“If there is a soul, it is a
mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here,
throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful
bringing forth.” ~ Albert Camus
"Formation. Transformation.
Eternal mind's eternal recreation." ~ Goethe
The
aim of this paper is to briefly and generally
explore the mandala symbol as it is found in Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism and
the Christian Garden of Eden. Each of these mythical "philosophies" employs
the image of a circle (mandala) depicting their belief in the essential nature
of Reality. The circle is composed minimally of a center, a perimeter and an
external reality beyond the periphery. As we shall see, the two views are
radically different. However, while this paper will sketch these basic
differences, my main aim is to propose a depth psychological reconciliation of
these dissimilar cosmologies. This mythical rapprochement will utilize the
theme of developmental psychology--a view that places psycho-spiritual
processes at the center of human existence. Mine is not an endeavor to make
either "view" adopt the teachings of the other or jettison any of
their own ideological distinctives, but is a depth psychological exploration
suggesting that psycho-spiritual truth is most often a mosaic of various
mythical perspectives.
The English term mandala is from the Sanskrit word for
"circle" (मण्डल)
and most often refers to a Hindu or Buddhist ritual symbol that
represents the composition and significance of the Cosmos. Most Tibetan Buddhist mandalas
are square with four gates inside a circle with a center point. The term mandala has become a broad term for any plan, chart or geometric
pattern that symbolically represents a microcosm of the universe.
Buddhist practitioners often employ
mandalic images for focusing the attention of aspirants and adepts in order to
establish a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation. The basic and final aim of such
meditation is to comprehend and eventually experience an existential “emptiness",
often described as the cessation of duality, the cause of all suffering. In
this Buddhist view the individual human being is born into the illusion of being an isolated and
alienated self (ego). This ego-self falsely generates impressions of mental,
emotional and material separation. The Buddha described this experience as dukkha, sometimes translated suffering, but better understood as
dislocation or separation. Psychotherapist Mark Epstein in Thoughts Without a Thinker describes dukkha as "pervasive unsatisfaction", writing:
From the very beginning, the human infant is vulnerable to an unfathomable anxiety that survives in the adult as a sense of futility or as a feeling of unreality. Hovering between two opposing facts--one of isolation and the other of dissolution or merger--we are never certain of where we stand. We search for definition either in independence or in relationship, but the ground always feels as if it is being pulled out from beneath our feet. Our identity is never as fixed as we think it should be. (46-47)
This
chronic experience of futile searching and hovering between two opposite facts is the source of all human
suffering. The goal of Tantric Buddhism according to Dr. Malcolm: "is to
overcome duality by sewing the complex reality of human experience into a
single, unified whole…”[1]
(Eckel). One practical tool that is employed to facilitate such a union is the mandala.
The mandala symbolizes the endless Wheel of Life, the endless samsaric
cycle of moving from one (re)incarnation to the next due to karmic acts of
dualistic unconsciousness. Mandalas serve
as visual or kinesthetic maps of a larger Reality--demarcating a sacred space
for the contemplation and transmutation of consciousness. The mandala map may
help awaken the practitioner to a "realer" Reality beyond the
dualistic illusion of egoic thinking--helping him or her to move from ignorance
to enlightened wisdom and union. The circular diagram often contains four
quadrants or positions frequently denoting the four directions--north, south, east
and west--while the center of the mandala forms the central fifth point. The
four quadrants may be occupied by any number of significant Buddha images,[2]
depending on the practitioner's specific psycho-spiritual needs, while the peaceful
and all wise Buddha Akshobhya[3]
most often occupies the heart of the mandala.
 |
| Akshobhya Buddha at the center |
Akṣhobhya is the personification
of awareness or wisdom—of truly knowing the difference between what is real and
what is illusory. He represents the eternal Buddha-mind, illuminating the
darkness of ignorance and confusion that characterize humans caught in the
painful cycle of existence on the outer edge of the mandala. Psychoanalyst Mark
Epstein says the mandala is a symbol of the Wheel of Life, "...a
representation of the possibility of transforming suffering by the way we
relate to it" (Thoughts 40).
Once the mandala is drawn, delineating
a sacrosanct ritual space,[4]
the practitioner mentally and/or physically circumambulates the perimeter of
the circle, courageously encountering the dualities and psychic disturbance
found on the circumference. Here one's intention is to move from fragmentary
illusion into the center of integrated fundamental
reality--another term for the emptiness of non-duality. Eckel writes: "A
mandala…draws a circle around space and suggests to us that the movement of our
consciousness, perhaps the movement even of our physical journey is to go
around the mandala, encounter its diversity and then unify reality by going
right straight to the center" (ibid.). The
outer illusory periphery of the mandala represents the fragmented and disturbed
consciousness from which one desires relief.[5]
Putting this into common language we might imagine that the circumambulation of
the four quadrants and the outer edge of the mandala might help one to see
through and transmute everyday life situations like financial worries,
debilitating addictions, dysfunctional relationships and other pathological delusions
which are generated by the oblivious ego self. The way to transform or heal
these distressing mental and emotional instabilities is to move to the unitive
center in order to experience Akshobhya Buddha, the unshakable One. “In the Tantric
tradition, you dissolve the distinction between the Buddha and your self”
(Eckel 15). The result is one of integrative enlightenment, freedom
from all dualistic thinking, and emptiness, an idea further elaborated in the Tibetan Book of the Dead,:
How
mistaken is the one which dualises subject and object…How debilitating is the
view which dualises good and evil! How pitiful we are, clinging to purity and
impurity! We confess this transgression within the expanse, which is free from
the duality of good and evil. (143).
That is the goal--freedom from the
duality of good and evil, terms we
shall encounter in the Christian mandala. One might sum up the Tantric mandalic
ritual as a process of moving from the outer edges of the circle to the inner
center--from painful subject-object separation to complete union, from
alienated judgmental ignorance to integrated wisdom.
Now moving to the biblical myth of Eden,
we find something very similar to a Buddhist mandala. The Garden of Eden is
also a sacred space with a very prominent center containing four rivers rather
than gates, a periphery and a world outside the boundaries of Eden :
Now the LORD God had planted a garden...in Eden; and there he put the humans he had formed...In the center of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge... A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. [God said to the human]...you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die... (Genesis 2:8-15)
At the center of Eden are two trees
containing life and divine knowledge--and four rivers dividing the garden into
quadrants.
Like
Akshobhya Buddha at the center of the
Tantric mandala, Adam and Eve are in a blissful state of non-duality, with the
man "united to his
wife..[as]... one flesh...both naked...[with] no shame" (2:24-25). So then both Tantric Buddhists and
biblical Christians portray the center as a place of peaceful union. But as we
read further into the biblical narrative, we begin to discover conspicuous differences.
First off, the Buddhist human begins on the outside edge of the mandala and
moves into the center, whereas the Christian begins in the center of the Edenic
mandala and moves to the outer edge. The trajectories are completely opposite
one another. In Genesis we read of the first humans beginning in the center of
the garden, only to encounter a divnely appointed crafty trickster (serpent)
who convinces them to become wise by experiencing the dualism of good and evil
perception:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God [cursed and] banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen. 2:15-3:24)
While
the Buddhist mandala finds the ignorant human on the edge of an illusory
existence, the Christian mandalic Eden locates the ignorant human at the center
of a perfect existence. The two views commence from opposite sides of the
mandala. While the Buddhist teacher implores
humans to cease eating from the illusory tree of dualistic sensory experience,
the Christian serpentine instructor, appointed by God, implores humans to eat
from the sensual tree of dualistic perception which is "good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for
gaining wisdom". Where the Buddhist begins with a desire to escape the
painful duality of good and evil, the Christian begins with a desire to
discover the painful duality of good and evil. It is true that in both versions
the goal is to have one's eyes opened to wisdom, but Buddhist wisdom eradicates
duality while Christian wisdom introduces duality. In Buddhism the movement is
away from the ignorance found on the samsaric periphery and into the peaceful
center; while in the Christian Eden the movement is from the peaceful center
outward onto the troubled and cursed edge of existence.
While both views agree that
ignorance is the original human situation and fundamental existential problem, the
two views radically disagree about the way to solve the problem of ignorance.
In Buddhism ignorance arises from "duality
consciousness," a complete lack of awareness of True Reality which unifies
all pairs of opposites. Here, psychologically speaking, the problem is that of
being an independent self--of being a separated distended ego. The Buddhist
must empty him/herself of all dissonant mental perceptions, including "a
dualistic perception of subject and object; all appearances of inherent existence;
all appearance of conventionalities; and all forms of conceptuality. A genuine
direct realisation of emptiness is non-dual, in that it is free from...[all]
forms of dualism" (Tibetan 461).
However, it is quite the opposite in the Christian philosophy (at least for
some). For some Christian theologians the goal of existence is to move from the
state of an unindividuated spark of divinity--a state of complete
ignorance--into a state of duality consciousness that allows for discursive
experiences and self-individuation. This is the impetus of the biblical myth
which sees human evolution as a process of moving from the center of the Edenic
madala outward, while the Buddhist philosophy sees the human moving from the
periphery back into the center of the mandala. Many would see these radical
differences as irreconcilable, concluding that one must adopt either a Buddhist
or a Hebrew perspective. However, from an archetypal point of view may we not imagine
them as ultimately compatible?
The first step toward reconciliation
is to acknowledge the possibility of a developmental approach to
psycho-spiritual consciousness, proposing that human beings evolve through worldly
time, space and circumstances. This was Jung's approach to therapy, writing
that: “Personality is a seed that can only develop by slow stages throughout
life” (C.W., 17,171). This implies that an ego-seed must be planted and
grown before it can be harvested--inflated before it can be deflated. Edward
Edinger sums it up well:
It is generally accepted among analytical psychologists [Jungians] that the task of the first half of life involves ego development with progressive separation between ego and Self; whereas the second half of life requires a surrender or at least a relativization of the ego as it experiences and relates to the Self. The current working formula therefore is, first half of life: ego-Self separation; the second half of life: ego-Self reunion. (5)
By
utilizing the circular mandala imagery found in both Buddhist and Christian
philosophies, we might suggest that a person must first grow a distinct ego-identity
by proceeding from the Edenic center outward into the world of
"cursed" afflictions, traversing the neurotic fragmentations found on
the journey around the periphery, and finally moving back into to the center as
propounded so masterfully in Tantric Buddhism. This
notion of spiritual evolution is not a new idea. Nearly 2,000 years ago the
Christian theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130-c.202 C.E.), interpreted Genesis as an epic narrative of psycho-spiritual
development. Irenaeus believes that humans, represented by Adam and Eve, are
immature children placed in the cosmos in order to grow and mature into the
likeness of God. He wrote in his work titled Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching: "...for there was in them [Adam and Eve]
an innocent and childlike mind, and it was not possible for them to conceive
and understand anything of that which by wickedness through lusts and shameful
desires is born in the soul" (13). He believes that the material world with its imperfections has
been created to "ripen" the human seed in order that it will flower
into immortality. Irenaeus writes:
In the previous books I have set forth the causes for which God permitted these [material] things to be made, and have pointed out that all such [souls] have been created for the benefit of that human nature which is saved, ripening for immortality that which is [possessed] of its own free will and its own power, and preparing and rendering it more adapted for eternal surrender to God. And therefore the creation is suited to [the wants of] man; for man was not made for its sake, but creation for the sake of mankind... (Against, V,29,1 italics mine)
Note that he calls the soul's movement to immortality a
ripening, and recognizes the human ego moving through this world of
fragmentation and duality as the means for making each soul "more adapted for eternal surrender to God". This is where Buddhism
enters, finding the confused and troubled soul on the edge of the soul-making
mandala, providing tools for re-entry at the end of the individuation process. The modern theologian John Hicks calls Irenaeus
the first theologian to develop a soul-making perspective.[6] When Irenaeus reads
Genesis 1:26, which says: "Then
God spoke, 'Let us make mankind in our image,
in our likeness...,'" he
interpreted it as the declaration of a divine soul-making process with a
distinct beginning and end. Irenaeus argues that the Hebrew word "image" indicates divine potential
while the word "likeness"
points to divine completion (Against
II, 24-26), imagining these verses to indicate a process of psycho-spiritual
expansion that began with the original Adam and culminating in the Christ. He
takes his idea from the Apostle Paul in the New Testament letter to the
Corinthians:
The Body that is sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (I Corinthians 15:44-49)[7]
Irenaeus
viewed the expulsion out of the mandalic garden center and into the world of
subsequent dualistic pathological struggles to be normal and necessary,
"This, therefore, was the [object of the] longsuffering of God, that man,
passing through all things, and acquiring the knowledge of moral
discipline...[must learn] by experience..." (Against III, 22).
I recognize that Buddhists typically
find such metaphysical conjecture about a "beginning" to be useless
speculation. This is seen in the introduction to Lady of the Lotus-Born, The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe
Tsogyal:
[In]…the general Buddhist view…the mind-stream, as it occurs in every sentient being, is something endless and beginningless. It has no assignable origin…Grounded in the deluded notion of self, sentient beings seek to achieve their aims, to find happiness and avoid suffering, according to the dualistic interplay of ‘I’ and ‘other,’ self and external phenomena. But because phenomena are impermanent, this situation is intrinsically unstable. Beings therefore pass through an unending sequence of states, more or less protracted, cognized as pleasure or pain, all transient and all incapable of bringing lasting satisfaction. This process is not only unlimited, it is uncontrolled and unpredictable even though, within certain broad parameters, it is endlessly repetitive and devoid of purpose. This is the definition of samsara. As the experience of unenlightened beings, it has always been the case and, left to itself, it will continue forever. (xviii italics mine)
Two
very different cosmological notions are revealed in this paragraph when
comparing Buddhism to the myth of Eden found in Genesis: First, samsara or the endless cycle of painful existence for
the Buddhist is "beginningless" while Genesis states that in the beginning
God created the heavens, the earth and the entire world of conditions for the
process of moving from the Adamic ego to the completed Christ self. Secondly,
for Buddhists this dualistic worldly existence is "a process...devoid of purpose," while in the Irenaean view there is
intentional purpose in all processive experiences of duality. Both the Buddhist
and Christian would agree that the ego's propensity to discriminate between opposites
causes pain and suffering. However, the
Irenaean view differs in that it views all pathological experiences as normal
and necessary in order to transmute the nascent human ego-pod toward
individuated completion. Irenaeus writes:
...how, if he [a human] had no knowledge of the contrary, could he have had instruction in that which is good?...For just as the tongue receives experience of sweet and bitter by means of tasting, and the eye discriminates between black and white by means of vision, and the ear recognises the distinctions of the sound by hearing; so also does the mind, receiving through the experience of both [good and evil]...But if anyone shuns the knowledge of both kinds of things, and the twofold perception of knowledge, he unawares divests himself of the character of a human being. (Against 39, 1 italics mine)[8]
The Christian story seeks to find a
cosmological explanation and reason for suffering whereas the Buddhist approach
begins with the basic experiences of life's myriad afflictions. From Irenaeus' perspective,
the human ego and soul-making process is conceived at the moment of dualistic
perception, and the subsequent world of opposites provides a kind of
gestational womb for the creation of a new kind of being. Here the human psyche
has an actual beginning, experiencing stages and states of transformative
develops toward a destination--akin to Aristotle's entelechial process. For most
Buddhists the goal is also transformation from a state of ignorance to that of
enlightenment, but there is no clear beginning or telic individuation.
Irenaeus teaches that humans commence
the soul-making process with a basic animal nature that is in need of
humanizing and divinizing into a final God-like form. The human creature must
move out of the garden of unconsiousness into higher realms through various
experiences before he/she can reach completion. Irenaeus writes: "But if
the Spirit be lacking in the soul, he who is such is indeed [comprised] of an
animal nature, and being left carnal, shall be an imperfect being, possessing
indeed the image [of God] in his
formation, but not receiving the likeness
through the Spirit" (Against 5,
6). This notion of humans containing and intermingling animalistic, humanistic
and divine qualities shows up again in another mandala-like image in the Book of Revelation. The Apostle John
sees a vision with the throne of God at the center surrounded by four living
creatures:
In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” (Revelation 4:6-8)
This Christian Tetramorph is a
common Christian symbol, reminiscent of Tantric
Buddhism's six realms of being, including an Animal Realm, a Realm of Gods and
a Human
Realm. These realms comprise the outer edge of their cosmic mandala or
Wheel of Life,
and represent the state of the incomplete human mind. Mark
Epstein suggests that we view
these six realms “less literally and more
psychologically” (17), with each of the six realms
being concerned with returning a missing
piece of the human experience, restoring a
bit
of the neurotic mind from which we had become estranged. This concern with
repossessing or reclaiming all
aspects of the self is fundamental to the Buddhist notion of
the six realms (Thoughts 18). It is possible to see a beautiful
symmetry between the
Christian and Buddhist views when one recognizes that
exiting the mandala for personality
development is as important as reentering
the mandala.
But not everyone is willing to admit
the possibility of this amicable mythical diplomacy. Most obvious are the
fundamentalist Christians who allow no spiritual or psychological cross
pollination between Buddhists and Christians. But even the brilliant
mythologist Joseph Campbell seems to miss the larger soul-making metaphor of
the mythical Eden story, calling it "a museum piece of a misinterpreted
folktale" (The Mythic 147). Campbell pokes fun at the idea of Yahweh
placing cherubim with flaming swords at the entrance to Eden in order to keep
Adam and Eve from getting back to the tree of life. Campbell, the ex-Catholic,
calls the biblical Yahweh an "unilluminated legend...the archetypal
mythical 'Hoarder,' holding to himself the gift of his grace, and his
mythology...of man's exile to an earth of dust..." (147). He goes on
compare what he calls this Edenic "bit of nonsense" to the Japanese
Buddhist temple-gate in Nara which is
guarded by two frightening wooden statues which serve as:
...the counterparts, in the Buddhist mythic image, of the cherubim placed by Yahweh at the gate of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life...in the Buddhist world the worshipper is instructed to walk right between those two gate guardians and approach the tree without fear; whereas, as told in the Book of Genesis, our own Lord God put his cherubim there to keep the whole human race out...One is not to be intimidated by the death threat of those guardians, but to cast aside the fear of death and come through to the knowledge of one's own Buddhahood-- or...in biblical terms: one's own Godhood...it is our own attachment to our temporal lives that is keeping us out of the garden. (202-04).
Campbell
seems to miss the mythical and psychological significance of the biblical
cherubim by assuming that because the images bear certain similarities, they
are identical "counterparts". But
if our earlier view is granted merit, then the flaming swords serve as
beneficent guardians who "encourage" the journeyer to move
"through the valley of the shadow of death" before returning to enter
as a transformed person. These cherubim might be likened to the mother who
stands at the door shouting at her teenage son, "And don't come back until
you have a job!" Before one can re-enter the mandala by obliterating the
ego, one must exit the mandala and develop an ego. Or in the words John Keats,
"How then are souls to be made? How but by...a World of Pains and
troubles...to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul...A Place where the
heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways" (Keats). In this
view, the cherubim with the flaming swords symbolize the psychological
necessity of moving forward rather than backward. In point of mythical fact, the
biblical Tree of Life is found again in the Book
of Revelation at the end of the Christian narrative, where journey is
associated with the alpha and the omega,
a beginning and an end to the heroic adventure.[9]
Both the biblical Eden myth and the Buddhist mandala are correct, but
encountered at different points along the soul-making journey. The way back to
the center originates from the center and moves forward by progressing out of
and around the circle before returning. Jung made an error similar to
Campbell's when he first encountered the Gnostics in 1918-19, elevating spirit
over matter. Jung wrote, "Weakness and nothingness here [on earth], there
[in the realm of spirit] eternally creative power. Here nothing but darkness
and chilling moisture. There wholly sun" (Drob 25). Later in life,
however, after recognizing the crucial role of living a physical life on this
earth via the myriad relationships that facilitate one's personal individuation
Jung wrote in Liber Primus,
"this [earthly] life [of relationships] is the way, the long sought after
way to the unfathomable, which we call divine. There is no other way. All other
ways are false paths” (Drob 25-26). James Hillman refers to these necessary
experiences of suffering as pathologizing
which he describes as "the psyche's autonomous ability to create illness,
morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of its behavior
and to experience and imagine life through this deformed and afflicted
perspective" (Re-Visioning
57). The Edenic story provides a mythology
for pathologizing. The cherubim with the flaming swords blocking the gate
remind us that once the ego separates from the Self, the way is not back, but
forward and through a world of dukkha.
Hillman also addresses the tendency of Westerners to disparage the archetypal
value of pains and troubles by reducing Eastern psychology to a means of
escape:
If I have disparaged the transcendental approaches of humanistic and Oriental psychology, it is because they disparage the actual soul. By turning away from its pathologizing they turn away from its full richness. By going upward towards spiritual betterment they leave its afflictions, giving them less validity and less reality than spiritual goals. In the name of higher spirit, the soul is betrayed...The archetypal content of Eastern doctrines as experienced through the archetypal structures of the Western psyche becomes a major and systematic denial of pathologizing. (Re-Visioning 67)
In summary, I am suggesting that the
combined mandala images of Tantric Buddhism and Edenic Christianity are
complementary. The movement in a soul-making paradigm is outward from the
undifferentiated hub of the cosmological circle, where the nascent ego enters
into a world of duality on the edge, moving around and around the cyclical
perplexities of life, eventuating in a re-entry back to the center as a
transformed entity. In the words of Goethe:
As great, everlasting,
Unyielding laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.
Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)
[1] The Vajrayana teachers say that a genuine experience
of this radical notion of emptiness, or freedom from duality, would even erase
the differences between samsara and nirvana.
[2] For the mandala, especially germane deities would be
selected. The Tibetan Book of the
Dead, Introductory Commentary by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, has a
preparatory section titled, “Natural Liberation of Negativity and Obscuration
through [Enactment of] the Hundredfold Homage to the Sacred Enlightened
Families”.This ancillary chapter, actually containing 110 Peaceful and Wrathful
Deities, requires one to physically prostrate him/herself to each of the
deities with the instructions that one should “mentally admit and feel remorse
for all one’s negativities and obscurations, which have been, are being and
will be accumulated” (95).
[3] According to the "Scripture of the Buddha-land
of Akṣobhya", a monk wished to practice the Dharma in the eastern world of
delight and made a vow to think no anger or malice towards any being until enlightenment. He duly proved
"immovable" and when he succeeded, he became the buddha Akṣobhya, the Immovable Buddha.
[4] Mandalas can be as simple as a plate with lines on it
to hold grain offerings, to intricate colored sand mandalas, all the way up to
a large tract of land. Tibet itself is understood as a Mandala with the sacred
center in the capital city of Lhasa. To work this Mandala one must go on a
lengthy pilgrimage, circumambulating the whole vast realm by visiting the
shrines that mark the sacred locations in the Mandala and eventually making
your way into the central monument in Lhasa.
[5] It must be noted here that the word “relief” is used
rather than the word “escape” since Tantric or Vajrayana Yoga does not advocate
escape, but rather transmutation of consciousness through moving into and
through the painful experiences. Some forms of Buddhism and Gnosticism would
support the notion of escape, as they view the realm of matter as a prison
incarcerating spirit or mind, but that is not what Vajrayana Buddhism teaches.
This is a critical distinction.
[6] Irenaeus did not develop a Soul-making theodicy per
se, but as John Hick notes, "It is permissible and convenient to name this
approach after Irenaeus, as its first great representative, in spite of the
fact that it has not been maintained and developed in a continuity of teaching
linking its origins with the present day." Evil and The Love of God,
219.
[7] Jung devotes a whole chapter in his autobiography,
Memories, Dreams and Reflections, titled 'Late Thoughts," to pondering and
developing the idea of Christ as the completion of the story begun in Adam.
[8] The most famous modern proponent of a similar
soul-making view was Freidrich Schleiermacher in his book, The Christian Faith,
where he says that the development of God-consciousness can be stimulated in us
not only by pleasure, but by pain (pp. 240-245).
[9] "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the
Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that
they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into
the city." Revelation 22:13-14
problems, not as inherited family illnesses, but as congenital "questions posed by Fate" to his ancestors. In this view, my ancestral connection has passed along the assignment to for me to take up. Here Jung uses a developmental metaphor in order to emphasize the soul's ongoing process of continuation and completion rather than that of inflexible sickness and brokenness. In a developmental metaphor, trauma is more like an algebra assignment. I am not broken and don't need to heal anything, but am allowed to continue working on and completing the Fateful family assignments.
the only alternatives are to get well or remain sick. If I don't "get well," then I have failed and remain sick and broken. But the educational and agricultural developmental metaphors allow for progress through the ancestral journey. I am merely one student in a family endeavor. I am not defective, but merely incomplete until the assignment is finished--likely many generations from now.
