OK Carl - Where Do You Want It?
Author's Note: Dear reader - I sincerely hope the following causes your mind to be both "socked" and "doubt" infested. After-all, you are not paying me for a service and I am not selling you any wares. Of course, we could dance this dance - as the internet is default set for commercial endeavour - but Ch'an is not that easy. It would be easy for you to give me money (and purchase my compliance) - but it is not so easy to permanently give away your greed, hatred, and delusion, ad clearly show me the empty mind ground. This is why the Ch'an Masters of old resorted to shock-tactics - a shout or a blow - as these actions "halted" the routine thought processes. Today, particularly with regards to writing, the same effect is achieved through the profane treatment of concepts. Fred, for instance, based his entire theory on a defunked (evolutionary) understanding of the development of the foetus in the womb - and when he was told about this - he refused to admit his mistake as his theory had already gained traction in the commercial and academic world. Freud, of course, was Jung's teacher. Becoming entangled in the thing the Buddha advocates becoming untangled from - is not the purpose of Ch'an training. Neither is making you feel "nice" about random words written upon a page. And here we are. ACW (31.10.2025)
Having studied with Richard Hunn, I was introduced to Richard Wilhelm’s extraordinary translation of the Book of Changes (I Ching) – which I later learned was originally rendered into Wilhelm’s native German – as the “I Ging”. What were we actually reading? Well, it turned-out that the English translation of Wilhem’s work is in fact a transliteration of his original German version. This might explain why Wilhelm quotes Carl Jung – who was also an ethnic German - although this time born in Switzerland. This is the pathway through which many of us in the West were introduced to Jungian thinking – which I did study for a number of years (although never officially). Richard Hunn had travelled to Zurich as he had been granted permission by Jung’s family to read Jung’s handwritten pages (omitted from his biography) that state he believed that rebirth might be real. His family asked for these pages to be removed as they felt such an idea might negatively impact his more scientific-thinking. Many years later, and after reading Frank J Sulloway’s excellent book entitled “Freud Biologist of the Mind – Beyond the Psychoanalytical Legend” – as well as many similar tomes – I realised just how off the mark this type of (psycho-therapeutic) thinking was - and remains.
Yes – such approaches to analysing the mind might assist some people with the negative aspects pertaining to their thought and emotional processes – but such schematics do little more than this. From a Buddhist perspective, it is the “balancing” of the delusional mind-set – or that way of looking at things that aligns greed, hatred, and delusion without ever questioning the presence or validity of these self-defeating entities. Placing aside the scientific issues arising from many of these psychological systems – the fact remains that the “delusional” mind-set as defined by the Buddha is a priori taken as “normal” and beyond any notion of “uprooting” or “transcendence”. Furthermore, linking mind development to commerce adds yet another layer of complication to a process that the Buddha taught free of monetary charge (the cost of training in the authentic Dharma requires a strict self-discipline). Can this type of expedient psychological training be useful? Yes – given that all the conditions are met which produces such an outcome.
But here is the massive contradiction to all this. Whereas a Buddhist Master (at least in the Chinese Ch’an tradition) must have attained a confirmed enlightenment before any teaching is undertaken – a psychotherapist can offer counselling when he or she possesses no more or no less mental stability than the next deluded individual. Simply paying for a course of academic training does not guarantee any profound or permanent alteration in the mind of the successful student. This is why many successful academics, even after years of successful teaching (or counselling in the case of psychologists), still retire to isolated Buddhist Temples to eventually get to grips with the greed, hatred, and delusion that continuously plagues their minds. An individual must think for themselves – so that they can permanently “stop” the thought processes on their own and through their own efforts – when given a proper meditative method to work with. This Dharma-process has nothing to do with money or status. Indeed, realising the empty mind ground is perhaps the lonliest undertaking in the world – and so it should be. If Jung had truly realised this understanding, then he would have known that rebirth simultaneously “exists”, “does not exist”, “exists and does not exist”, and “neither exists and does not exist”. There's nothing difficult about that to understand - now is there?
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