Moreover, Jung’s work, fundamentally, consisted of caring for the ego. I recall Jung’s
frequent reminder that he does not speak about God himself but, rather, about images
of God in the human psyche. Jung, as psychologist, limited his work to considering
those things which can be grasped by ego and then verbalized. He expressed these
from the ego’s side. Buddhism, on the other hand, passed through such an area at
once and reached the level of Emptiness or conscious non-discrimination. Thus it
describes the consciousness from that side, not from the ego’s side. In order to
accomplish such a descent in level of consciousness, Buddhism developed various
methods of meditation and chanting, practices which maintain full awareness of
concentration and observation. The results of such effort are described in many sutras.
During such practice as zazen (Zen meditation), for example, Zen refuses to attend
to the ‘middle zone’ of ego consciousness, reaching instead toward Emptiness
consciousness. Jungian psychology, it seems to me, focuses on images in that middle
zone which Zen practitioners pass through, and interprets them in relation to the ego.
With this key difference in mind, I would like to discuss how I think about and
practice psychotherapy. Since I was trained as a Jungian analyst, I believe that,
generally speaking, I follow Jung’s ideas. I also want to make it clear that I have never
had an experience such as what is called Emptiness consciousness. Yet I also, at this
point, don’t think that I should practice Zen in order to have such an experience.
Despite that, I could not help but pay attention to Buddhism because my ego started
to change, getting closer to Buddhist views. Even though I thought I was practicing
psychotherapy according to Jung’s ideas, probably I still have a different kind of ego
from that of Westerners. Compared to the Western ego, the Japanese ego is living
far more ‘in everything,’ much as I have described in presenting Hua-yen ideas. Before
asserting my ego’s independence and integration, I think of myself as an existence
living in the world of Interdependent Origination. Frankly, when I meet those
Jungian analysts who ‘analyze’ and ‘interpret’ everything, I feel like saying to them,
‘Everything is Emptiness,’ although I really don’t comprehend what that statement
means. One consequence of having such an ambiguous way of life is that I have
obtained a good number of excellent results through psychotherapy in Japan. But
what I am doing need not be limited only to Japan. I hope that it also will be helpful
to some degree in other cultural regions. Because this contemporary period is a time
of cultural collision, I think that no one can live comfortably in their indigenous,
traditional culture.
ReferencesBettelheim, B. (1983) Freud and Man’s Soul, New York: Freeman Press.
Freud, S. (1964) New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. and ed. J. Strachey, London:
Hogarth Press.
Guggenbuhl-Craig, A. (1971) Power in the Helping Professions, New York: Spring Publications.
Izutsu, T. (1980) ‘The nexus of ontological events: a Buddhist view of reality’, in Eranos
Yearbook 49 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1981).
Izutsu, T. (1989) ‘Cosmos to anticosmos’ [Cosmos and anticosmos], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
144 HAYAO KAWAI