[Buddha-l] Jung and Dignaga and social mores

[Dan Lusthaus]

Bob Zeuschner writes:

> I wonder what it is that I accept today, that my great-grandchildren
> will shake their heads at, and find it hard to believe that I did not
> recognize how morally objectionable such behavior is.
> I just don't know.

These sorts of ruminations, intriguing and valid as they are on many levels,
do not apply in the case of Jung, which is why I consider this "defence" of
him (or excusing him, though people seem to want to avoid calling what they
are doing what they are actually doing) inappropriate and misleading.

You are talking about sensibilities that have changed, in which people in
the earlier time period could not have, or would for the most part, not
suspect the change in attitude that would arrive later down the pike.

I remember, back in my undergrad days, going to a campus screening of Boris
Karloff's "The Mummy" (made in 1935, I think). Always loved horror films,
and I had long considered this the best of the "mummy" movies, since Karloff
does not play a mute idiot staggering around in bandages, but a revived
ancient Egyptian whose power is mental and magical, rather than brute
strength. The female lead is not only a present day Egyptian woman, but also
contains the soul of Karloff's ancient girlfriend, for whose illicit love he
had been killed and buried alive back in the old days. This was the pre-Indy
Jones days, so the woman plays a helpless, dependent victim, so much so that
the newly aroused feminist sensibilities of many audience members loudly
boo-ed her (or rather what her character said) several times. Things have
changed (Diana Rigg in the 60s, and the surprising and refreshing Karen
Allen character in the first Indiana Jones movie who shattered the
stereotype -- she now runs a yoga studio). Though strong women were depicted
in other films in the 30s, it was considered a perfectly acceptable
stereotype for the woman to be the maiden in distress in need of male
protection.

The 30s film-makers and audience could not be expected to predict the
changing sensibilities brought about by a women's movement that was still 30
to 40 years away.

In Jung's case, he chose a profession that, at that time, was not only
dominated by but was almost exclusively Jewish. He knew Freud and the
others. He knew that Freud's office was at 19 Berggasse in Vienna, far
removed from the districts where gentile doctors had their offices -- not by
choice, but because of antisemitism. He knew, while the Zarathustra Lectures
were coming into existence, that the Nazis were persecuting Freud, and the
difficulties Freud had finding a way to escape the continent for the safety
of Britain. His "disappointment" with Nazis -- which may very well have
arisen out personal frustrations with local Nazi friends rather than larger
ethical awakenings -- came long after Kristallnacht, an event he was not
unaware of. Let's say -- if one buys the self-interest version -- that this
was his grab at an oedipal moment, and Freud and the Jews were the father
needing killing. When he discovered that his mother, incongruously the Nazi
"Fatherland", didn't want to embrace him either, that he was as dispensable
as the Freudian father, his attitude began to morph.

The point -- even if we accept some version of that story -- is that,
contrary to what has been repeated here by several people several times,
Jung was not simply swimming in an undifferentiated world of antisemitism
where everyone was unthinkingly doing it, oblivious to its consequences or
reality on the ground, including the direct impact it was having on his own
mentor. Freud had been chastising him for his antisemitism for decades. He
knew better, and he should have acted differently. This is not imposing an
alien standard from another time or planet, but the measure of his own time.
That, in fact, was precisely the point of the Nuremberg Trials. Whoever
doesn't understand that must consider the Nuremberg Trials themselves to be
unjust.

As for the Buddhist angle, yes, Buddhists talk about compassion, concern for
the suffering of others, etc. It is always easier to tell someone else who
has been wronged to "let it go" than to do so when you yourself are the
victim. Even when the wronged number in the millions, over most of two
millennia. But this is only part of Buddha's advice. He also instituted an
institution in the sangha, to be engaged in by all monastics monthly,
involving confession for one's misdeeds, major or minor. Recognition of
one's misdeeds, and the promise to desist from such actions in the future is
the deep and constant background for the other attitudes and practices. To
fail to participate honestly was/is grounds for expulsion from the Sangha.
Where is Jung's "confession"? Where his contrition? He is not in the sangha,
but perhaps this is grounds for his expulsion from the honorary luminary
list.

Dan