Beyond the logic of Lemma: the oneness of life and its environment,the oneness of within and without

In this paper the ‘analyst as a citizen in the world’ is understood as the analyst interconnecting and harmonising with his or her environment, including not only society, but also nature and the universe. In this sense, Buddhism teaches the Oneness of Life and its Environment, and links are made between Mahayana Buddhism and Jung's understanding of the Self and individuation. The Logic of Lemma in the Flower Ornament Sutra indicates that all phenomena in the world can merge with each other without losing individuality; ten stages are described from the Lotus Sutra and links are made with the development in respect to the ego; Kenji Miyazawa and his work are given as examples to illustrate this. Causality and synchronicity are explored in terms of the interaction between the individual and the environment, and three examples are given where sometimes individual, egoic, causality is more of a feature and sometimes synchronicity has a greater prominence. The paper ends with an examination of tree drawings, made over a period of 50 years by junior high school students, which indicates the way that these individuals have portrayed themselves and their relation to their environment.     

The emergence of the ecological mind in Hua‐Yen/Kegon Buddhism and Jungian psychology

The complexity associated with deep interconnectedness in nature is beginning to be articulated and elaborated in the field of ecological studies. While some parallels to the psyche have been made and the field of Eco‐psychology has been developing, Jung's explicit contribution by way of the image of rhizomes has not been considered in detail. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze acknowledges borrowing the term from Jung, though he disagreed with Jung's Empedoclean use of the term. The paper presents some fundamental properties of rhizomes along with contemporary scientific research on mycorrhizal (fungal) networks. Comparisons are made, first with classical symbolic forms, demonstrating some overlap but also some differences. Then comparison of rhizomal networks is made to those found both in mammalian brains and in recent images of the ‘cosmic web’. While no hard conclusions can be drawn from these images, their remarkable similarities are suggestive of a need to reconsider what is meant by ‘intelligence’. The cosmic web is one of the largest structures in the known universe (clusters of galaxies which form into filaments and walls) with empty spaces in between. Exploration of the structure of this web leads to a discussion of dark matter and dark energy, current hot topics in science, probing into the mysteries of our ‘Big‐Bang’ cosmology. An additional comparison of the emerging image of the universe as a whole with the ancient Chinese Buddhist cosmological vision from the Hua‐Yen School (Kegon in Japan) again reveals profound parallels. The potential convergence of aspects of subjective, or meditative, explorations with objective scientific constructions is striking and offers links between East and West, as well as potential confirmation of the objective aspects of empathy.     

Where East meets West: in the house of individuation

The psychological process of individuation as experienced in Jungian work may lead to states of consciousness that resemble advanced spiritual developments across religious traditions and cultures. This is where Westerners may reach a common ground with the East. In the essentials and with respect to the final goal there is little difference among the many ways to the self, even if the cultural features in the landscape are disparate. In late stage Jungian analysis and individuation and in what Erich Neumann calls ‘centroversion’, the personal and the impersonal aspects of the personality accumulate around the ego‐self axis to form a composite identity. In this complex structure the ego does not vanish but is joined to the impersonal archetypal levels of the psyche and identity thus becomes at once individual and archetypal. This is the third stage of conjunction as described by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis and it is identical to the type of consciousness depicted in the final scenes of Zen Buddhism's Ten Ox‐Herding Pictures.     

Beauty,ugliness and the sublime

Jung and Freud had very different ideas about the nature of analysis. This paper begins by exploring how Jung's gnostic approach, with its goal of individuation, is deeply informed by Buddhist and Taoist principles. His pluralistic, relational model regards truth as subjective and co‐constructed with the patient. In contrast, Freud's secular methodology has objective truth as its goal. His classical psychoanalysis is a form of reality testing where the analyst claims to know the painful, singular, objective reality which the patient tries to evade. The theory of aesthetic development (see Piaget 1951, Baldwin 1975, Parsons 1980, Housen 1992, Harris Williams 2010) proposes that artistic appreciation is linked to human development. The paper looks at how the apperception of beauty, related to both truth and meaning, acts as an indicator and facilitator of individuation in the clinical encounter. This is illustrated by a clinical case study. Through empirical research, support is given to the argument (Bollas 1978, Meltzer 1988) that our early experience of the feminine/maternal plays a central role in developing an aesthetic capacity. The experience of the sublime in analysis is examined and portrayed as a means by which aesthetic development may be reignited and narcissistic isolation shattered.     

Nina Coltart and the border of Bethlehem

Nina Coltart's freedom in addressing delicate areas such as spirituality and Buddhism within a psychoanalytic framework has opened borders between different psychoanalytic communities. This paper sets out to identify a deep‐rooted philosophical tension that runs through several aspects of Coltart's work starting from her ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem … or, thinking the unthinkable in psychoanalysis’. In exploring this central topic in depth psychology, of the distinction between thinkable and unthinkable contents, the author argues that it is not a fundamental distinction in Coltart's work but is rather a particular example of a more fundamental structural dichotomy which pervades her approach and which manifests in several different guises. It is the breadth and sincerity of Coltart's writings which make this a useful exercise, not only for understanding the structure of her work but also in illuminating some structural tensions which permeate depth‐psychological pursuits in general.     

A lemma science of mind: the potential of the Kegon (Flower Ornament) Sutra

The paper argues for a new perspective on the relationship between Buddhism and European psychology, or sciences of the mind, based in the Kegon Sutra, a text that emerged in the early stages of Mahayana Buddhism (3^rd ‐ 5^th century CE). The basis of European science is logos intellection, formalized by Aristotle as following three laws: the law of identity, the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Logic in the Buddhist tradition, by contrast, is based in lemma (meaning to understand as a whole not with language, but with intuition). Lemma‐based science born in the Buddhist tradition shows that rational perception is possible even without the three laws of logos. The Kegon Sutra, which explains what Buddha preached only a week after he attained enlightenment, is unified under the logic of lemma and can be seen as an effort to create a ‘lemma science of the mind’. The fundamental teaching of the Kegon Sutra is explored, and its principles are compared with primary process thinking and the unconscious as outlined by Freud and Jung. Jung's research of Eastern texts led him to create a science of the mind that went further than Freud: his concept of synchronicity is given by way of example and can be seen anew within the idea of a lemma‐based science.     

From Freudian narcissism to the Buddhist notion of anatman,via Jung's idea of identity

Starting from the question the youthful Carl Gustav pondered as he sat on ‘his’ stone – ‘Am I he who sits on the stone, or am I the stone on which he sits?’ – the author has attempted to show that, for Jung, the idea of identity is founded on a wilful non‐determination. This stance results in ethical and methodological repercussions that differentiate it both from the Freudian project and from Hindu and Buddhist thought, while at the same time having much in common with them. The paper refers to the notions of emergence and (Varela et al. 1992) enaction 2 2 According to the Wikipedia entry, the introduction of the term ‘enaction’ is attributed to Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (1992), who proposed the name to ‘emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pre‐given world by a pre‐given mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs’.
and argues that the concept of the archetype, especially in relation to the self, merits a re‐evaluation in light of the new scientific paradigm.