The Red Book Adventures

It’s February in Minnesota. Some folks go on trips, vacations, around now. Lots of people I know actually, a couple of friends to Hawaii, another to the West coast. My mom is in Orange County somewhere, with my brother. My brother who is estranged from me, I believe because I am poor and perhaps because I question my faith, I’m not sure why, and we’re not able to talk about it; he’s uptight, but still my mom is warm.

So, this is my vacation, what I’m calling The Red Book Adventures, traipsing through Jung’s psyche, if you can imagine that. In a moment of desire for the book, I decided to justify the cost by thinking of it as a textbook, and creating this quest for the beginnings of Jungian psychology. Well, it’s not necessarily warm and sunny, but it’s a trip. Here’s my travelogue.

Day 1

My own actual copy of The Red Book lies in the box on my coffee table, unopened. I’m not sure why when it arrived days ago I didn’t just jump to open it like I do most of my boxes from Amazon. What will I find on this adventure? I just finished watching a ten minute intro to this work on Amazon by Dr. Murray Stein. It made me both more interested and a bit afraid. This short lecture spoke of the power of suffering as one of the points of the Christian story that Jung addresses in The Red Book. The Christian idea of suffering has affected more of my life than I care to admit. Suffering, hmmm. I will open the box, and open the book. I am brave, but I am afraid of suffering.

The book is still unopened but the adventure has started. I read up on The Red Book on Wikipedia, one of my favorite sources (truly). On my cyber travels I meet Robert Thurman. In googling The Red Book, it seems that as part of marketing this book, famous people were interviewed on this book, and Thurman was one of them. Wikipedia has this to say about Robert Thurman: “Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (born August 3, 1941) is an influential and prolific American Buddhist writer and academic who has authored, edited or translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding the first endowed chair in this field of study in the United States. He also is the co-founder and president of the Tibet House New York and is active against the People's Republic of China's control of Tibet.” It goes on to say that Thurman was “the first American Buddhist monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.” He is also the father of Uma Thurman. Who knew?