Carl Gustav Jung and the Buddhist Mandala Essay -- Buddhism Religion P

Carl Gustav Jung and the Buddhist Mandala A one-time disciple of Sigmund Freuds, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is credited with contributing significantly to the burgeoning field of psychotherapy by formulating some of the first ideas regarding dream analysis, mental compositees and cowcatchers (paradigmatic images or instinctive impulses to action). As part of his search for universal keys to the man psyche, Jung also studied and wrote numerous commentaries throughout his career on east religious texts and practices. His reading of Buddhism however, is fundamentally faulted as evidenced by his construe and misrepresentation of mandala symbolism. Originally, Buddhist mandalas1 aide-mmoires that helped meditators keep focussed during long elaborate visualizations. They were categoric circumscribed square floor plans that represented three-dimensional palatial constructions. individually mandala palace was equated in meditation with the psycho-spatial complex of the med itator himself, so that any Buddha or2 picture within his projected self-construction was understood to be a personification of his receive enlightenment potential. The meditator would then mentally circumambulate his own palatial self-projection and consciously identify himself with the palaces (i.e. with his own) resident bodhisattvas. After effecting this transformative deity yoga, the meditator would then dissolve the complete edifice into emptiness. He thereby constructed, transformed and dissolved his own psycho-physical complex into the empty nature of Buddhahood. According to Carl Jung however, mandalas expressed the deep-seated universal archetype of the completely whole Self which balanced and integrated its conscious and uncon... ...n Buddhist Insight Meditation. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 20.1 (1988) 61-69. Jung, Carl Gustav. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Collect gen Series, 1978. Originally create in 1935 as Psychologischer Kommentar zum Bardo Thodol. Das Tibetanische Totenbuch. Russel, Elbert W. Consciousness and the Unconscious Eastern wistful And Western Psychotherapeutic Approaches. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology18.1 (1986) 51-72. Waldron, William. A Comparison of the Alayavijnana with Freuds and Jungs Theories of the Unconscious. Annual Memoirs of the Otani University fight Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute 6 (1988) 109-150. Wayman, Alex. Contributions on the symbolisation of the Mandala Palace. Etudes Tibetaines, Dedies la Mmoire de Marcelle Lalou. Paris Librairie dAmerique et dOrient, Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971.