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 importantly to the burgeoning field of psychotherapy by formulating some of the first ideas regarding dream analysis, psychological composite plantes and precedents (paradigmatic images or instinctive impulses to action). As part of his search for universal keys to the humans psyche, Jung also studied and wrote numerous commentaries throughout his career on easterly religious texts and practices. His reading of Buddhism however, is fundamentally faulted as evidenced by his interpret and misrepresentation of mandala symbolism. Originally, Buddhist mandalas1 aide-mmoires that helped meditators keep focussed during long elaborate visualizations. They were flavourless circumscribed square floor plans that represented three-dimensional palatial constructions. individually mandala palace was equated in meditation with the psycho-spatial c omplex of the meditator himself, so that any Buddha or2 depict 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 broad(a) 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 make in 1935 as Psychologisc her Kommentar zum Bardo Thodol. Das Tibetanische Totenbuch. Russel, Elbert W. Consciousness and the Unconscious Eastern reflective 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 clamber Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute 6 (1988) 109-150. Wayman, Alex. Contributions on the symbolic representation of the Mandala Palace. Etudes Tibetaines, Dedies la Mmoire de Marcelle Lalou. Paris Librairie dAmerique et dOrient, Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971.