A Fun Flash of Insight

Having supper with two very dear friends last night the subject of which was better, Buddhism or Jungian psychology came up. This is a tricky one because it is true that the founders of both, the Buddha and Jung, and those that have followed them, have each believed that their way was - is - superior to that of others. And I guess, why wouldn’t they? We all want to believe that our way is best or at least not less than someone else’s. However, this rather black and white approach obscures the far more interesting dialogue that emerges once we let go of positions and enter the hinter land between them which is made up entirely of greys. Something that I think Jung probably understood as evidenced by the ambiguous statements he made in his autobiography and other writings.

This is a huge subject so here I am going to indulge in a little speculative fun. Over twenty years ago I wrote about a meeting in 1958 between a very old Jung and a Yoda like Zen master called Shin’ichi Hisamatsu. (It's him in the photo). Essentially it was a car crash of misunderstandings. Hisamatsu interrogated Jung in an attempt to find whether Jung’s Analytical Psychology bore any similarities to his Zen and came away feeling that it did not. Jung for his part was more reticent, perhaps recognising on reflection that the two men had simply misunderstood each other despite their good hearted intent to build bridges. Later commentators on this conversation have suggested that Hisamatsu elicited from Jung a completely un-Jungian idea through the power of his questioning. Not unlike the conversations between Zen masters and their students where a moment of awakening is spontaneously brought forth. And Jung does indeed say something very un-Jungian - that the cure for being ruled by both our passions and unconscious compulsions is nirdvandva - an Advaita Vedanta term that means ‘beyond opposites’ or ‘non-dual’ - a description of ultimate reality, where distinctions between opposites, such as pleasure and pain or joy and sorrow, no longer exist. However, for my part I suspect that Jung simply did not fully understand the term and merely meant that suffering is resolved through the transcendent function that lifts us out of conflicting emotions into a third and more resolved position. An entirely Jungian idea and nothing to do with either Hinduism or Zen.

But is this correct? Jung seems quite scandalised when he realises that Hisamatsu wishes to find a means to end suffering entirely and forever. For the Romantic Jung this is unthinkable; we can only know what is beautiful by experiencing ugliness, happiness by knowing pain. Furthermore, suffering is the engine of individuation because it is through suffering that we finally find meaning. So in his autobiography, in contrast to above, he says that he is not at all interested in achieving the state of nirdvandva but rather:

I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic images. I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded—and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, not that it is not or is no longer.

And yet he also recalls a dream:

I came to a small wayside chapel. The door was ajar, and I went in. To my surprise there was no image of the Virgin on the altar, and no crucifix either, but only a wonderful flower arrangement. But then I saw that on the floor in front of the altar, facing me, sat a yogi in lotus posture, in deep meditation. When I looked at him more closely, I realised that he had my face.

Jung interprets this dream, which he finds rather shocking, in such a way that it merely confirms what he already knows, but we students of Jung understand that a dream may bring some new insight as yet not consciously known. Could it be then that the Jung who so delighted in the soulful experience of this earthly world also had within him a yogi who knew the wisdom of non-dual awareness, the blessed refuge beyond opposites of nirdvandva? That maybe, some years later when he met with Hisamatsu, only several years before his death, when he said that suffering may be finally brought to an end within the state of non-dual awareness, it was not a mistake or a misunderstanding, though hardly knowing it himself, this was exactly what he did mean. So he turns out to be both a Romantic and a Buddhist.

Maybe, maybe not, but it’s fun to fantasise.

NW. 15 June 2025