The path after Born Again - A Zen Buddhist perspective

"The inner truth which I discovered when I was living in a hermitage when I was twenty-six did not differ in the slightest from the truth when I met the Chinese Zen master Daoje and got his testimony of enlightenment, or right now, today.  However, as far as complete illumination of the eye of objective reality and mastery of the supreme teaching and realization of the great freedom is concerned, I am as different know from when I met Daoje as sky is from earth.  Believing in and acting on this, you should seek the day of fulfillment of the eye of reality....It is accomplished by the practice of single-minded devotion to nurturing it."

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"Already Rinzai was in Obaku's community, when he asked three times about the essential meaning of the teaching of the enlightened ones and was beaten each time, but still didn't discover anything.  However, at one word from Daigu he was transformed....The change that took place at Daigu's was Rinzai's point of entry.  Those who study and investigate Zen, past and present, all have entry sometime; however, if you stop there, you have gotten a little and consider it enough.  After this, if you are not most earnest it will be hard to accomplish the complete illumination of the eye of reality....the truth is exceedingly profound, knowledge and wisdom extremely deep; the farther you go, the deeper they are....If you watch an enlightened guide, you realization will grow deeper and deeper."

Sayings of Bankei
in The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen
tr. and ed. by Thomas Cleary

Interesting parallels to Alma 32.

Jung and God

"My raison d'etre consists in coming to terms with that indefinable Being we call God."

"I don't overlook God's fearful greatness, but I should consider myself a coward and immoral if I allowed myself to be deterred from asking questions."

"No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.  He has pistis and peace." 

"Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I wanted.  That gave me the strength to go my own way.  Often I had the feeling that in all decisive matters I was no longer among men, but was alone with God."

C. G. Jung, Word and Image

Rebirth and Follow Through

"[it] doesn't necessarily mean that once you're enlightened you stop there.  It is necessary only to practice according to reality and complete the way.  According to reality means knowing the fundamental mind as it really is; practice means getting rid of obstructions caused by habitual actions by means of true insight and knowledge.  Awakening to the way is comparatively easy; accomplishment of practical application is what is considered most difficult.  That is why the great teacher Bodhidharma said that those who carry out the way are few....

If you can really get to see your fundamental mind, you must treat it as though you were raising an infant.  Walking, standing, sitting, lying down, illuminate everything everywhere with awareness, not letting him be dirtied by the seven consciousnesses.  If you can keep him clear and distinct, it is like the baby's gradually growing up until he's the equal of his father - calmness and wisdom clear and penetrating."

Sayings of Bunan, in
The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen
Ed./Trans.: Thomas Cleary

Compassion

"Fire is Something that burns;
water is something that wets;
a Buddha is someone who practices compassion."

Sayings of Bunan, in
The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen
Ed./Trans.: Thomas Cleary

The motto over Jung's door

"Vocatus atque not vocatus deus aderit."

(Summoned or not summoned God will be present.)

Taken from an equivocal Delphic oracle.  Jung parsed the oracle as follows:
"...it says: yes, the god will be on the spot , but in what form and to what purpose?  I have put the inscription there to remind my patients and myself: Timor dei intitium sapientiae [The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom].  Here another, not less important road begins, not the approach to 'Christianity' but to God himself and this seems to be the ultimate question."

Soul and Relationship - Jungian perspectives

"No individuation can be achieved without relatedness to another person."

Aniela Jaffe

"Individuation has two principle aspects: in the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship.  Neither can exist without the other, although sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates."

C. G. Jung

"The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two, and it is the true mystery which cannot be betrayed by words and depleted by arguments."

C. G. Jung

C. G. Jung, Word and Image

Jungian Analysis and the Numinous

"...the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous.  But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is real therapy, and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology.  Even the disease takes on a numinous character."

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"Among all my patients in the second half of life - that is to say, over thirty-five - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.  None of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.  This of course has nothing whatever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church."

C. G. Jung, Word and Image

Seeing and Knowing Others

"People see others in terms of themselves.  The vision of fools is dreadful.  If there is ambition in oneself, one will see others on the basis of that frame of mind.  He who lusts looks with lust.  Unless one is a sage, seeing is dangerous.  Even though there are people on the great way, people who can see and know are rare.  What a waste.  A wise man discerns the potential of others though they may not be equal to him, and makes use of their level of understanding."

Bunan, from
The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen

Kabbalah - Body and Soul

"Just as the union of body and soul gives life to the body, so does it wrap the soul in material substance, providing it with the powers of the physical body.  This is not a one way process.  The soul not only gives something to the body, vital force and life, it also gets something from the body, from the body's connection with matter and form, its physical capacities, its channels of perception, and its various links with both the material and the immaterial worlds.  In this way, the soul is of course limited and restricted by the body; but it also draws on a new form of being, a different point of view.  The contact and mutual attraction between body and soul creates a contingency, an unique situation, generating the human self, which is neither body nor soul but a merging of the two.  This conjoined self can achieve great things, giving expression to the glory of the body in being raised from the inertness of matter and to the exhilaration of the soul's response to this mutual contact."

Adin Steinsaltz
The Thirteen Petalled Rose

The Purpose of Myth

"The anthropologist Clifford Geertz has suggested that mythological structures function for cultures in two ways, as models of and as models for reality.  In the first case, the myth describes the way the universe factually appears to be; in the second, it models the way in which a universe peopled by humans of that culture ought to be."

Curtiss Hoffman
The Seven Story Tower