Journeys into Emptiness: Dogen, Merton, Jung and the Quest for Transformation

Models for every spiritual seeker Here are the life journeys of three great seekers who, though separated by time and culture, had much in common. Dogen was the 13th-century Japanese founder of a School of Zen Buddhism, the Soto School, and a teacher of zazen, wordless meditation. Jung was a 20th-century Swiss psychiatrist who broke with psychoanalysis and saw the mind as having both male and female elements. Merton was a 20th-century American Trappist monk who through traditional Christianity eventually embraced a wider spirituality. Each of the three engaged in a search for personal transcendence, a search that was triggered by a private experience of emptiness. Requiring no previous knowledge of its subjects, this book looks at the tradition in which each man worked, the key events of his life, his particular experience of emptiness, and how he used the experience to be transformed. The book shows how to bring the wisdom of all three men into our lives today. It also shows how to bring meaning and understanding to emptiness, one of the most difficult problems of the psychospiritual journey. These side-by-side biographies summarize each life in a wonderfully cohesive way for anyone new to the particular man. They also shed fascinating new insight for those more familiar with either the man or his philosophy.