Abstract
This article introduces the close relationship between Jung and Chinese religions, compares Jung’s psychological theories to Chinese religious thoughts taking Buddhism and Taoism as examples, and draws the following three conclusions. First, although Jung never went to China, Jung’s interest and studies in Chinese religions continued throughout his life. Second, there are important similarities and differences between Jung’s unity of opposites and Buddhism’s “Middle Way,” Jung’s synchronicity and Karmic harmony, Jung’s Self and Buddhism’s Self, and Jung’s individuation and Buddhism’s meditation. Third, there are significant, close relationships between Jung’s concepts of synchronicity, Self, and his three principles of psyche and parallel concepts in Chinese Taoism.
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Notes
Alaya Consciousness, the eighth Consciousness or “store-house consciousness,” is the basis of the other seven, and the seven prior consciousnesses are based and founded upon the eighth. It is the aggregate which administers and yields rebirth; this idea may in some respects be compared to the usage of the word “citta” in the agamas.
Big fulfillment is the highest Dharma of the Nyingma School in Tibetan Buddhism. As the laws of life and death, or Nirvana, are all in this Empty wisdom, it is “fulfillment” or “realization”; no other method of liberation from the cycle of life and death can surpass this method, which is named “big” or “great.”
Trikaya (Sanskrit: “three bodies”) represents, in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the concept of the three bodies, or modes of being, of the Buddha: the dharmakaya (body of essence), the unmanifested mode, and the supreme state of absolute knowledge; the sambhogakaya (body of enjoyment), the heavenly mode; and the nirmanakaya (body of transformation), the earthly mode, the Buddha as he appeared on earth or manifested himself in an earthly bodhisattva, an earthly king, a painting, or a natural object, such as a lotus. The three bodies (trikaya, i.e., modes of being) of the Buddha are rooted in Hinayana teachings concerning the physical body, the mental body, and the body of the law.
“Tathagatagarbha heart” refers to the heart as the fount of life or the unrestrained heart; it is also called “real I,” “real heart,” or “ru-lai-zang.”
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