Meister Eckhart

Eckhart was a Christian mystic around the 13th century. Some people seem to think a mystic pulls rabbits out of a hat (😀) but in this context it simply means a human being who seeks to experience the divine rather than just write/create theology. To live truth rather than just think it.

Like many Christian mystics, he sailed close to the wind as far as heresy is concerned. But that seems par for the course. We all need a dash of heresy before any attempt to swallow anyone elses "only way"......😀

Eckhart is seen as a "dharma brother" by many of the Buddhist Faith, and the "zen man" D.T.Suzuki said that certain of his utterances mirrored the prajna wisdom of zen - direct seeing, when concepts fall away and only the constant advance into novelty remains.

Eckhart once said that if the only prayer we ever said was "Thank You" it would be enough. I think this is so. It certainly corresponds to my own Pure Land faith, where the Nembutsu is in effect a cry of gratitude - felt in all circumstances.

Again, he said:- "Love has no why". Which I find profound. Make of it what you will. We are what we understand.

Another of his phrases was "Nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness, and there God shines."

Anyone familiar with the "anatta" (not-self) teaching of Buddhism will see why Eckhart is seen as a Dharma Brother.

Enough for now. My coffee is getting cold. Shopping to get, grandchildren to collect and cook for.

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SW-User

Nice and quiet around here, I can waffle and ramble to my hearts content....

Eckhart says in perfectly orthodox and traditional Christian terms (this assurance given by Thomas Merton, who taught theology to the novices in the monastery of Gethsemane) :-

“In giving us His love God has given us His Holy Spirit so that we can love Him with the love wherewith He loves Himself. We love God with His own love; awareness of it deifies us.”

D.T. Suzuki quotes this with approval, comparing it with the Prajna wisdom of Zen.

As I see it, many who see themselves as "religious" seem to value the exception. Only here! Only in this book! But surely it is the correspondences found right across the whole world of Faiths, deep truths found in diverse scriptures that relate to each other - such is what speaks of the reality of any path or true way of being?

If Truth is eternal and God is omnipresent, then the Divine cannot be restricted or confined to one single religion or spiritual path.

As Thomas Merton wrote in a letter to Suzuki:-

I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?