EASTERN RELIGION: WESTERN IMAGINATION43
West, and what the East means to the West. This approach asks such questions as: under what conditions were the various Eastern cultures encountered by the West, and what was the operating table, the ground of meaning, the mythic or imaginative substratum which supported the East-West interchange and upon which concepts and ideas were moved around? Such a perspective views the cross-cultural interchange as resting upon an ocean of symbols (Baudet, 1965; Said, 1979; Campbell, 1973, vols. 2 and 3).
It is frequently through extreme geographical differences that a culture reflects upon itself and tells stories about itself. The gradual emergence of the image of Christian Europe, for example, depended extensively upon the development of fantasies about an Islamic Orient. Fantasies of Tartary, of the East, of the West, and of Asia only acquired a coherent shape quite recently. They were formed within the context of the West's struggle for self-definition. Tibet is also a part of the oppositional fantasy between East and West which dominates contemporary imaginings. Indeed, there is a density about the image of East—West which is difficult to shift. Hopefully, by addressing it directly, at its root-metaphor—geography—the previous chapter has created some imaginative space.
Plucking a highly evolved religious and philosophical system such as Vajrayana Buddhism from its sociocultural milieu is fraught with difficulties. As Peter Marin wrote of some experiences with Tibetan Buddhism in America: 'We drift in a landscape that we do not understand and we have the wrong names for things' (1979, p. 43). Jung was one of the first to set about unravelling the psychosocial complexities of this interchange. As such, his work is an essential starting-point for any imaginative analysis.
All of Jung's major writing on Buddhism, and on Eastern religion generally, were undertaken between 1936 and 1944, with the exception of The Secret of the Golden Flower which appeared in 1929. He produced the work on 'Mandala Symbolism' in 1950 and subsequently reconsidered his commentaries on two Tibetan texts in 1953. His visit to India took place between 1938 and 1939. It is important to situate these works in the development of Jung's opus. The earlier phase which led to his co-operation with Freud ended in 1912, with the publication of 'Symbols of Transformation'. This work with its concentration on the archetypes of Hero, Puer and Great Mother, not only sealed his split from Freud, it also plunged Jung into a period of isolation and introspection which ended in 1921 with the publication of'Psychological Types'.