of
the predicament in which Western people found themselves: the conflict of religion
and science, the one-sided development of consciousness, and the destructive
emergence of the unconscious as a consequence, the loss of balance and so on.
Jung’s interest in the East had nothing to do with Orientalism as escapism that is
often suspected to hide Western imperialism, but was rather motivated by the need
for self-exploration. For Jung, the East was a mirror in which the West could find
wisdom for its much-needed self-awareness. Clarke (1994) rightly places Jung in the
long tradition of dialogue with the East as a means to self-examination.
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