Japanese Zen and the Zen priest's function has largely been reduced to officiating at funerals, a practice sarcastically referred to in Japan as . For example, the Sōtō school published statistics stating that 80 percent of laity visited temples only for reasons having to do with funerals and death. Mahayana Buddhism teaches śūnyatā, "emptiness", which is also emphasized by Zen. But another important doctrine is the buddha-nature, the idea that all human beings have the possibility to awaken. All living creatures are supposed to have the Buddha-nature, but don't realize this as long as they are not awakened. The doctrine of an
Buddhism and psychology Buddhism. British barrister Christmas Humphreys has referred to mid-twentieth century collaborations between psychoanalysts and Buddhist scholars as a meeting between: "Two of the most powerful forces operating in the Western mind today." One of the most important influences on the spread of Buddhism in the west was Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki. He collaborated with psycho-analysts Carl Jung, Karen Horney and Erich Fromm. Carl Jung wrote the foreword to Suzuki's "Introduction to Zen Buddhism", first published together in 1948. In his foreword, Jung highlights the enlightenment experience of "satori" as the "unsurpassed transformation to wholeness" for Zen practitioners. And while acknowledging