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Zen Buddism has always seemed deprived of a psychology, especially of the interpersonal kind, except for that of the master/pupil or initiated/uninitiated. After reading this gem of a paper. I feel that psychology is deprived of enlightenment.
Unfortunately I am only qualified to review the paper from the standpoint of the unenlightened, but from this position it seems a clear, if deceptively simple, exposition of the Buddhist's attempt to achieve a personal realisation of enlightenment. The rigorous Zen training tries with the use of ‘koans’ among other techniques to eliminate the interior-exterior dichotomy—to ‘smooth it out into one whole sheet’. Izutsu points out that in any case for the Buddhist's non-dual conception of the universe, interior/exterior is only a pseudo-problem, of interest to the uninitiated on the way to enlightenment. There are records of some masters achieving this through internalising the exterior and others who achieved it by externalising the interior. But it is not sufficient to rest here, to become just the flower in a state of identity with it. It is necessary to get beyond to a state of identity with all things, a kind of seamless transparency with the universe, a state prior to the subject/object bifurcation.
From the position of analyst, one might suppose that the introvert/extrovert orientation of the pupil might decide which of the two paths he finds has led him to enlightenment. One might also think about the role played by projective identification and of the importance of the ego-self axis. And what is the relationship between enlightenment and the primal self? Clearly, individuating is not the same as enlightenment, though one may have to be fairly whole to achieve it.
From the position of the enlightened, psychology starts to look rather peculiar, for there would be no projection and no introjection, transference would be a failed and ever failing way to achieve enlightenment, and internal objects would be just some of the ‘t