Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism occupies a distinctive and contested position within the depth-psychology corpus. It enters the literature primarily through three vectors: the translation and interpretation of the Bardo Thödol, the historical encounter between Jung and Vajrayana thought, and the broader comparative project of mapping Buddhist psychology onto Western psychotherapeutic frameworks. Evans-Wentz’s editions establish Tibetan Buddhism — understood as Tantric, or Lamaist, Buddhism — as the privileged carrier of esoteric death-and-rebirth phenomenology, insisting on its continuity with pre-Buddhist Bön shamanism while encoding it within a Theosophical universalism. Clarke documents Jung’s carefully staged ambivalence: drawn to Tibetan materials as mirrors for the collective unconscious and mandala symbolism, yet maintaining a therapeutic rather than metaphysical appropriation. Lama Govinda and Mark Epstein approach Tibetan Buddhism as a living psychological system whose contemplative methods — visualization, mantra, recognition of mind’s nature — offer resources unavailable to Western clinical practice. Coleman’s Penguin edition represents the scholastically responsible turn, grounding the tradition’s technical vocabulary in its own philosophical terms. Running through all these positions is a tension between romantic projection (Tibet as timeless repository of wisdom) and genuine philosophical encounter — a tension Clarke identifies as constitutive of Western reception. The 1959 diaspora, noted by multiple authors, transformed Tibetan Buddhism from a ‘Forbidden Land’ into a globally distributed contemplative presence, dramatically accelerating its influence on transpersonal and psychodynamic thought alike.

In the library 13 passages

Tibetan Buddhism has become widely known in the West. Tibetan Buddhist centres have been established in many parts of Europe and America and have attracted widespread interest and following. Jung first became acquainted with this particular school in the inter-war years when Tibet was still a ‘Forbidden Land’

Clarke traces Tibetan Buddhism’s Western reception from Jung’s early inter-war encounter — when it was scarcely accessible — through its post-1959 diaspora, establishing it as the last major wave of Eastern philosophy to enter Western consciousness.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994thesis

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Lamaism has preserved the Bon shamanic tradition almost in its entirety. Even the most famous masters of Tibetan Buddhism are reputed to have performed cures and worked miracles in the purest tradition of shamanism.

Eliade argues that Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism) is structurally continuous with pre-Buddhist Bön shamanism, with its greatest masters functioning as shamanic healers, thereby positioning the tradition as a palimpsest of archaic ecstatic techniques.

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis

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It is part of a larger cycle of texts of the ‘heart essence’ (mying thig) tradition of the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism. This cycle of texts is a ‘treasure’ (gter ma), said to have been hidden in Tibet by the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava during the eighth century

The introduction identifies the Bardo Thödol as embedded within the Nyingma treasure-text tradition, establishing Tibetan Buddhism’s specific sectarian and textual context as foundational to the work’s authority and meaning.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis

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In Eastern practices, as demonstrated most clearly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, remembering of childhood is done primarily to support and enhance meditation. In the West, these memories tend to disrupt it.

Epstein draws a structural contrast between Tibetan Buddhist and Western psychotherapeutic uses of memory, arguing that the Tibetan tradition subordinates personal history to meditative development in a manner incompatible with Western clinical assumptions.

Epstein, Mark, Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective, 1995thesis

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With the Tibetan diaspora that began in 1959, Tibetan Buddhist culture has been portrayed as if it were itself another artifact of Shangri-La, as an entity existing outside of time and history, set in its own eternal classical age in a lofty Himalayan keep.

This passage critically examines the Western mythologization of Tibetan Buddhism as timeless and otherworldly, arguing that the 1959 diaspora intensified rather than corrected a romantic projection that evacuates the tradition of historical reality.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis

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The Tibetan dorje (Skt. Vajra), being one of the chief ritual objects of Tibetan Buddhism, has come to be called the lamas’ sceptre. Esoterically, the word dorje has many meanings. It is applied to Buddhas and deities, to Tantric initiates, to specially sacred places, to texts and philosophical systems.

Evans-Wentz uses the dorje/vajra as an emblematic symbol to demonstrate the polyvalent esoteric vocabulary of Tibetan Buddhism, showing how a single ritual object encodes an entire cosmological and initiatory framework.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting

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it was in the eighth century A. D. that Lāmaism, which we may define as Tantric Buddhism, took firm root in Tibet. A century earlier, under the first king to rule over a united Tibet, King Srong—Tsan—Gampo… Buddhism itself entered Tibet from two sources: from Nepal… and from China

Evans-Wentz provides a foundational historical account of Tibetan Buddhism’s emergence as Tantric Buddhism rooted in the eighth century, tracing its dual origins from Nepal and China and its consolidation under royal patronage.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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like a gigantic wave the Tantric and modifying the Buddhism world swept over the world and Hinduism alike and obliterating many of their differences. The influence of Tantric Buddhism upon Hinduism was so profound

Govinda situates Tibetan Buddhism within the broader Tantric current that transformed both Buddhism and Hinduism, arguing for its pan-Asian philosophical significance rather than its insularity as a Himalayan phenomenon.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting

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‘[As] a doctor’, he wrote towards the end of his life, ‘I acknowledge the immense help and stimulation I have received from the Buddhist teachings’… What the study of Buddhist literature enabled him to do, he claimed, was ‘to observe suffering objectively and to take a universal view of its causes’

Clarke documents Jung’s therapeutic reception of Buddhist teaching — including Tibetan materials — as a clinical resource for observing psychic suffering objectively, valued precisely because Western religious authority had lost its healing function.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994supporting

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The degenerative character of Bardo life is corroborated by the spiritualistic literature of the West, which again and again gives one a sickening impression of the utter inanity and banality of communications from the ‘spirit world’.

Jung’s preface, embedded here, places Tibetan Buddhist bardo phenomenology in dialogue with Western spiritualism and the unconscious, using Tibetan eschatology as a depth-psychological mirror for understanding post-mortem states.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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Theravada Buddhism 97, 114, 120, 121 thresholds 145 Tibetan Buddhism 30, 97

Cooper’s index entry locates Tibetan Buddhism as one of several Buddhist schools referenced in the comparative framework of the text, indicating its presence as a distinct category alongside Theravada and Zen without elaborating its specific role.

Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019aside

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Srong-Tsan-Gampo, who flourished in the first half of the seventh century A.D. and died about 650, was the first Buddhist king of Tibet, and, being a great patron of learning, is justly the most famous and popular of Tibetan rulers. He was canonized as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara

Evans-Wentz provides biographical annotation on Tibet’s first Buddhist king, contextualizing the political and devotional conditions that enabled the Dharma’s initial establishment and the subsequent line of Dalai Lamas.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954aside

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Tantra 72, 111–12… Vajrayana 172… Tibetan Book of the Dead

Clarke’s subject index groups Tibetan Buddhism’s core concepts — Tantra, Vajrayana — alongside Jung’s major Eastern engagements, reflecting the structural centrality of the Tibetan tradition within the broader comparative project of the book.

Clarke, J. J., Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient, 1994aside

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