The Sacred Image: C. G. Jung and the Western Embrace of Tibetan Buddhism

Text Sample:
Chapter I, Introduction:
The Western Embrace of the Tibetan Diaspora
When the iron eagle flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered over the earth and the dharma will go to the land of the red man. (Johnson, 1996, p.1)
In the more than six decades since the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, there has been a profusion of Tibetan Buddhist teachings dispersed throughout the world. This process has been especially prominent in North America and Europe, where centers of tantric learning have done much to promote the proliferation of this ancient tradition. Many scholars, including the historian Arnold Toynbee (1953), have suggested that for the West the most significant incident of the last century was its direct exposure to the practices and teachings of Buddhism. And this still evolving process has been greatly expanded through the ever-increasing influence of the Tantric Buddhist tradition known as Tibetan Vajrayana. As Philip Glass wrote (as cited in Yeshe, 1987/2001):
The great Tibetan diaspora is recent history, having begun with the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the early '50s. In the decades that followed, the arrival in the West of many, many living masters of Tibetan Buddhism turned the tragedy of Tibet into an unexpected and spectacular windfall for Western devotees of spiritual discipline. (p. vii)
For more than a thousand years, the spiritual treasures of this geographically isolated and theologically secretive region had remained largely inaccessible to the outside world. However, in the early decades of the last century a few intrepid Westerners such as Alexandra David-Neal and Ernst Hoffman (later to be known as Lama Anagarika Govinda) managed to penetrate these mysteries through their travels and subsequent encounters with prominent practitioners of this unique Buddhist tradition. Lama Govinda (1969), who studied for many years under the able tutelage of the eminent teacher Tomo Geshe' Rinpoche, described-in

Judson Davis, PhD, is an educator, author, spiritual counselor, documentary filmmaker, and world traveler. He holds a Doctorate in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has taught on the college and corporate levels in California, Germany, and Japan. His work has been featured in various books and academic journals, and he presently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Expressive Arts Therapists.