the zen of Meister Eckhart

[earl]

Mesiter Eckhart, the 14th cent. German Christian mystic, is a wonderful example of the adage, "all mystics speak the same language." His words sound as if they could have come from the mouths of zen masters and I wanted to share some of them here now, (they are extracted from a book written by D T Suzuki-a zen master who was so struck by the parallels between Eckhart & Mahayna he wrote a book re that in the late 1950's entitled, "Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist-" I'll attach the website & end of this for those who'd like to read the book on-line).

"Thou shat know him, (God), without image, without semblance and without means...but, for me to knoe God thus, with nothing between, i must be all but he, he all but me-I say God must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one 'is', in this is-ness working one work eternally; but as long as this he and this I, to with God and soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he...God's is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less."

"While I subsusted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing; there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing, all creatures spake God. If I am asked, Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak Godhead? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do, in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense inot my mind and make them one in me. When i go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me: God passes away."

"Emoty yourself of everything. that is to say, empty yourself of ego and empty yourself of all things and of all that your are in yourself and consider yourself what you are in God. God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being. There, be still and do not flinch from this emptiness."

Finally, in accord with my "univerasalistic/mystic mentality," this quote from the dude:

"All the different religious traditions can be traced b ack to an experience of Communion with the Ultimate by their founders or reformers. Historic circumstances lead then to the diversity of religious traditions. Yet all those diversities are only so many expressions of the one and the same mystical core-expressions of the sense of ultimate belonging. This mystical core needs to bring forth so many different myths and teachings, needs to be celebrated in so many different rituals, because it is inexhaustible."

Website for Suzuki book is:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mcb/mcb00.htm

Take care, Earl

[Abogado del Diablo]

Originally Posted by earl

"All the different religious traditions can be traced b ack to an experience of Communion with the Ultimate by their founders or reformers. Historic circumstances lead then to the diversity of religious traditions. Yet all those diversities are only so many expressions of the one and the same mystical core-expressions of the sense of ultimate belonging. This mystical core needs to bring forth so many different myths and teachings, needs to be celebrated in so many different rituals, because it is inexhaustible."

Website for Suzuki book is:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mcb/mcb00.htm

Take care, Earl

Awesome post earl. Thanks for the introduction to Meister Eckhart. That's one more item for my reading list.

On a similar note, I've always liked Campbell's notion of all religious revelation as "folk inflection of the elementary idea" (that same elementary idea expressed in the excerpts from Eckhart in your post). Campbell was fond of quoting the Upanishads: "The Truth is One. But the sages speak of it by many names."

[earl]

I'll go ahead & add a few more, (hopefully with fewer typos ):

"...you behave as though you transformed God into a candle in order to find something with it, and when one has found what one looks for, one throws away the candle."

"When I still stood in my first cause, ("Godhead"), I had no God, I was cause of myself...but when by free will I went out and received my created being, then I had a God. Indeed, before there were creatures, God was not yet God, but he was what he was...This is why I pray to God to rid me of God..."

"Separate yourself from all twoness. Be one on one, one with one, one from one."

"This play has played eternally before all natures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, 'prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in an eternal stillness.'"

What a guy! take care, Earl

[Abogado del Diablo]

Thanks, earl. This is very interesting.

Is there a particular book by or about Eckhart that you would recommend as a starting point (I prefer "by" rather than "about", personally)?

Thanks again.

[Paladin]

Hi Abogado,


You might like Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings Selected and translated by Oliver Davies, Penguin Classics 1994 ISBN 0-14-043343-0


Hope this helps

Peace,

Mark

[Abogado del Diablo]

Thank you Mark.

[earl]

Originally Posted by Abogado del Diablo

Thanks, earl. This is very interesting.

Is there a particular book by or about Eckhart that you would recommend as a starting point (I prefer "by" rather than "about", personally)?

Thanks again.

Actually got all my Eckhart stuff off the internet. There are even a few more things I've discovered on the net looking at similarities between Eckhart's thought and buddhism, (in case no one could tell, my version of Christianity is heavily flavored by buddhism! ). For those interested on that sort of thing, for instance, there's a 1997 article entitled, "Morality and Mysticism: the Views of Dogen and Eckhart," by Daniel Zelinski, Ph.D. @ http://www.66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:lkTJZEhFkzcJ:www.princeton.edu/~wildberg/Papers/Zelinski%2520paper.pdf+soto+zen,+origin+and+eckhar t&hl=en

Enjoy your reading, Earl

[path_of_one]

Thanks so much for this post! Definitely one more thing for the reading list. Sounds like Eckhart fits very well with my own experience and beliefs.

[earl]

Heck, I'm so taken with his words, I'll post some more-perhaps i should start an Eckhart quote of the day thread

"I assert that in heaven all is in all and all is one and all is ours...i contend that in that place, what one has another has, not from another nor in another, but in its own self, so that the grace in one is simultaneously in another as his own grace."

"It is all the same thing: knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by Him. Even as luminous air cannot be distinguished from its luminant, for it is luminous with what illumines it, so we know by being known, by making us conscious."

"Anyone who foolishly imagines that he will get more of God in thoughts, prayers, pious offices and so on, than by the fireside or in the marketplace, in truth, merely takes God, as it were, and wraps his head in a cloak and hides him under the table. For anyone who seeks God under fixed forms lays hold of the form while missing the God concealed in it. But anyone who seeks God in no special guise lays hold fo him as he is in himself."

"People often say to me: 'Pray for me.' and I think to myself, 'Why ever do you go out? Why not stop at home and mind your own treasure? For indeed the whole truth is in you."

OK, folks, I'll stop now, though i think i'll go add a few more on the Christian thread related to the "Word." Take care, Earl

[Snoopy]

Hi,

Er, what can I say - shameless bumping.

s.

[Thomas]

Hi Earl – (long post, cut to the bottom, if pressed, I have a favour to ask)

In my Tradition I've heard Eckhart referred to as 'The Prince of Mystics,' although we have no 'evidence' that he ever had a mystical experience such as those experienced by Aquinas, Bonaventure (both Doctors of the Church) or the Spanish mystics (St Theresa and St John of the Cross) so he is regarded as a 'speculative' mystic, or a 'speculative theologian'.

I'd like also to say that whilst there was a charge of heresy brought against him, invariably a case of scholastic squabbling that too often marred the High Middle Ages, both Pope and Eckhart died before the matter came to be decided. Prior to this his task was touring the German religious houses and reforming those that had fallen into unsound practice, so he was never anything other than through-and-through orthodox.

The argument was taken up in a spat between the Franciscans (contra) and the Dominicans (pro), and, never being resolved, the stain remained.

Now he is accepted as wholly and entirely orthodox in his theology, offering delightful paradox for contemplation. I think there is a move to have him beatified, but St Eckhart or not, he will always be Meister Eckhart to me (likewise Origen will always be, as his peers knew him, The Man of Steel – Clark Kent, you can eat your hat).

Eckhart's contentious tracts were not from his own pen, but notes taken from lectures delivered to Dominican students ... so we must also recall that he was presenting high-level theology to university students.

It's a sad indictment that the 3-volume collection of the works of Eckhart will not (I have been told) be reprinted ... it is always best to drink from the source ...

Lastly, might I leave you with a saying of another Dominican favorite of mine, a woman, and a Doctor of the Church, St Catherine of Siena. In a mystical vision Christ appeared and said to her:

"I am He who is ... you are she who is not."
That still sends shivers up my spine.

FAVOUR:
Last lastly ... if I ever get round to writing, one of my inspirations would be to write "The Simple Way of Meister Eckhart" ... I shall post some quotes from him in that vein, and would appreciate a Zen (or even an idiosyncratic Earl) overview of them in that light ...

... and, of course, everyone else is welcome ...

Thomas

[Thomas]

Meister Eckhart said:

What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with yourself, you can discuss all that is in your heart?

Thomas

[wil]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Meister Eckhart said:

What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with yourself, you can discuss all that is in your heart?

Thomas

Having a bunch of them, without religious, ethinic or international borders, without proximity or time constraints...like here at CR!

[earl]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Hi Earl – (long post, cut to the bottom, if pressed, I have a favour to ask)

In my Tradition I've heard Eckhart referred to as 'The Prince of Mystics,' although we have no 'evidence' that he ever had a mystical experience such as those experienced by Aquinas, Bonaventure (both Doctors of the Church) or the Spanish mystics (St Theresa and St John of the Cross) so he is regarded as a 'speculative' mystic, or a 'speculative theologian'.

I'd like also to say that whilst there was a charge of heresy brought against him, invariably a case of scholastic squabbling that too often marred the High Middle Ages, both Pope and Eckhart died before the matter came to be decided. Prior to this his task was touring the German religious houses and reforming those that had fallen into unsound practice, so he was never anything other than through-and-through orthodox.

The argument was taken up in a spat between the Franciscans (contra) and the Dominicans (pro), and, never being resolved, the stain remained.

Now he is accepted as wholly and entirely orthodox in his theology, offering delightful paradox for contemplation. I think there is a move to have him beatified, but St Eckhart or not, he will always be Meister Eckhart to me (likewise Origen will always be, as his peers knew him, The Man of Steel – Clark Kent, you can eat your hat).

Eckhart's contentious tracts were not from his own pen, but notes taken from lectures delivered to Dominican students ... so we must also recall that he was presenting high-level theology to university students.

It's a sad indictment that the 3-volume collection of the works of Eckhart will not (I have been told) be reprinted ... it is always best to drink from the source ...

Lastly, might I leave you with a saying of another Dominican favorite of mine, a woman, and a Doctor of the Church, St Catherine of Siena. In a mystical vision Christ appeared and said to her:

"I am He who is ... you are she who is not."
That still sends shivers up my spine.

FAVOUR:
Last lastly ... if I ever get round to writing, one of my inspirations would be to write "The Simple Way of Meister Eckhart" ... I shall post some quotes from him in that vein, and would appreciate a Zen (or even an idiosyncratic Earl) overview of them in that light ...

... and, of course, everyone else is welcome ...

Thomas

Hi Thomas, while I have no knowledge of church history being literally pretty "unchurched," I was of the impression that in terms of his practices, Eckhart was fairly orthodox. Which makes it all the more striking to me that his very poetic expressions of (presumably) his direct experiences reflect impressions that would easily overlap the types of mystical experiences obtained by folks of other religious persuasions. The "heart" (of being) has its own reason(s) the head knows not and perhaps speaks a common language I had alluded to when I started this thread nearly 2 years ago. Would love to hear more of your commentary re Eckhart, Thomas. take care, earl