carl jung=榮格; tibetan tantra=西藏密乘; emptiness=西藏密乘; deity yoga=本尊瑜伽; inflation=自大
摘要
In the practice of deity yoga, compassion and wisdom are combined in a single consciousness such that the wisdom consciousness realizing emptiness is used as the basis from which one appears as a deity. Tibetan systems stress the importance of “divine pride,” in which the practitioner seeks to develop such clear imagination of herself or himself as a deity that the sense of being a deity occurs strongly. For Tsong-kha-pa (1359-1419), visualizing oneself as a deity and identification with that deity comprise the central distinguishing feature of tantric meditation. In Action Tantra this practice begins with emptiness yoga, called the “ultimate deity,” wherein the deity is an appearance of the wisdom realizing the emptiness of inherent existence—the deity being merely the person designated in dependence upon purely appearing mind and body. Because the empty status of the person is being realized, it is said that deity yoga serves to counteract the conception of oneself as inherently existent and thereby prevents afflicted pride, a version of ego-inflation which the renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) sought to avoid by advising against identifying with assimilated contents. This paper explores the perils of inflation that Jung predicted for Westerners who attempted Eastern yoga, and describes his remedy: assimilation of contents of the collective unconscious, not through identification, but through confrontation, avoiding equation with either the lowest or highest aspects of one’s own psyche.
