So while reading Jung I feel like I'm getting gaslit on what is buddhism
>The Indian's goal is not moral perfection, but the condition of nirdvandva. He wishes to free himself from nature; in keeping with this aim, he seeks in meditation the condition of imagelessness and emptiness.
>I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychicimages.
>I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor frommyself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles.
Like I feel what he describe is the point of meditation and his views on buddhism are a strawman.
And this is not just in this quote, a lot of other quotes in his books are like this one, he's arguing how buddhism try to suppress or ignore what goes inside with the purpose of making you feel better.
So did buddhism change a lot in the last 70/80 years or are Jung's views corrupted?
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It's called "mindfulness and concentration" and not "mindlessness and dispersion" for a reason. Claiming that meditation is about denying reality and diminishing your self-awareness is the pure opposite of reality and a major strawman
It's strange because it's quite evident that Jung is familiar with many concepts and ideas that are directly derived from the teachings of Buddha, I guess as a christianc*ck he feels compelled to defend Lord Jesus while shitting on Buddhism
You are all mad that Jung sees to the heart of Buddhism which is nihilism and denial of nature. You can’t even explain why it is a “strawman”, it’s a the truth sheered of mumbo jumbo.
>You can’t even explain why it is a “strawman”
But I literally did?
Jung suggests that Buddhism advocates running away from things one dislikes
Buddha teaches that to overcome things one dislikes, one must understand and confront them
Jung's interpretation appears dishonest or obtuse.
But it's possible that the western version of Buddhism is simply a diluted copy, so that's why I'm asking my question.
same error Nietzscheans make about it
Buddhism isn't another 'higher world' religious system that seeks to escape becoming into some 'pure eternal realm of Being'. Not in early Buddhism nor Mahayana..
Just because Nietzsche curtails the impulse to escape from 'this world' to 'the higher world', doesn't mean he's eliminated escapism entirely. His endless transvaluation and self-generation of meaning is escapism, in the same way, just to a subtler degree than a Platonist. Escapism from the presently-enduring experience, escapism from 'the abyss' of the impossibility of teleological grounding.
The Buddha was fully free from suffering and craving while he was still alive, walking around in his human form. He didn't have to 'disappear' from nature or phenomenality to be free. Because nature and phenomena aren't the problem: craving (alternatively frameable as escapism) is the problem. It just turns out that all the 'life-affirming' worldly activities and indulgences Jungians or Nietzscheans laud so highly, are driven and motivated by this escapism, and one who is free from escapism is naturally ascetic.
What many call 'life-affirming' is just as escapist as the Platonic 'higher world' dynamic, but subtler.
good post
>Buddhism isn't another 'higher world' religious system that seeks to escape becoming into some 'pure eternal realm of Being'. Not in early Buddhism nor Mahayana..
Mahayana is kinda reaching for this 'pure eternal realm of Being'
>As for saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, these two do not exist. However thorough knowledge of saṃsāra is nirvāṇa. - Nagarjuna
and yet Nagarjuna says buddhas live on a plane, in his ''In Praise of the Dharmadhatu''
I thi g the big difference appears when you realise that a being without substance (svbahava) is a completly different "being" than that of the monist and dualist
> Mahayana is kinda reaching for this 'pure eternal realm of Being'
It would seem so sometimes, but it’s really pointing at something a bit deeper or different from this conception, and a cliche might be to call this understanding ‘ineffable’, ‘non-verbal’, or even (that word some people love to hate, apparently) ‘non-dual’. As that anon gave an example of right after with this teaching from Nagarjuna that samsara and nirvana are one:
.
One way it could be put is as the realization of the inseparability and interdependence of dualisms like ‘noumenon’ and ‘phenomenon’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘self and other’, ‘experiencer’ and ‘experience’, also ‘samsara’ and ‘nirvana’ or ‘non-enlightenment’ and ‘enlightenment’. Neither halves of these pairs can be coherently said to exist without their mutual counterparts that are interdependent with them. Seeing this mutual inseparability of each of these binary pairs/dualisms (which could also be likened to the teaching of dependent origination), as in Nagarjuna’s teaching, leads to the realization of sunyata (voidness, emptiness of svabhava or self-nature, lit. own-being, in Sanskrit and Pali). This can also be applied to dualities like ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’. This is a bit confusing to put in language, hence why Buddhism often urges non-verbal practices like meditation to see this, and also in some of its manifestations, as in some Mahayana and Vajrayana sutras and teachings, seems to favor a penchant for the paradoxical, the elliptic, or the gnomic in its language, the greatest example of which is probably Chan and Zen kung-ans (koans, ‘case-records’), meant to short-circuit dualistic and striving thought seeking for a goal beyond itself.
If one wanted to speak in this elliptic way, one could probably put it something like this:
Because there is ‘self’, there is ‘other’.
Because there is ‘other’, there is ‘self’.
Therefore, there is neither self nor other.
Bizarre as this logic sounds, it is there in Buddhist teachings.
So it’s not quite just ‘transcending this world into a higher realm’ (although that could be one possible conventional linguistic way of putting it for beginners as an employment of skillful means, or upāya, using stopgap formulations that are later transcended), but more like realizing the ‘transcendence’ is already in the ‘immanence’. Nirvana is samsara and samsara nirvana, the only difference is in how one’s mind interprets phenomenal reality. It could also be put as realizing a position of consciousness in which one is no longer ever greedily and thirstily striving for ‘something else’, ‘something higher’, ‘something better or different from this’, but instead is in a relaxed, clear state of mind unswayed by passion, aggression, and ignorance, which is radical acceptance of the immanent as much as it is radical transcendence.
A cliched way of putting it (which could be called another employment of upāya or skillful means) is ‘being in absolute nowness’, but even obsessive greedy clinging to the present moment (as if one will get something out of it) can make one miss the point. So the Tibetans in fact have a teaching that it’s not just about the ‘present’ or ‘nowness’, but instead the realization of the fourth time, beyond the three times of then, now, and later, or past, present, and future (Longchenpa).
With the Mahayana’s ideal of the Bodhisattva, who even forsakes this fleeing to another plane of transcendence beyond incarnate life on the Earth, we have another shattering of this typical religious dualism (of material life as ‘bad’ and the otherworldly plane as ‘good’). The Bodhisattva of the Mahayana ideal even theoretically accepts indefinite reincarnation to lead the infinite sentient beings throughout all time and space to enlightenment, as in Hwa Yen’s recursive and somewhat psychedelic cosmology, with its Bodhisattva vows saying this. So the distinction between ‘journey’ and ‘goal’ is also abolished, and samsaric life and nirvanic life one.
In some of Vajrayana and Tantric Buddhism (either an extension of Mahayana teaching according to some or, by their own light, a superior vehicle to it that includes and transcends Mahayana insights), this abolishment of the typical religious dualism (which could also be called life-denying, per thinkers like Nietzsche and Jung) goes even further, with their teachings on the possible transmutation of sense-pleasures, of desires, and of negative emotions in Tantra. The ethos of it can basically be seen in the legend of the Kingdom of Shambhala in the Kalachakra Tantra. An entirely immanent, physical, real kingdom of enlightened Buddhists, not in some ‘other world’. There’s also the focus on longevity, immortality, life-extension or long-life practice in some of Tibetan Buddhism (as in Taoism). Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava, the legendary and revered founder of Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, is held according to Tibetan legend to be literally and physically immortal and still living, having gone to the West after teaching the Tibetans. This clearly would be odd if Tantric Tibetan Buddhism was teaching forsaking or denial of earthly life, to have its legendary founder be literally immortal.
Of course, some might view this as simply symbolic of the ‘eternal truth of the Dharma, which never ages, decays, nor dies’, but Guru Rinpoche does also literally say:
“As the first of all activities, the vidyadhara [wisdom-holder] should achieve longevity! Of all activities, the first should be long-life practice. If life is long, it can be virtuous, and the purpose of this life and the next can be achieved. So it is good to live a long life because we can fully accomplish the purpose of this and future lives.”
So, in short, some of these teachings could be said to be about absolute acceptance of ‘becoming’, impermanence, and flux, as much as they could be said to be about “reaching for this ‘pure eternal realm of Being.’” After all, these two (‘being’ and ‘becoming’) are also interdependent parts of an illusory dualism according to many Buddhist teachings, neither existing without the other, mutually negating each other and leaving only a Wholeless Whole of Voidness upon cognizance of their true nature, which could be called anything from the Tao to the Buddha-nature to the Dharmakaya to Suchness (Tathātā) to Emptiness (Sunyata).
Corrupted. Even his Gnosticism is corrupted. He's the video essay go-to for a reason.
>Even his Gnosticism is corrupted
Yeah. I love the Seven Sermons but his interpretation of Pleroma is pretty much antithetical to the dualistic spirit of Gnosticism
Bingo
Speaking of, is there a contemporary writer who really gets the gnostic spirit?
Living authors? Maybe Scott David Finch. I'm stumped. Most are posers
Buddhism is corrupted both by Western New Age-ers and by the Indians who inherited the Proto-Indo-Aryan teachings.
Jung was a Freemason and he knew the true origins of Buddhism. Let me give you a hint. Buddha comes from the root word "Budha" which in old Sanskrit literally means "Mercury," as in the planet Mercury, or the Roman god Mercury. The day Wednesday in Hindi is "Budhavar", and the various other Indian language dialects all use the same root "Budha" for this day. To the Roman's, Wednesday was called "dies Mercurii" or the "day of Mercury". And the Greeks, Wednesday is "hemera Hermou" in reference to the Greek god Hermes. Wednesday itself is named after the Germanic/Norse god Woden/Odin. These are all names for the same God.
That's just the beginning. I can go on.
Gnosticism is corrupted. It's important to understand that Jung wasn't a Gnostic, he was merely sympathetic to Gnosticism.
>Gnosticism is corrupted.
By what?
By the concept of dualism.
What's primitive about dualism?
It being "primitive" isn't the problem. Dualism is an inherently false artificial construct that was born out of the minds of the unfortunate, the weak, the ugly and the sickly. All those who rejected their own existence, and from this rejection, were blinded to the truth. The truth is the material world--space and time--are phenomena emergent from the "Logos." In other words, dualism is emergent from an underlying Neutral Monism. There is a Platonic gradation or spectrum from the "divine" down to the chthonic world we occupy. Modern physics backs this up.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
where the the "neutral monism" is identified as the concept of "information" in the abstract. That is, "it" from "qubit."
>boilerplate emanationism
>actual ad hominem
>holographic 4d rainbow fractal digital quantum universe simulation hypothesis slop
I knew the answer before I even asked the question
The fact you can't come up with a valid counter other than mere dismissal shows I've hit a nerve. Gnosticism truly is the mystery cult for midwits.
You did not provide an argument, you asserted your claims. Here's an argument: if One precedes the Many, then whence comes evil? If evil is inherent to the One, then the first principle cannot be the Good.
Good and Evil are illusions. I'll refer you to the following scene:
So the One is not the Good and there is no emanation process from the heights to the depths. Besides, if Good and Evil are merely appearances, whence come appearances? Then the problem becomes the Problem of Misconceiving Something As Evil
Indeed.
Except now the principle of evil becomes the principle of the capacity of illusion, or ignorance. You've substituted a nice and parsimonious dualism of Good and Evil with a dualism of reality and illusion internal to reality, which not only undermines the goodness of reality but has you twisting yourself into pretzels to account for how ignorance emerges in the midst of the divine
There is only The All. The Godhead. The Great Programmer.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0001020.pdf
Yaldabaoth, to the Gnostics. Architect of this polarized field, who dupes suckers like you into worshipping him because he is powerful, not even, he is Effectivity itself. People like you never have anything to say, you just assert your claims and believe the inherent beauty of your ideas will suffice.
I've said all that there is to say, and have given you any one else paying attention all that is needed to understand the truth. It is your attachment to "Baby's first mystery cult" teachings that blind you. You lack the courage to accept that everything terrible that has happened to you in your life was necessary.
It is ironically your attachment to babby's first monism, your freshman Neoplatonism, that makes it so easy to pigeonhole you. I can just as easily say monists are cosmic narcissists blinded by hedonism into repressing the truth that all's not right with the world. I'm not even above you, I am perpendicular to your cognitive plane.
You are ironically the very source of what you hate.
Cosmic narcissists always out themselves when they impute narcissistic motives to dualists, gnostics, vegans, etc. any movement that goes against the grain of their physiologically female brains.
The Great Epic. The Great Tragedy. The Great Comedy. All in One. Such is Life.
Suffering vastly outweighs pleasure. Your gay little cosmic tragicomedy is more like an island of delight in an ocean of refuse
You wish to play the role of Wilhem. Here's a mirror, look within.
In a world where suffering vastly outweighs pleasure, of course there's going to be a survivorship bias operative at all levels of society, especially in media, and especially in jrgps where the antagonist is a dissolutionist pseudo-gnostic who must be defeated with the power of "friendship", i.e. a flaccid humanism, or ironically enough, actual Gnosticism: the inherent dignity of the individual.
The real ending of SMTIV is the Oblivion ending. The protagonist outgrows his juvenile enthusiasms for Law and Chaos and becomes exhausted with the whole thing. You haven't reached that stage yet.
You haven't reached the stage in understanding that there is no oblivion. There is no escape.
Speak for yourself. The fire can be quenched, the hunger stilled.
I kinda dig this convo turned into a shin megami tensei discussion
why do you listen to a german bourgeois created by the secular enlightenment who talks about buddhism?
I'm confused as to why he would criticize Buddhism when he's essentially "preaching" the Buddha's teachings himself.
Both discuss concepts such as non clinging, introspection, seeing reality as it is, awakening, reconnecting with oneself and nature, meditation, and more.
> seeing reality as it is
Buddhism has a very dogmatic view or what constitutes reality and it insists that its followers adhere to its dogmas about the list of dharmas, anicca, anatta, dukkha etc
*dogmatic view of what constitutes
It's not a strawman at all. Imagelessness (animitta) and emptiness (suññatā) are both key terms in Buddhism, and "freeing oneself from nature" is synonymous with realizing the unconditioned or nature-less (asaṅkhāta). His preferred goal of reveling in becoming and "images" is more or less pantheistic, the opposite of Buddhism.
>buddhism try to suppress or ignore what goes inside
One of the sharpest differences between Buddhism and psychoanalysts (and existentialists) is that the Buddha taught that lowly impulses could be eradicated, whereas the latter think this is not only impossible but not worth doing. See for example the ending of Hesse's Siddhartha where he embraces "the river" instead of asceticism. Many often complain that Buddhism is nihilistic, but to me it seems like the reverse, it's the moderns who dejectedly say "we're stuck with this quasi-animalistic existence so we can only make the best of it; we must imagine Sisyphus happy, etc.".
Incidentally this is all in regards to the Buddha's original teachings, which today live on mostly in Theravada and somewhat in Mahayana. But a lot of Mahayana and Vajrayana developments are closer to Jung's ideal of "lively contemplation of nature", maybe that's why you think he's strawmanning.
There's a key problem here, in meditation one doesn't "search" for emptiness or imagineless, those things come naturally with the jhanas, if you search for then you're craving for your preconceived ideas of those things while developing aversion of inmediate reality, meditation is a tool to develop awareness, you never escape nature, aversion to nature is craving for the un-natural, you're just creating more mental compositions, Jung is confusing what the jhanas give you(imagineless, emptiness,non-conciousness etc) with what the meditator search (awareness to develop the jhanas and don't feed mental compositions)
You seem to be responding to an imagined post, instead of anything that I actually wrote.
I'm pointing out the difference between receiving something and wanting something, buddhist don't care about the animitta, they care about suffering, the animitta is just one of the many things one experience in the path to freedom from suffering, so what Jung is saying is indeed a strawman
>Jung is talking almost entirely about original Buddhism
Even in the satipatthana sutta the ideas Jung expose as "buddhist" are refuted, this dichotomy between man vs nature is shallow and overly abstract, not in li e with the buddha's teachings
>which today live on mostly in Theravada and somewhat in Mahayana
rare comment
what Theravada teachers do you prefer?
And which Mahayana trends do you see as preserving true insights from original Buddhism? I'm guessing certain strands of Chan?
He's completely
>But a lot of Mahayana and Vajrayana developments are closer to Jung's ideal of "lively contemplation of nature"
What do you mean? Mahayana does say that samsara is ultimately equivalent to nirvana, but samsara is still suffering. Nirvana is a cessation, the difference between Theravada and Mahayana is that Theravada accepts existing things which can cease. In Mahayana, emptiness means that nothing ever actually arose, so all phenomena have been in a state of cessation from the beginning, and this has to be recognized. Emptiness and signlessness (animitta) are the gateways to liberation in Mahayana too.
Different anon, but the suttas don’t display such strong ontological commitments as the orthodox Theravada Abhidhamma tradition, at least (paramattha dhammas, atomism, momentariness).
In fact, it seems to me that the suttas point to a sort of complete supramundane undermining of the possibility of any ontological conceiving (see: MN 1). I am open to a correspondence between this and the Mahayana ‘emptiness free of the four extremes’. I’ve seen it said that the Mahayana view is perfectly encapsulated in the Kaccayanagotta sutta.
Luckily there are some ‘heterodox’ Theravada strains that are strictly phenomenological, which seem to totally dispense with the Abhidhamma ontology as useless and even misleading.
one last adjustment:
I prefer ‘lacking ontological status’ because I find that some of the language around ‘emptiness’ can make people take up a view that: “things only appear to exist out of ignorance, but in truth, nothing exists!”
As I see it, a view that “things don’t exist, they only appear to out of ignorance” is equally as much of an ontological ‘conceiving’ as the view “things in truth, exist”.
I’m a commoner of course so I can’t speak with any certainty, but my sense of these things is that the appearance is never denied or rejected, just any imputed ontological status with regard to it, is undermined (status like: it exists, it doesn’t exist, some things that appear do exist, some things that appear don’t exist, etc). And this undermining is not a choice, it isn’t accomplished by mere intellectual assent, but by the gradual training, and is only truly realized at stream-entry (or the path of seeing, in Mahayana terms).
By my understanding, in Mahayana, there is no truer reality behind appearances. Rather, appearances (and by extension - absolutely everything without exception) themselves are recognized to, from the very beginning, have always completely lacked ontological status. I understand the tetralemma, the four extremes, to be given as exhaustive of all possibly modes of ontological status. Like the Mahamudra formulation: “Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise.”
And this is how I understand ‘all phenomena have been in a state of cessation from the very beginning’. However this insight is only possessed by an ārya, and for the commoner, things effectively do ‘exist’, their mind is afflicted with ontological status still sort of ‘baked into’ the appearances of their experience, because of the adventitious afflictions of the mind (avidya, tanha).
Let me know if this aligns with your understanding.
I suspect there is some correspondence between this, and the end of ‘conceiving’ as described in the mulapariyaya sutta.
Humanist garbage.
Humanism is incompatible with any form of higher existence (except from being uploaded into a computer together with a bunch of s.o.y.b.o.y.s)
"Jungianism" is compatible but it's understated, just like in Judaism or Islam or Evola... they see no reason to talk about stuff that have their charm if everybody contributes to it. Compare that to most Christians, even mystics, who are "sentimentalists" (including myself).
>like I feel what he describe is the point of meditation and his views on buddhism are a strawman
It is, a very common one, most western "thinker" of that era without a proper conection with meditation teachers of the buddhadharma, made that same mustake, pretty common then not so common now
Buddhism and the Western reception of Buddhism are entirely different animals. I am not familiar with Jung but if he does not know an Asian language used for Buddhist texts and by Buddhist practitioners (such as Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese) or does not rely on sources who do, and is just giving his ideologically informed opinion on Buddhism, he is not a good author to help you understand Buddhism but merely a launch point for those curious. If you have more interest in its historical reception in the West he would be of more note
You say all those translations were made up by people who didn't speak the language? In an age you had to risk your life to make it there and then be totally exposed to your hosts? Lol
I read about aborigenese tribes teaching only swearwords to white man and then laughing at them for decades, but this is a bit too much
>You say all those translations were made up by people who didn't speak the language?
No, I said you really ought to have command of the language or access to someone who does, especially if you are going to do some sort of scholarship on the subject. There's no need to be anxious over this it's common sense
>or access to someone who does
That's what I wrote about didn't I?
>There's no need to be anxious over this it's common sense
The irony is that it's common sense for white man... meanwhile we have all seen how exams (or the tech and IT sectors for that matter) go on in China or India.
You are most certainly barking up the wrong tree...
You're dense if you think there are no philological or semantic issues with translations of religious and philosophical texts and interpreting them.
Oh so now all translations are bad?
Sorry for radicalizing you 🙁
jungschizos are not sending their best
It's not about language per se. Japanese learn English and fail to understand Western sources because it's all way too complicated even for Westerners.
Jung at times makes it clear that you can't just put Eastern gods in your pocket and make them your own. You only have pocket-sized gods.
So when he's talking about one thing or another it's always from a German idealistic perspective, which will never be compatible with Eastern thinking anyway.
>which will never be compatible with Eastern thinking anyway.
Nit that anon, but i will say i disagree with you on this, it is true that they're huge differences that can't be put together the way jung does, but i think bridges can be made, ks just a lot of hard work Jung was just not ready to do, he was lazer focused on create a series of archetype that can represent a human mind, things like language, philosophy of reality or culture where outside of his scoope
>human mind,
only the western bourgeois mind, at best.
>communists plotting to hijack jung by "he was almost right but..."
My homie...
I was exaggerating a bit but what I mean is that the deep ontological constructions that a person is born into cannot be flipped from one kind of structure to another by study alone.
I agree that lots of mappings can be made so that a given person can gain understanding. But at the same time all the ways that a person sees and acts and produces will reveal how their deeper structure is organized. That differing structure will lead to divergent (and often incompatible) outcomes, even when there is agreement in terms of linguistics. E.g. nihilistic nothingness and Buddhist nothingness will be bridgeable at some levels and mutually incoherent at others.
I'm 70% sure Mahayana and Zen Buddhism, which is more in line with what most people think of Buddhism today, did not reach Jung or was well known by most of the world 70 or 80 years ago.
AFAIK in Buddhism you're supposed to practice moral perfection from the very beginning
You work on reaching the Dhyanas as a form of moral purification as well
This is another quote from Jung
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house.
Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we haveneglected will return with added force.
LMAO THE homie WAS SEETHING BECAUSE THEY CALLED HIM A moronic WH*TE PIGGO
When we left the temple and were walking down a lingamlane, he suddenly said, "Do you see these stones? Do you knowwhat they mean? I will tell you a great secret."
I was astonished, for I thought that the phallic nature of these monuments wasknown to every child.
But he whispered into my ear with the greatest seriousness, "These stones are man's private parts!'
I had expected him to tell me that they signified the great godShiva. I looked at him dumfounded, but he only nodded selfimportantly, as if to say, "Yes, that is how it is. No doubt you in your European ignorance would never have thought so!"
Buddhism is pointless. Any religion created by bugmen has zero value to humanity, its plain to see