[Buddha-l] Jung and Dignaga

[Dan Lusthaus]

Vincent,

> DL> I agree with you it is important to try to understand, as fully as
possible,
> DL> the mentality (or mentalities) at work in Europe in the 1930s-40s, not
to
> DL> excuse them (Oh, everybody was doing it), but to acquire a clearer
> DL> understanding of the dangers and how this works.
>
> so in depth we agree very much. Just I think you are fixed in errors
> performed by individuals or political regimes, while I point to a
> general error in the morality of an old mechanics.

I agree that we agree. Where some disagreement might still remain is that I
think (1) the new racialization of old prejudices was more a case of putting
old wine in new bottles than of devising something entirely novel, and (2)
that one reviews these historical cases to not only see and recognize what
was "among them, in them," but to correct such problems in the present for
the future. Admitting their faults for what they were, not dissolving them
into the collective unconscious of their times. Such correction begins, I
believe, in acknowledging them for what they were, not lowering our
expectations of what they should have been capable of back then.

>Jung. For sure he was not a saint but not worse
> than Freud or many others.

This, too, remains as a disagreement. Freud was deeply conflicted about
numerous things, and a lot of people have had fun speculating about the
nature of those conflicts and how that impacted his work. He knew it, and
his self-analysis was brutal and radical, in search of resolution. Unlike
Buddhists and some others, he didn't think the tensions and problems of life
had a final resolution or panacea -- short of death -- and considered the
wish for the oceanic feeling (as he dubbed nirvana and similar teleologies)
unrealistic death wishes. In that, he may have been wrong -- or he may have
been more brutally honest than Buddhists will admit to themselves. That, I
would contend, can only be answered by the personal achievements of each of
us individually, and not how we imagine or fantasize an ideal being ought to
be or might have been.

> Finally, this topic is not related with Buddhism for some people (despite
> Equality, Freud and Jung are a frequent presence in Buddhology).
> So if you want we can finish this after your eventual reply.

We can take if online if you wish.

Dan