POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO JUNG
The goal in psychotherapy is exactly the same as in Buddhism.
(C. G. Jung)1
The most conspicuous difference between Buddhism and Western psychology is perhaps found in their respective treatments of the concept of “self.” In Western psychology, the existence of a “self” is generally affirmed; Buddhism denies the existence of an enduring “self” and substitutes instead the concept of anatman, “no-self.”
(Masao Abe)2
C. G. Jung was the first psychoanalyst to pay close and serious attention to Buddhism and to write commentary on his own careful readings of Buddhist texts. In 1992, Meckel and Moore published a comprehensive collection of the English translations of Jung’s commentaries – beginning with Jung’s 1939 “Foreword” to Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Meckel and Moore, 1992, pp. 11–30). Jung wrote about and commented on writings from Japanese, Tibetan, and Chinese sources. Bringing in both original insights and important questions, Jung’s essays formed an early backdrop for various conversations to develop between Western psychology and Buddhist practices.
My own training to become a Jungian psychoanalyst began in 1979, eight years after I had formally become a student of Zen Buddhism. I came to my study of psychology in general, and to Jung’s psychology in particular, with a background in Buddhist thought and practice. The interaction between the two disciplines has formed a core aspect of my development as a human being and a psychoanalyst for several decades now. While this interaction has been extraordinarily useful, it hasn’t always been easy or clear.
Considerable perplexity has arisen for anyone interested in the dialogue between these disciplines over the past five decades. Perhaps most troubling has been confusion about language and terms – especially concepts such as ego, self, consciousness, and unconscious – and distortions in history or fact. Both traditions have subtle and complex theories about conscious and unconscious subjective life and it has been very difficult to determine where they overlap and depart from each other. At times, we have been steeped in so much befuddlement as not to be able to make sense of encounters between practitioners from these two traditions. For instance, when the renowned contemporary Zen master, Shin’ichi Hisamatsu visited Jung in Zurich in 1958, specifically to have a conversation with him about “the state of psychoanalysis today” (Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto, 2002, p. 111), Hisamatsu believed that Jung was the founder of psychoanalysis. When Hisamatsu said as much, Jung did not dissuade him. More important, Hisamatsu asked Jung, “From what you have said [in this conversation] about the collective unconscious, might I infer that one can be liberated from it?” To the utter surprise of everyone present (and everyone since), Jung replied, “Yes!” To which, Hisamatsu responded, “What we in Buddhism, and especially in Zen, usually call the ‘common self’ corresponds exactly to what you call the ‘collective unconscious.’ Only through liberation from the collective unconscious, namely, the common self, the authentic self emerges.” (Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto, 2002, p. 116) What this exchange really means is anyone’s guess. Muramoto’s translation and helpful commentary on this meeting attempt to clear up as many ambiguities as possible, but still many remain. Undoubtedly, this is why Jung refused to give his permission to have the transcript published, although ultimately it came into print. After you have read this chapter, I hope you will return to this opening passage and decide for yourself whether you believe that Jung actually thought that we can liberate ourselves from the collective unconscious or if he was so frustrated and confused that he blurted out a response that he would have preferred not to.
In this past decade, many publications and conferences have offered discriminating insights and new commentaries that have, I believe, brought the conversation between Jung’s psychology and Buddhism to a new level of clarity and usefulness. Collections of essays such as Meckel and Moore (1992), Molino (1998), Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto (2002) and Safran (2003) have contributed significant new findings and voices – especially from Western psychoanalysts who are also long-term Buddhist practitioners – that permit us now to move beyond simple comparisons and contrasts and muddled reasoning. In addition, books by individuals who are both Jungian analysts (or Jungian therapists) and committed Buddhist practitioners – such as Odajnyk (1993), Young-Eisendrath (1997), Glaser (2005), and Preece (2006) – have been invaluable in making precise suggestions about how to use Jung and Buddhism in doing clinical work and understanding personal development.
In this chapter I offer my own analysis of how Jung’s psychology and Buddhism can work together in helping us better understand the transformation of human suffering and the nature of subjectivity and intersubjectivity.
These topics bring me to a contemporary inquiry into archetype, complex, karma, self, and no-self, especially in regard to the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Finally, I will close with a few remarks about Jung’s apparently negative feelings about Westerners practicing Buddhism.
Complex and karma
For the past couple of decades, I have been interested in the ways in which Jung’s theory of psychological complexes and the Buddha’s teachings on karma relate to and illuminate each other. Let me first discuss the ways in which I understand and use Jung’s concept of a complex, and then I will turn to the Buddha’s teaching about karma.
Although Jung’s early ideas about the affectively charged complex were influenced by the pioneering work of French psychologist Pierre Janet, Jung’s later (post-1944) theory of a psychological complex drew more on the nascent fields of evolutionary biology and ethology. Whereas the early theory emphasizes personal meaning, as opposed to collective meaning, the later theory emphasizes the situational factors that provoke an enactment or discharge of a complex.
Drawing on Jung’s later theory, I regard a complex as an emotional habit to see, think, feel, and act (including speak) in a predictable way under triggering circumstances. At the affective core of every complex is an archetype, according to Jung’s later theory. I would define archetype to mean a universal predisposition to form a coherent image (a mental image that affects how we “see” the world and others, as well as how we fantasize ourselves in relation to others) in certain emotionally aroused states.
The Great Mother and Terrible Mother – depicted in myth, fairytale, and iconography throughout the world – are two obvious examples of such commanding archetypal images. These images are connected to the fact that a human childhood is a long, conflicted dependency in which both the child and caregivers experience an ambivalent mix of feelings and actions. All children habituate to emotionally charged attachment relationships that organize especially around pleasurable, gratifying themes (Great Mother) and painful, rejecting or overwhelming ones (Terrible Mother). Because of our long and risky dependency, human beings everywhere are predisposed to shape highly positive and negative images, and then to impose and project those images onto actual caregivers and others who are in authoritative, intimate, or provident roles throughout life.
And so, I regard archetypes as universal constraints on human experience that arise from: (1) our attachment systems, including relationships; (2) the ubiquitous characteristics of human subjectivity; and (3) the predictable features of our birth, ageing, and eventual demise. Archetypes curtail our subjective freedom, just as our biology and instincts limit our objective freedom. In my view, Jung’s later (post-1944) theory of complex and archetype opened the way to linking archetypal theory with the motivational and perceptual systems of emotions, as they respond to the set-up and limits of our species, especially the life of the mind.
Each individual has a specific and particular exposure to the conditions in which archetypal images are organized – based on caregivers and their personalities, trauma, culture, society, physical health, and many other factors. Any psychological complex that forms around the core of an archetype will express not only mental images that promote a sort of internal theater, but also the actions, feelings, language, and so on that accompany that archetype from its beginnings as a complex. Over time, our complexes gather steam and become better defended, with attitudes and desires of their own – conscious, unconscious, and partly conscious.
The human personality is a gathering of such loosely associated autonomous complexes (e.g. Mother, Father, Child, Shadow, Ego). According to Jung, then, people are naturally and normally dissociated in their experiences of themselves and others. Our personalities are discontinuous and hard to manage.Wefrequentlydefendourselvesthroughprojection,findingourworst problems and habits in others. Rather than being regulated by conscious cortical thought, we are more often motivated by emotional self-states. Any complex can capture conscious awareness, and drive our actions, sensations, and internal images, but the ego complex – about which I’ll say more later – is most often connected to conscious perception. Each complex contains both “subject” and “object” positions or poles, bringing with it an unconscious internal drama or theater in which others are unknowingly invited or directed to play out certain scenes or dynamics. And so, complexes are interactive emotional scripts: projection-makers as well as internal fantasy-makers.
For instance, if I have a depressed, restless, low-energy Mother complex, I may have learned to respond by cheering up the (M)other. And so, I am quick to see others – especially my co-worker, spouse, or child – as hopelessly lost in their bad feelings or restlessness, in need of my plumping them up. On the other hand, I may reverse this dynamic and identify with the Mother (object) pole of the complex and demand that someone else play the Cheerful Child to my Depressed Mother.
These complexes are neither factually true, nor are they unrelated to the facts of our growing up. They blend the internal responses, fantasies, and reactivities of a child with the actual events and interactions that happened to that child. No one – even after a very effective analysis or psychotherapy – can know exactly what is fact and what is emotional fiction in these complexes, and yet, the complexes are “true” in the way that they are commanding involuntary dynamics that recur in an individual’s personality, identity, and relationships.
In working with Jung’s theory of complex and archetype in individual and couples psychotherapy and analysis, I begin by helping people become aware of how they repetitively recreate internal and external relational themes with themselves and others. Usually, we focus initially on the dynamics that act as impasses or roadblocks – presented as symptoms and sufferings when people enter psychotherapy. Eventually we discover other more subtle – perhaps more creative or nurturing or darker – complexes.
Whether we investigate these themes in transference, countertransference, and dreams in individual therapy or we study repetitive interactions in couples therapy, my patient and I eventually come to see the internal theater of the mind as it is played out through habits. It is not very hard to hear the “scripts” or predictable phrases, to witness the gestures and body sensations, to feel the feelings, and to discover the internal fantasies that mark each complex with its particular psychological meanings and causes. It’s much more difficult to know what to do next.
In working with complexes in therapy, I first and foremost want both of us – patient and therapist – to be open-minded witnesses to the internal voices, images, and body sensations. In order to become alert to being triggered by a complex, we have to see and feel it somewhat mindfully, reflectively. If we do not know that we are captured by an emotional habit, we have no freedom at all; we simply play it out. It seems to be reality. If we condemn our habits too quickly, we feel humiliated or trapped in shame, guilt, or self-pity.
After some reliable self-awareness is in place, my next job is to help my patient become compassionate with herself for having and being this complex. I want her to understand in some comprehensible way what already happened, or seemed to have happened, to her that resulted in her forming this habit: that its script or directives respond, in some way, to the original happening. The complex made sense in some earlier context and was adaptive to circumstances, just as the intrusively cheerful or officious attitude of a grown-up woman makes sense when we uncover her desire to cheer up her frequently depressed low-energy mother.
At this point in a treatment, a patient has enough knowledge and insight to have the option of acting differently and/or acknowledging and repairing any relational or other damage done. Typically, though, he is resistant or afraid to make a change. Usually there is a period of time – sometimes quite lengthy in an individual psychotherapy or analysis – when he and I go round and round the same complexes that emerge within our therapy sessions. The patient seems stuck or stymied even though he may be quite conscious of what he enacts and why. Inevitably, he eventually becomes aware of his deep desire to rid himself of his complex and/or for me to erase it. From the time he entered therapy, he had secretly hoped that his insight or my “magic” would remove the difficult habits of his mind. Instead, he finds that he must work with these habits himself, becoming familiar with the ways he is unconsciously drawn into enactments in order to be able not to identify with or condemn these emotional configurations.
Repeatedly we embrace the reluctant recognition that our habits stay with us. Our only freedom consists in our becoming an increasingly more objective observer of their triggering effects and finding the hidden meaning within them – which may be creative or insightful or not. Instead of treating a complex as an imperative to act, we regard it as subjective experience. We allow the feelings, thoughts, images, and body sensations to pass through us without acting. We reflect on their meaning rather than act it out.
My Jungian therapeutic method for working with psychological complexes, as just described, is infused with my Buddhist understanding of karma. The Buddha specifically transformed the Indian theory of karma from a theory of predestination into a theory of intentional action. Most scholars would say that the Buddha’s major teaching on “karma” is that our intentional actions have consequences which come back to haunt us on all levels of our lives. But karma is more than a law of cause and effect because it underpins many teachings in Buddhist ethics. It accounts for how our deliberate actions lead not only to the structure of our moral character – for better and worse – but affect our relationships with people and other beings.
The Buddha taught that intention or volition is the most important component of our actions and that our behavior is secondary, although still significant. Perhaps most important for our discussion, the Buddha clearly showed that human character is not fixed, but is malleable and so, can be changed. The way to change our character is through our intentions and actions. Becoming mindful – observant in a precise and relaxed way – we are able to know our intentions and see the potential consequences of our actions before we engage in them.
Like a good psychoanalyst, the Buddha believed that the meaning of a person’s action cannot be known merely by seeing the manifest behavior; to know the meaning requires a knowledge of the intention behind the action (Nagapriya, 2004, pp. 41–42). For example, you may help a sick friend because you feel genuine empathy and compassion or to accrue recognition or special favors. Your action looks the same in either case, but the karma resulting would be different. In the first case, your intentions would be “skillful” and in the second, “unskillful,” in Buddhist language. Skillful intentions come from understanding, generosity, and compassion and lead to insight and wisdom. Unskillful ones are rooted in confusion, craving, and hatred and lead to suffering and ignorance. Learning to discriminate unskillful from skillful desires, and acting on the skillful, is foundational for practicing Buddhist ethics.
In ordinary life, however, most of our motives are mixed. The Buddha very much recognized unconscious motivations and the ways in which we can deny and rationalize our desires. If a person wants to become skillful and observes some harmful (to self or other) long-term effects from his actions, even though he is unaware of having negative motives, then he should consult with another person whom he respects on the Buddhist path. In other words, the Buddha taught that a person “should not feel embarrassed or ashamed to reveal his mistakes to people he respected, for if he started hiding his mistakes from them, he would soon start hiding them from himself” (Thanissaro, 2006, p. 44).
Choice and intention are not always obvious, according to the Buddha: just because we are unaware or fail to consider our motivations does not automatically mean that we have no choice. Lack of awareness is itself a habit that we perpetuate if we do nothing about it. Within the Buddha’s teachings on karma there are subtle and practical applications that interface readily with the psychoanalytic idea of unconscious or preconscious motivation or desire. Also, there are similarities with psychoanalytic ideas about personal responsibility: we may or may not be responsible for actions that are unconsciously motivated, according to the Buddha. Once we have some knowledge of our motivations, only then do we become responsible.
Jung’s theory of a psychological complex with an archetypal core is remarkably similar to one aspect of the Buddha’s teaching about karma, relating to “volitional dispositions.” The character or personality that makes us unique individuals expresses the sum total of our dispositions:
Our volitional dispositions are our tendencies to act, speak, and think in a particular way. They are what determine our habits and thus what make us distinctive. They constitute those aspects of our character which others are constantly praising or complaining about. Depending on our particular moral make-up, some of these habits will be skilful, others unskilful. Owing to their relative continuity, we tend to think that these habits are enduring and unchanging, but this is a mistake that prevents us reforming them and realizing our potential. (Nagapriya, 2004, p. 51)
When a person comes in for psychotherapy, she will generally complain about her own and others’ dispositions. From a Buddhist perspective, she’s talking about unskillful habits and from a Jungian perspective, she’s concerned with psychological complexes.
In the course of an effective treatment, I see myself as working especially with the karma that has accrued in my patients’ lives from emotional habits and patterns that developed in the relational set-up or trauma of their early life. From a Buddhist perspective, I am helping them change their intentions from unskillful to skillful, and in some cases, helping them stop re-enacting patterns that are deeply harmful by showing them how to be mindfully aware of the aggregated subjective experience of a complex. I never mention to my patients these Buddhist influences, unless the patients are themselves practitioners of Buddhism and come with their own questions involving Buddhist ideas or methods. And yet, this background supports my own hopefulness about helping people transform their suffering.
Among the many contributions that Jung has made to contemporary psychotherapy practices, I find his theory of complexes to be central. Not only does he clarify the normal dissociated and discontinuous nature of personality, but he also gives a roadmap for tracing the destructive emotional dynamics of human relationships. Often these are the dynamics that have brought an individual for therapeutic help. Working with the Buddha’s teaching on karma helps me keep a bigger picture in mind – in terms of moral development, character, and compassion – in assisting my patients in becoming more aware and responsible in relating to their complexes. Perhaps the most important of these is the ego complex.
A Buddhist Jungian account of self and ego
The human self, as I would define it, is our experience of being a limited continuousindividualsubjectwithaseparationbetween“inside”and“outside.” As humans, we have the distinct impression that we are “in here” in a body, while the world is “out there,” outside the body. These are sense impressions that are strongly reinforced by society, culture, and language, after the age of about eighteen months. You may believe that the self is palpable and real, but as the Buddha discovered more than 2,500 years ago, if you look for evidence that it exists, you can’t find it. We cannot see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or cognize it – and that is why even psychologists and psychoanalysts (who use the term all the time) cannot agree on a definition of it. My definition above is one I have taken years to work out. Being a Buddhist, I am especially careful in defining the self because I have discovered what a fiction it is. Being a Jungian, I am aware all the same what an important fiction it is.
From the perspective of both disciplines, I want to reformulate the way we think and talk about the self. To begin, I regard the human self as an action of a person that arises in relation to something the person senses or experiences as “other.” The self is not something we are, but something we do. In both Buddhism and Jung’s psychology it would clarify a lot of confusion to remember that self and person are not identical: the person is the objective body–mind being that exists in a public domain and the self is the subjective function that produces the experience of being an embodied individual with certain traits and capacities. Persons do selves. Perceptually, we unify our subjectivity over time and space, separating ourselves out from the flow of experience. It takes quite a lot of effort to do this, and from time to time, we let go of that effort and fall apart (being out of our bodies, losing track of time, not knowing who we are). Mostly, though, we maintain the self unconsciously through micro-movements in our perceptions. We are not born with this function, but with the potential to develop it: the archetype of self.
Around eighteen months, the toddler begins to announce the effects of this archetype in protesting “No!” and naming “me, mine.” The “terrible two’s” are the birth of the ego complex at the core of which is the archetype of self – a universal predisposition to form a coherent image and impression of being an individual subject. Everywhere, the human self has ubiquitous subjective characteristics: (1) coherence within a body, connected to a body-image; (2) continuity over time in a life story; (3) agency or authorship of action; and (4) attachment routines expressed in bonding, separation anxiety, and grief.
AsIseeit,thearchetypeoftheselfisawakenedbytheonsetofthesecondary or self-conscious emotions that appear between eighteen months and two yearsofage.Theprimaryemotions–sadness,joy,curiosity,disgust,andfear– are present at birth in human infants, as they are in all mammals, but the secondary emotions – shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy, jealousy, pride, conceit, self-pity – are not clearly evident until about eighteen months of age.
When they emerge, they motivate the development of an ego complex: an emotional habit to see, think, feel, and act as a particular embodied individual subject who seems unified. Our ability to sustain this complex in time and space depends on many brain and body states, as well as relational supports, context, language, and culture. We all develop our ego in relation to others. Different societies and cultures sponsor ego complexes with more or less individuality, more or less separate identity, and different values. And yet, everywhere human beings experience coherence, continuity, agency, and attachment routines, in connection with individual identity or they are anomalous.
When we think, act and feel as continuous and separate, without being aware of doing so, we are generating the self automatically and unselfconsciously, like driving a car without noticing it. When we are conscious of ourselves – in states of guilt, shame, pride, jealousy, envy – we become conscious of our ego: this is who I am and how I am in relation to someone or something else. At such times we are drawn into our self-conscious reactivity, defenses, and self-protection.
The Buddha had many useful things to teach about the parameters of the self in our experience:
The Buddha refused to say whether the self exists or not, but he gave a detailed description of how the mind develops the idea of self as a strategy based on craving. In our desire for happiness, we repeatedly engage in what the Buddha calls “I-making” and “my-making,” trying to exercise control over pleasure and pain ... The sense of “I” that leads you to be generous and principled in your actions is an “I” worth making, worth mastering as a skill. So too is the sense of “I” that can assume responsibility for your actions and can be willing to sacrifice a small pleasure now for a greater happiness in the future. (Thanissaro, 2006, p. 46)
The Buddha also emphasized that self-protectiveness and self-consciousness draw us into problematic self-focus. He advised the following strategy for reducing the unhappiness caused by self-concern:
[D]eflect judgments of good and bad away from your sense of self, where they can tie you down with conceit and guilt. Instead, you focus directly on the actions themselves, where the judgments can allow you to learn from your mistakes. (Thanissaro, 2006, p. 44)
Developing self-awareness of our own intentions, and discovering the effects of our mental habits, require moving beyond a positive or negative self-focus.
From decades of research on “flow experience,” conducted by Csikszentmihalyi (e.g. 1991, 1992, 2000) and his associates, we know that selfconsciousness interrupts high concentration states and interferes with equanimity or relaxation. High concentration and equanimity produce what Csikszentimihalyi has dubbed “optimal experience” in which we feel better and learn faster. Flow experience is readily found in activities such as lovemaking, rock-climbing, chess-playing, and meditating (among others). This research shows that getting caught up in the ego complex – with its rationalizations, identity, and defenses – interrupts mindfulness (concentration and relaxation) and the subjective awareness that helps us learn about our mental habits. In helping people cultivate awareness through psychotherapy or mindfulness practices, it’s useful to keep self-conscious emotions and the ego complex at minimal interference levels.
As both Jung and the Buddha point out, there are skillful and unskillful uses of the self and the ego complex. From a Jungian perspective, the archetype of the self functions over a lifetime to motivate us toward greater integration: increased recognition of unconscious complexes, increased selfacceptance as we become more responsible for what we actually do and say, and more compassionate toward ourselves. This archetype imprints us with a tendency to perceive ourselves as a unified subject, while our unconscious complexes have a will of their own, pushing in different directions away from integration, toward unknown or even unknowable motivations or desires. As Jung pointed out repeatedly, if we confuse the integration of the self (the human personality) with increased control by the ego complex over the personality, we are in trouble: we become inflated with omnipotent striving or grandiosity. On the other hand, if we don’t have a strong enough ego function, we are in trouble in a different way, leaning towards psychosis and identifications with non-ego complexes. The goal of “individuation” – a lifetime process of becoming a self-aware person – is a compassionate relationship between the ego complex and other complexes. Said in a different way, we eventually become mindful caretakers of all of our complexes, always open to thoughtful reflection on our motives and desires, no matter how alien or dark they may be.
Although Jung’s theory of an archetypal self has been used by him and his followers to promote a model of an enduring essential self (atman in Sanskrit) or soul, this theory also lends itself to a non-essentialist theory of self, as I have illustrated here and elsewhere (e.g. Young-Eisendrath and Hall, 1991; Young-Eisendrath, 1997; Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto, 2002; Young-Eisendrath, 2004). From a Jungian Buddhist perspective, the human self is neither a single enduring essence nor a teleology. It is better characterized as an emergent property of a particular embodied individual subject. In such a non-essentialist view, there is no underlying essence or predetermined template for that individual. Rather there are the normal human constraints (archetypes), situational factors, and interdependent arisings of relationships and conditions that confront a person with everchanging possibilities for integration and awareness. This non-essentialist approach leaves room for theorizing a no-self (anatman in Sanskrit) as a subjectivity different from self.
A psychotherapeutic perspective on no-self
In a paper by the contemporary Japanese Zen teacher, social activist and humanist, Masao Abe it is argued that Jung’s psychology of self is fundamentally different from Zen practice because the former depends on theories that affirm a belief in an essential and enduring self, whereas Zen disconfirms such a self. (In this paper, Abe is using Zen as a synonym for Buddhism.) For example, Abe says:
In Jung, the ego is no longer identical with the whole of the individual but is a limited substance ... If this relativization ... is strengthened ... it could help open the way to the realization of No-self. But in Jung, instead ... the position of self as the total personality based on the collective unconscious is strongly maintained. (Meckel and Moore, 1992, pp. 128–140)
As I have shown (Young-Eisendrath and Hall, 1991), however, it is possible to understand Jung’s theory of an archetypal self without assuming that the self is an essence or enduring totality. If the self is understood as a function or emergent property of a person, and not a thing, then Jung’s other concepts – such as complex, individuation, unus mundus (oneness aspect of experience), and the collective unconscious (unconscious interpersonal environment shared with others) – can also be interpreted within a constructivist psychology that is epistemologically consistent with Buddhist theories and practices.
While Abe maintains that “there is no suggestion of the realization of the No-self in Jung,” I respectfully disagree. In Jung’s letters, and in some of his commentary on Buddhist texts, he occasionally reveals insights from no-self. Most notably, at the end of his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung remarks on himself:
When Lao-tzu says: ‘All are clear, I alone am clouded,’ he is expressing what I now feel in advanced old age ... Yet, there is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.
(1961, p. 359)
AsAbe(MeckelandMoore,1992,p.133)says,aclearrealizationofno-self in Zen “would reflect ... the non-substantiality of the unconscious self as well as the conscious ego.” I believe that the above passage reflects such a realization. But what is so important about the no-self, anyway?
Answering that question becomes immediately difficult when we use language to describe no-self. In speaking about the self, as I said, we can get into a muddle, but speaking about no-self is even more difficult and dangerous because people readily confuse no-self with no ego or with a nihilistic type of emptiness. Neither of these has a place in Buddhism or is consistent with the phenomenology of no-self.
No-self, in the individual subject, refers to the absence of the felt boundaries of subjectivity at the level of the archetypal self (coherence, continuity, agency and attachment), in the presence of conscious mindful awareness. Buddhist meditative practices are designed to help us focus on such an absence – instances when there are no lacks, gaps, inside–outside, or restlessness that could be regarded as “self” or “other.” At these times, the knower–known or observer–observed are one. Buddhism encourages us to become familiar with no-self phenomena and to study them with mindfulness – not to make them separate or holy, but to see what they teach us. These practices are skillful only when they produce greater compassion and wisdom, not special feelings of spiritual achievement. The Pali term Anatta (or Anatman in Sanskrit) refers to the interbeing or interdependent aspect of reality. Everything (including us) and every moment are dependent on a context that includes others. Because of our strong tendencies to create a separate self (and sustain it through an ego complex) we fail to perceive Anatta under most circumstances of our ordinary lives.
While no-self is hard to describe, it is not so hard to cultivate. The Buddha taught no-self as a practical guide to mindfulness. An earlier quote from Thanissaro talked about the Buddha’s recommendation to deflect judgments of good and bad away from the self and only toward our actions and their consequences. The Buddha instructed even his seven-year-old son to stay away from negative absorptions with the self through shame, guilt, jealousy, envy, and the like. Instead of the self, the Buddha emphasized the power of our actions. Allowing self-conscious emotions to fade, while returning mindfully to a focus on our actions, opens a new perspective.
First and foremost, it forces you to be honest about your intentions and about the effects of your actions. Honesty here is a simple principle: you don’t add any after-the-fact rationalizations to cover up what you actually did nor do you try tosubtract from the actual facts through denial. Because you’re applying this honesty to areas where the normal reaction is to be embarrassed about or afraid of the truth, it’s more than a simple registering of the facts. It also requires moral integrity. (Thanissaro 2006, p. 44)
This is an excellent account of the kind of reflectivity we like to cultivate in our clinical consulting rooms. Then, both therapist and patient gain practice in observing their subjectivity and intersubjectivity without anxiety or remorse: becoming calm and alert witnesses of fantasies, desires, intentions, and actions. To be more reliable observers of our actions and intentions, we must develop an attitude that avoids excessive self-consciousness.
At a fundamental level, teachings on no-self help with this. It is our nature, as Buddhists remind us, to be perpetually dissatisfied, even annoyed or irritated, when the world, others, and the circumstances of our lives do not go as we need them to, or believe that they should. When we are thrown off our center or out of our comfort zone we want to blame someone: ourselves or someone else. Sometimes, we find that there is no one to blame. This brings relief. For example, you are out for your evening walk and a hard object drops down, out of nowhere, hitting your shoulder. You spin around: Who threw that stick at me? Then, you look up and see clearly that a loose branch has fallen down onto you. Instantly, you relax. There is no one to blame, no one to be angry with.
We can feel a similar relief when we see ourselves from our inherent interdependence, webbed in relationships. Looking back over generations or even at a dynamic between people at a particular moment, we may see that the threads of connection and pain are complex enough to mediate against finding someone (self or other) to blame. Buddhist ethical and meditative practices that focus our attention on no-self and no-blame are designed to help us notice and enter into such a state. Recognizing no-self and no-blame, we begin to clarify how and why we “do self,” separating ourselves out from the flow of experience. Then we discover gradually how to be both interdependent and responsible, drawing on both no-self and self. Eventually, we are no longer driven by our ego complex or constantly tripped up by negative (or positive) self-concern.
In longterm therapy, there are many occasions when a therapist and a patient happen upon no-self moments. Sometimes these are moments when the connection between the therapeutic couple is palpable and complete. Then, there seems to be a unity in the room – two people who are not exactly one, but not two. We feel the grace and relaxation of our interbeing. More often, though, no-self comes in with a shock, surprise, or awe.
I live and practice psychotherapy and analysis in a fairly unpopulated rural area, near a small town, where there is always the possibility that my patients may hear some gossip (true or false) about me. When a patient begins a session by saying “Well, I’ve heard something about you that I need to talk about,” I feel a stab of anxiety. We are suddenly outside of our normal proceedings and something is happening that neither of us can control. Often, the intruding story or ideas have been heard innocently enough: at the checkout counter at the drugstore, in line to buy movie tickets, at the local gym. No one is to blame for putting the information on the airwaves. It is no one’s fault. Patient and therapist are faced with something that neither of us planned, something that has come in from left field to disrupt our usual frame. My interest in, and gratitude for, what these moments teach has been very much enhanced by my Buddhist practice.
Both parties may want to “blame” because the intrusion is unwelcome and seems to come from an unconscious source in one or both. There is great value, however, in recognizing that sometimes things happen to us (for instance, the check doesn’t get delivered in the mail, the electricity goes off, the key to the office doesn’t work) that show us directly that we are not in control. And yet, we need each other to transform the difficulty into new insight or growth. If therapist and patient can navigate these unintended no-blame disruptions with a deep respect for the mutuality of their relationship and the relief of not blaming, then they will learn something about trusting interbeing (instead of the ego) at times of upset and pain.
Relational psychoanalysis – practiced by Jungians, intersubjectivists, interpersonalists, and object relations analysts – stresses a two-person or interdependent psychology. I believe that Buddhist teachings and practices of no-self will enhance our ability to develop concepts and apply methods that go beyond our habits of speaking of one mind, one brain or one person in our therapeutic work. I have found Jung’s psychology to be congenial with my own attempts to use no-self in reaching new insights about intersubjective reality.
Jung’s apparent negativity about Buddhism for Westerners
Now that I have demonstrated some ways in which I use Buddhist teachings and ideas to expand my understanding and application of Jungian psychology and psychoanalysis, I want to close by remarking on the negative claims that Jung sometimes made about Westerners practicing Buddhism. Occasionally, still, these kinds of statements are raised as criticism about blending Jung and Buddhism. But for someone like myself who has been practicing Buddhism with Western teachers for more than three decades, Jung’s perspectives seem antiquated and out of touch with reality. For example, in his introduction to D. T. Suzuki’s text, Jung says:
AnyonewhohasreallytriedtounderstandBuddhistdoctrine–evenifonlytothe extentofgiving up certainWesternprejudices– willbegintosuspect treacherous depths beneath the bizarre surface of individual satori experiences ...
(Meckel and Moore, 1992, p. 14)
And:
Great as is the value of Zen Buddhism for understanding the religious transformation process, its use among Western people is very problematical. The mental education necessary for Zen is lacking in the West. Who among us would place such implicit trust in a superior Master and his incomprehensible ways? (Meckel and Moore, 1992, p. 23)
While I heartily admire Jung for his courage in opening the dialogue between Western psychology and Buddhism, he was uninformed about the real teachings behind what he was reading. There was no way that he could have known that Buddhism on the whole, and Zen in particular, lives very close to our experiences. Its methods are designed to make us acutely mindful of the reality we share and inhabit, not to take us to numinous experiences or set us apart from others.
Although there have been many muddles of language and fact as Buddhism has come to the West, there also has been a relatively smooth transition of teachings, rituals and practices from ancient foreign cultures to modern Western societies in a period of less than fifty years. That seems remarkably short to me. I believe that Western psychology and psychotherapy have played an important role in this transition by providing a fertile ground in which the seeds of Buddhism took root.
And finally, there are no “superior Masters” in whom to place our trust on the Buddhist path. Beginning with the Buddha himself, all teachers attempt to help their students become “a lamp unto yourself,” as the Buddha is reported to have said. Buddhism directs our careful attention to the nature of the world in which we live: that everyone is distressed or suffering in some way; that all phenomena are impermanent and subject to change; and that nothing exists independently or apart from anything else. As we see the deep implications of this reality, we begin to look at ourselves, our relationships and our planet in a more compassionate and responsible way.
NOTES
1. This statement is from “The Jung-Hisamatsu Conversation,” translated fromAniela Jaffe´’s original German protocol by Shoji Muramoto, in P. YoungEisendrath and S. Muramoto (2004), p. 116.
2. This is the opening statement from “The Self in Jung and Zen” by Masao Abe, inD. Meckel and R. Moore, (1992), p. 128.
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