ABSTRACT

Throughout the past generation of Christianity’s encounter with Buddhism, the role played by Jungian psychology has been ancillary at best. True, Jung’s ideas are cited with a certain regularity, but for some reason the systematic body of thought he left behind has not attracted Christians or Buddhists as a common forum for mutual criticism and enrichment. In this essay I would like to draw attention to what I see as an unnecessary closure in Jung’s idea of the psyche and to suggest how its opening could nudge Christianity and Buddhism into closer contact with each other and with the shifts that have taken place in the general spirituality of our age.