I am trying to get nearer to the remarkable psychology of the Buddha himself, or at least of that which his contemporaries assumed him to be. It is chiefly the question of karma and rebirth which has renewed my interest in Buddha. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 548.
On Jan. 23rd I had a slight embolism followed by not too severe heart cramps. I was under house arrest for a month, forbidden all mental activity, i.e., active concentration. However, it didn't stop me from my long planned (renewed) reading of Buddhist texts, whose content I am leaving to simmer inside me. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 544.
Nobody knows whether there is reincarnation, and equally one does not know that there is none. Buddha himself was convinced of reincarnation, but he himself on being asked twice by his disciples about it, left it quite open whether there is a continuity of your personality or not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 103-104.
The spiritual (as contrasted with the worldly) Messiah, Christ, Mithras, Osiris, Dionysos, Buddha are all visualizations or personifications of the irrepresentable archetype which, borrowing from Ezekiel and Daniel, I call the Anthropos. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 304-306.
With no human consciousness to reflect themselves in, good and evil simply happen, or rather, there is no good and evil, but only a sequence of neutral events, or what the Buddhists call the Nidhanachain, the uninterrupted causal concatenation leading to suffering, old age, sickness, and death. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 310-311.
Buddha's insight and the Incarnation in Christ break the chain through the intervention of the enlightened human consciousness, which thereby acquires a metaphysical and cosmic significance. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 310-311.
The same is the case in the West, where one makes futile attempts to give life to our Christian tenets; but they have gone to sleep. Yet in Buddhism as well as in Christianity there is at the basis of both a valid truth, but its modern application has not been understood yet. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 385-386.
In Buddhist art, as in the Celtic illuminated manuscripts and sculptures, the complicated designs and intricate rhythms of the border pattern serve to coax the frightening, pullulating chaos of a disorganized psyche into harmonious forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
Equally, the complicated ornamentation of ritual mandalas in Buddhism could be regarded as a sort of psychic "tranquillizer," though this way of looking at it is admittedly one-sided. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 387-388
The Indians, if influenced by Buddhism, habitually depotentiate their emotions by reciting a mantra. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 430-433
The Christian idea proves its vitality by a continuous evolution, just like Buddhism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 580-581
We still consider his [Socrates] daimonion as an individual peculiarity if not worse. Such people, says Buddha, "after their death reach the wrong way, the bad track, down to the depth, into an infernal world." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 531-533
But just as Buddhism in its many differentiations overlaid the original spiritual adventure, so Christian rationalism has overlaid medieval alchemistic philosophy, which has been forgotten for about 200 years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 600-603
It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha, Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to call it the “self,” by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same time a centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just as a larger circle encloses a smaller one. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, 247.
And that was the case in Buddha’s own existence; he was a prince, a man of the world, and he had a wife, he had concubines, he had a child —then he went over to the saintly life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 797.
There is no reason whatsoever why you should or should not call the beyond-self Christ or Buddha or Purusha or Tao or Khidr or Tifereth. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1672
If you take the concept of prayer in its widest sense and if you include also Buddhist contemplation And Hindu meditation (as being equivalent to prayer), one can say that it is the most universal form of religious or philosophical concentration of the mind and thus not only one of the most original but also the most frequent means to change the condition of mind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 558
In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 322.
You notice that the meditation is not on the spirit of the Buddha, but on the Body of the Buddha; the highest truth grows from the deepest roots of the body and not from the spirit. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 28
We also find four colours in the Bardo Thodol as the lights of the four wisdoms, they form four "light-paths" to Buddhahood or redemption. These are clearly the four functions expressed as four paths of orientation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 10th Feb 1939
That is as you see the reason why I said that I haven't come across Buddhist mandalas based upon 3, 5, or 6 ( 2 x 3) . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 222-223
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