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(De)Psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing and Reconsidering C.G

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Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Pomona Senior Theses Pomona Student Scholarship 2014 (De)psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing and Reconsidering C.G. Jung's Role in the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Imagination Alec M. Terrana Pomona College Recommended Citation Terrana, Alec M., "(De)psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing and Reconsidering C.G. Jung's Role in the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Imagination" (2014). Pomona Senior Theses. Paper 117. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/117 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Pomona Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pomona Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. (De)psychologizing Shangri-La: Recognizing and Reconsidering C.G. Jung’s Role in the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Imagination Alec Terrana Professor Zhiru Ng. Professor Andrew Aisenberg A senior thesis submitted to Pomona College in partial fulfillment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies Spring 2014 All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within; their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out. I have never counted upon any strong response, any powerful resonance, to my writings. They represent a compensation for our times, and I have been impelled to say what no one wants to hear…I have the feeling that I have done all that it was possible for me to do. Without a doubt that life work could have been larger, and could have been done better; but more was not within my power. C.G. Jung Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to express my tremendous gratitude to my thesis reader and unofficial academic advisor, Professor Zhiru. From my earliest academic inquiries into Buddhism, you have helped me along the path and continually encouraged my aspirations. One further “thank you” seems necessary for all of the times you reined in my thesis ambitions when they grew a bit too grandiose. I truly cannot imagine my time at Pomona without your guidance and support. I will also take this opportunity to thank my thesis reader, Andrew Aisenberg. Your insight has not only pushed my understanding of psychoanalysis and Orientalism to new limits, but has introduced me to entirely new realms of meaning waiting to be deconstructed. To everyone that read a draft of my thesis at any point, a simple thank you does not seem to do my gratitude justice. My project has often been structurally unsound and has always been far too long. Your taking the time to look over my writing and provide comments means the world to me. Additionally, I would like to thank some of the other professors who have profoundly impacted my thesis and my education in general: Dan Michon, Erin Runions, Oona Eisenstadt, Darryl Smith, and Brendan Ozawa De-Silva. My experiences with each of you, both inside and outside of the classroom, have left an indelible mark on my understanding of the world and I will be forever grateful for our encounters. Thank you, also, to all of my friends who have supported me in this process (i.e. allowed me to rant far longer than I deserved), as well as in all other personal and intellectual exploration. You have each pushed me to broaden my horizons in different ways, helping me to become the person that I am today. To my family: I do not think I could ever adequately express my appreciation for you. You have supported me in every decision I’ve ever made, no matter how outlandish it may have seemed at the time, and given me the strength to pursue my dreams, rather than settling for living someone else’s. I love you. Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................1 Treading Old Paths and Plotting New Ones: Framing Our Project • Recognizing and Reconsidering Jung: Plotting our Path Forward Chapter One .................................................................................................................... 12 What’s Wrong With Jung: Setting the Stage for Jung’s Journeys East • The ‘East’ in the ‘Western’ Gaze: The Orientalist Episteme and Discourse • The Search for ‘Mystic Tibet’: Tibet in the Western Imagination • Mapping the Mind: Jung’s Analytical Psychology Chapter Two.................................................................................................................... 26 Jung & The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Producing a Manual of Western Spirituality • The Bardo Thos Grol: A Cosmological Guide to the In-Between Realms • The Birth of a New Guru: Jung encounters The Tibetan Book of the Dead • Psychologism in the Bardos: Jung Travels Through the In-Between Realms • The Tibetan Book of the Dead After Jung: A Guide to Western Spirituality Chapter Three................................................................................................................. 56 Jung & the Mandala: A New Vision of Psychological Unity • The Tibetan Mandala: Awakening Enlightened Body, Speech, and Mind • The Jungian Mandala: An Icon of Psychological Unity • The Western Mandala: A Doorway to Our Own Divinity Chapter Four................................................................................................................... 85 Jung’s Echo: Jung’s Broader Influence on Modern Tibetan Buddhism • The Eranos Conferences: Searching for a Religion After Religion • Amplifying the Jungian Voice: The Direct Inheritors of Analytical Psychology • Modern Tibetan Buddhist Psychologism: The Creation of a Domesticated Doppelganger • Against Interpretation; Concluding a Traditional Critique of Jung Chapter Five...................................................................................................................101 Pursuing the Eastern Other: Jung’s Attempts to Decipher Human Personality • Mapping the Architecture: Determining Jung’s Discursive Positionality • A Man Divided Against Himself: Jung’s Contemplation of Internal Otherness • Scientific Positivism in French Psychiatry: The Foundations of Jung’s Methodology • Interiorizing the Buddha: Rendering the East Readable Chapter Six.....................................................................................................................124 What’s Right With Jung: Reconsidering Psychologism and Deconstructing Orientalism • Scouring the Margins: Putting Jung Back in Jungian Psychologism • The Anxiety of Authority: Unraveling Jung’s Authorial Tensions • The Paradox of Position: Deconstructing Orientalism • Concluding Comments: Repurposing the Jungian Lens Appendix.........................................................................................................................138 The Tibetan Mandala in Practice: Entering a Space for Transformation Works Cited....................................................................................................................146 Introduction Treading Old Paths and Plotting New Ones: Framing Our Project There is only one way and that is your way. You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you. May each go his own way. I will be no savior, no law giver, no master teacher unto you.1 C.G. Jung Having dedicated much of his life to exploring and making sense of the world’s many mythologies, it is only fitting that Carl Jung’s life and work have taken on a mythic quality in their own right. Despite his exhortations against such deification, Jung’s voice has, for better or for worse, authoritatively resounded in both academic and popular discourse. His wide variety of pursuits have led to him being understood as a man poised between worlds, living as a psychoanalyst and a psychonaut, a scientist and an alchemist, a scholar of comparative religion and a mystic. As a builder of bridges between disparate disciplines and cultures, Jung occupied a position of special privilege during a period in which vast stores of Asian religious texts were being translated into English and other European languages for the first time. Standing at this liminal intersection, Jung played a key role mediating and introducing Asian religious practices and conceptions to his European and American audiences, as well as in bringing the work of contemporary Indologists and Sinologists to a wider audience.2 His authority is both demonstrated and reproduced through his authorship of prefaces to the translations of several of the most widely known Eastern texts among Westerners, such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead3 and the I-Ching.4 Jung’s participation in the Eranos lecturesa, a forum dedicated to creating a dialogue between Eastern and Western systems of thought, further cemented his inseparable ties with Asia. As one of the earliest scholars attempting to render Asian religions in terms intelligible to Westerners, Jung established analytical precedents that have carried into contemporary discussions about appropriating Asian cultures. Whether or not Jung a The Eranos conferences began in 1933 and occur annually in Switzerland up to this day. 1 intended for this to be the case, his authority and influence have grown far greater than the man himself. Even though Jung himself advised others against treading the same path that he laid forth,5 it has nevertheless become a road well worn over the course of the past
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