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JUNG, CHRISTIANITY, AND BUDDHISM
James W.Heisig
Throughout the past generation of Christianity’s encounter with Buddhism, the role
played by Jungian psychology has been ancillary at best. True, Jung’s ideas are cited
with a certain regularity, but for some reason the systematic body of thought he left
behind has not attracted Christians or Buddhists as a common forum for mutual
criticism and enrichment. In this essay I would like to draw attention to what I see
as an unnecessary closure in Jung’s idea of the psyche and to suggest how its opening
could nudge Christianity and Buddhism into closer contact with each other and with
the shifts that have taken place in the general spirituality of our age.
The body of writings Jung left behind is at once forbidding and fascinating. The
sheer volume of his output, which continues to grow as notes from his seminars and
other unpublished material are added, makes it more and more unlikely that any but
a small coterie of devoted specialists will take the time to become familiar with the
whole. Even so, the academic background the specialist needs to read with
understanding all but ensures that large blocks of his work will simply be skimmed
over uncritically. For the same reason, general readers, in which group one must
include the greater part of Jungian analysts, commentators, and critics, tend to dip
into his writings according to their needs and to rely on secondary sources for general
outlines of his thought. As a result, Jung’s influence, while it reflects the breadth of
his interests, tends to flow in most cases from no more than a small portion of his work.
Still, the captivating quality of Jung’s work greatly outshines the impossible
demands he places on his readers. The maps he drew of the psyche and the wealth of
clinical and historical material he snares with his interpretative nets have a way of
relativizing one’s ordinary way of thinking about the experiences of life and of lending
depth to his frequent asides about self-actualization, culture, and religion. And
everywhere, between the lines, the unmistakable traces of personal experience work
a subtle seduction on the reader. Simply put, Jung’s ideas cannot be approached from
books about Jung’s ideas. One has first to enter into the atmosphere of his thought
and breathe it in, resisting the gullibility or hasty skepticism that it is wont to prompt
from the unprepared. He is not the only thinker of whom this can be said, of course,
but the way his disciples and critics have abused his work makes it worth repeating
at the outset of yet another appraisal of his ideas.