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The article sets out to describe the interior developments, including the experience of satori that takes place in the practice of Zen meditation, by the application of Jungian psychological insights.
Dr Odajnyk has previously written an article discussing how both Eastern and
Western alchemical imagery describe in pre-psychological language the attainment of wholeness that results from the practice of meditation. ‘In comparison with other meditation practices’, he begins, ‘Zen is unique in that it seeks an experience of the original state of being.’ All schools of Buddhism, however, are concerned with this original state of being. In the Northern schools it is called the Buddha nature. The Southern school uses a different kind of language to describe this particular state. Because the enlightenment of the Buddha changed Gautama the man into the Buddha, all Buddhist practice is concerned with this fundamental event. It lies at the core of all schools of Buddhism; different language is used in different traditions to describe this, but the language is a mere circumambulation.
What is perhaps more peculiar to the Zen school is that it uses a language with which we feel we (Western culture) have some kind of affinity, not to say understanding. Zen starts at the pinnacle of the developed Mahayana (Tibetan Buddhism extended) and its language and practice is the result of its long stay in China, during which time it took on board, only to express in its own way, much of the Tao and Confucianism. Furthermore, the Mahayana has steadily progressed and redefined itself over the last two millennia. It is interesting to note that when the Mahayana first came into China it took several hundred years before the already existing philosophical language of the culture was able to find words and language to describe accurately the various Mahayana terms. To some extent we are in a similar situation here in the West. Having said that, however, the article is an interesting one because