Robert Jingen Gunn is a psychotherapist and a faculty member at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In this erudite volume, he sets out to reveal emptiness as a place of divine activity. He sees the experience of loss, darkness, doubt, or confusion as an essential stage in the process of self-transformation.
Dogen, the thirteenth century Japanese Zen master, explored the positive dimensions of emptiness in the spiritual practice of Zazen. After searching for a teacher, he came to a deeper understanding of his authentic self.
Thomas Merton, a twentieth century Catholic monk, used his experience of homelessness as a catalyst to fresh explorations of solitude and community. Gunn skillfully probes this imaginative Christian's weaving of the many threads of emptiness in his life. Merton's writings about the emptying of self in service to others is one of his finest contributions to the world's religions.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's search for wholeness grew out of his experience of emptiness in depth psychology and his struggle to reconcile his own male and female elements. The author sheds new light on the importance of Jung's relationship with Toni Wolff as an anima figure in his life.
Using illustrative material from the work and lives of Dogen, Merton, and Jung, Gunn reveals how emptiness can be a seedbed for the flowers of self-transformation.