The self as destination or illusion: a comparative study of individuation in Jung and self-transcendence in Buddhist Vijñānavāda

Abstract

This article examines whether Jung’s theory of individuation reaches a structural limit that Vijnanvada (Yogacara) Buddhist philosophy can identify and continue. Prior comparative scholarship has mapped Jungian archetypes onto Buddhist categories; this study argues that such approaches conceal a more fundamental asymmetry between the two traditions. The study employs structural-comparative analysis of Jung’s Collected Works (vols 9/1, 9/2, 10, 11, 12) and the Cheng Weishi Lun (CBETA T31, no. 1585), with secondary scholarship in Buddhist studies, Jungian psychology, and phenomenology. The comparison proceeds at the level of cognitive architecture and is applied reflexively to both traditions. Four findings are established. (1) Both traditions posit a subliminal mind (collective unconscious / alaya-vijnana) in response to the insufficiency of surface consciousness. (2) Jung’s integrative methodology misreads the structural self-grasping of manas as content available for integration. (3) The Jungian Self archetype reproduces at a more sophisticated level the same atma-graha structure that manas enacts in lived experience. (4) The Vijnanvada doctrine of ‘turning consciousness into wisdom’ (zhuan shi cheng zhi) articulates a transformation of cognitive mode from self-assumption to samata-jnana that Jung’s framework approaches but does not formulate. Individuation arrives at the threshold of cognitive transformation without articulating the means to cross it. Vijnanvada offers a possible continuation: individuation functions as precondition for the subtler work of transforming the structural orientation of cognition itself. Both frameworks are subject to reciprocal epistemological constraints and reflexive hermeneutic suspicion.