AOL File Library: 4,101 to 4,200/aol-file-protocol-4400-4101-to-4200.zip/AOLDLs/General Buddhist Library/Eckhart_Nagarjuna Comparison/ECKHART&.txt

Text File | 2014-11-30 | 70KB | 930 lines

- 1 -

LITTLE TOWN THAT TIME FORGOT:

BUDDHIST NIRVANA AND MEISTER ECKHART╒S DIVINE GROUND IN THE SOUL

By Jacqueline Weltman
San Francisco State University

    ╥I have sometimes said that there is a power in the spirit that alone is free. Sometimes I
have said that it is a guard of the spirit; sometimes I have said that it is a light of the spirit;
sometimes I have said that it is a spark. ...This little town, about which I am talking and which I
have in mind, is in the soul so one and simple, far above whatever can be described, that this
noble power about which I have spoken is not worthy even for one instant to look into this little
town; and the other power too of which I spoke, in which God is gleaming and burning with all
his riches and all his joy, it also does not ever dare to look into it. This little town is so truly one
and simple, and this simple one is so exalted above every manner and every power, that no
power, no manner, not God himself may look at it. It is as true that this is true and that I speak
truly as that God is alive! God himself never for an instant looks into it, never yet did he look on
it, so far as he possesses himself in the manner and acording to the properties of his persons. ...if
God were ever to look upon it, that must cost him all his divine names and the properties of his
Persons; that he must wholly forsake......╙

                        -Meister Eckhart,  Sermon 2






    Meister Eckhart, the 13th century Catholic mystic, was not content merely to ascribe to
God a supreme essentiality or a glorious list of superlatives. His God explodes from qualities,
bursting the bubble of goodness and light to absorb, reconcile and transcend opposites. Eckhart,
as John Caputo writes, ╥made medieval onto-theo-logic tremble.╙1 Not content to allow the
mystic the usual gifts: a special burden of suffering, visionary ecstasies or a larger than average
portion of grace, Eckhart╒s mystic empties himself of ego, eschews special spiritual states, to
realize identity with God in the shared ground of God and the soul.
    Much of Eckhart╒s teaching compares favorably with forms of Buddhist philosophy. It is
much easier for the critic to dismiss these similarities at the surface; to assume that because he
was a loyal churchman, Eckhart╒s Catholicism is, in essence, irreconcilable with Buddhist
teaching. But to halt here owing to some concept of the innate and essential unreconcilability of
the teachings may be contradictory to both teachings and, in any case, unfruitful.
    I cannot refute the argument of scholars like McGinn that Eckhart, when he spoke of the
empty Godhead and the shared ground of God and the soul, did not mean what it sounded like he
meant. Neither, however, can I support it. Eckhart╒s wit, his ability to upset the habitual patterns
of language, his transgressive sense of metaphor and orthodoxy-erupting rhetoric point to an
individual deconstructing Church authority from within. Although at the end of his life, he feebly
defended himself from the inquisiting Church hierarchy, during his fecund and vibrant preaching
career he seemed to have little compunction about advancing certain controversial positions
based upon his own mystic experience. If I read his clear-sighted teaching with analytic eyes,
bringing an understanding of Buddhist metaphysics, I find a more-than-surface intersection
between those ideas and his own. Eckhart╒s deconstruction of the names and qualities of God; his
notion of the co-identification of man╒s ╥soul╙ with God╒s ground, and the path he recommends
for such a breaking through to God╒s ground has similarities - ontological, epistemological, and
practical - with Buddhist figurations of, and paths to, Nirvana. The loss of the concept of a
permanent ego-self, the purification of the klesas  (psychological and physical hindrances to
enlightenment), the ontic experience of non-attached spontaneity characterized by a loss of self-
will: Both Buddhist philosophy and Eckhart╒s Christianity posit these as characteristic of
ultimate enlightenment. They also describe a way to ╥get╙ there.
    There are methodological problems that face us as we begin this discussion. The first is
that different philosophical stripes of Buddhism interpreted Nirvana in different ways. Eckhart╒s
╥breaking through╙ of the soul╒s ground to God╒s resembles sometimes the Nirvana of the
Theravada, sometimes of the Mahayana varieties of Buddhism (as well as subgenres of each). I
will bring out these differences when and where necessary. The second issue arises when we are
forced to choose which works of Eckhart╒s to investigate. Eckhart, as a Dominican friar,
followed his order╒s mission to teach and preach. His Latin writings, accomplished in the
universities of Paris and Germany, where he was appointed to teach, are less challenging to
Catholic orthodox doctrines of God, the Trinity, salvation, and sacred scripture. The vernacular
sermons he wrote and preached when serving congregations of nuns and lay people in Germany,
however, are much more daring in word and trope, concerned less with proper doctrine, and
more with edification and orthopraxis. Although the Latin writings are interesting for their
buoyancy, earnestness and hermeneutic of ╥inner-meaning,╙ it is in the vernacular sermons that
Eckhart╒s most groundbreaking ideas appear. These are means by which he addresses the need of
the common faithful to experience God in a society more and more dominated by institutional
hierarchy, priestly mediation between God and people, and ritual gesture. Therefore I lean more
toward using the German sermons, supported by the Latin writings when necessary.
    The third issue arises when trying to compare ideas of philosophic complexity from
completely different traditions with each other. Buddhist philosopy, like Catholic theology, has
its own extended lexicon, most of it in Sanskrit and Pali. I am assuming, for the purposes of this
paper, that my reader has less background in technical Buddhism than in the basic doctrines of
Christianity. My modus operandi, therefore, will be to begin with a full discussion of Buddhist
Nirvana, salvation and path practice for comparison, followed by a comparative exposition on
the works  of Eckhart that deal with these themes.

ONTOLOGY

    What is Nirvana? What is God; what is the soul? Buddhist variations on Nirvana, or
enlightenment, differ with tradition. Eckhart discusses God and the soul in a variety of ways,
many of which bear a resemblance to these concepts of Nirvana.
    The standard explanation for Buddhist Nirvana is that rather than having positive
qualities, it is more easily defined by what it is not. Nirvana in the earliest systems is the state of
purification of the klesas, or physical and psychological pollutions of a person. Nirvana for the
early Buddhist is the only unconditioned dharma, or ╥existent╙: a birthless, deathless
psychological state of quiescence in which the notion of a personal soul, or atma, has been rooted
out. Life, as an endless combination of sensory experiences, forms, perceptions, impulses and
conscious thoughts, is experienced as it appears and collapses in its momentary impermanent
existences. All desires for and aversions toward impermanent and illusory sense objects -
whether abstract or concrete - have been abandoned and the illusory ego-self is annihilated.
There are no further re-births for such a person. The only thing keeping a yogi from perfect
freedom in this state is his surviving physical body. Once this is abandoned through death, he
enters his final, or parinirvana. One who is freed in Nirvana has ╥perceived void and
unconditional freedom╙2 and ╥knows the uncreated.╙3 Nirvana is, therefore, ╥uncreated╙ and
╥unconditioned,╙ the ╥highest of all things,╙4 the ╥highest happiness,╙5 ╥the quiet place,
cessation of the mortal and transitory.╙6
    Nirvana is ╥the signless;╙7 it is ╥calmness,╙8 and ╥cessation.╙9 Here is one famous
description of Nirvana by the Buddha:

It is like a flame struck by a sudden gust of wind...in a flash it has gone out and nothing more can
be known about it. It is the same with a wise man freed from mental existence: in a flash he has
gone out and nothing more can be known about him. ...When a person has gone out then there is
nothing by which you can measure him. That by which he can be talked about is no longer there
for him; you cannot say that he does not exist. When all ways of being, all phenomena are
removed, then all ways of description have also been removed.10

Nirvana is thus a state; its ontology cannot be separated from its mode of apprehension. The
often-quoted Udana  gives the most ╥affirming╙ description of this ultimate unconditioned
dharma:

Monks, there is a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. Monks, if that unborn,
not-become, not made, not-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this
here that is born, become, made, compounded.11

This passage is the closest the Pali scriptures come to positing Nirvana as some sort of existence-
that-makes-appearances-possible. It was a later development of the Mahayanists to describe
Nirvana as neither born nor unborn, not a dharma or a state, but rather their interplay, trace or
relationship in pratitya-samutpada - the twelvefold chain of dependent co-arising, or ╥the
manifestation of separate entities as relative to their causes and conditions╙ contrasted with the
earlier Hinayana meaning of ╥the evanescent momentary things appear.╙12 Because all dharmas,
including Nirvana, according to the Mahayana belief lack self-nature13 they are ╥empty╙ -
╥inasmuch as empirically and logically they only occur in mutual dependence
(pratityasamutpanna).╙14 This latter Mayahanistic interpretation is that of the master Nagarjuna,
founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, who declares that Nirvana neither
exists nor does it not exist. Like the sage who has gone beyond, there is nothing we can say about
it, for to make a statement about it is to implicate its opposite. Whenever we are given a
descriptive choice about the ultimate reality, there we err and cannot help but err. ╥What
originates dependently is unoriginated╙15 says Nagarjuna in a hymn, and since nothing
originates independently, samsara (this world of multiplicity and delusion) is Nirvana. The
ontology exists in the inference, and the radical subject is the seat of realization. ╥The unborn has
no own being, so how could it arise from itself?╙16 writes Nagarjuna, in contradistinction to the
Hinayanists. The Madhyamaka attitude toward Nirvana seems to be typified by this passage from
The Acintyastava (Hymn to the Inconceivable Buddha):

That which has transcended the duality of being and non-being, without, however, having
transcended anything at all; that which is not knowledge or knowable, not existent or non-
existent; not one or many, not both or neither...without foundation, unmanifest, inconceivable,
incomparable...arises not, disappears not, is not to be annihilated and is not permanent - that is
[reality], like space, not within the range of words or knowledge.17

This Mahayantistic Nirvana is ╥apratisthita Nirvana╙ - Nirvana that ╥does not dwell anywhere╙,
least of all in Nirvana; ╥it means that one is not attached to Nirvana and that is because Nirvana
originates in sunyata╙ [the emptiness of selflessness].18
    Eckhart, like the Buddhist philosophers, realizes that Ultimate Reality cannot be
harnessed to the infinite varieties and descriptions of existence. To affirm something of God
leaves out another proposition equally true or implies that something else is false. To have the
last word on the qualities of something,- like Nagarjuna╒s Nirvana - so vast and inconceivable, is
quite impossible. To Eckhart, a being called God exists, it is. And creatures have their existence
only because this is so. God is not interrelationship or relativity, but Be-ing that exists in the
╥now of eternity.╙ He is the creator in a religion that accepts a linear, historical scheme of
creation, and yet he does not exist in, nor is he limited by, time. How can this be?
     The answer is that in Eckhart╒s work, although God is taken as existent, he is given more
of an ontological than a theological import, and so his God-ness does not remove him from the
ground of abstraction, de-historicization, de-personalization. Eckhart seems to differentiate, like
Nagarjuna, between the teaching of conventional and absolute truths, for even as he freely
bandies about theories and ideas of Logos, Trinity, and external works, he is able to say that God
is ╥...neither Father nor Son nor Holy Sprit and yet he is a something that is neither this nor
that.╙19 McGinn writes: ╥...for Eckhart, natural and revealed truths are virtualy co-extensive only
in content and not in the mode of their apprehension. What the philosophers teach as merely
probable or likely, Christ, the Truth, teaches as absolutely true.╙20 Conventionally, God is God,
and we can say some things about what he is and not be wrong. However, in absolute terms, God
is not any of these discrete things we call him - he is not limited by us, by Time, or by his
Persons.
    To understand what God is in Eckhart, it is helpful to look at ╥his╙ creation, for the two
share the same ground. A central doctrine of Buddhism is that all beings possess the Buddha-
nature, the potential for enlightenment. In Eckhart, each person possesses God╒s nature in the
soul, and this nature shares his qualities. The two central properties of both God and the soul are
esse, existence, and unum, or oneness. Esse  is defined by McGinn as ╥absolute existence...esse
is what is absolute and undetermined in God...╙21 Unum  denotes an absence of plurality.
Plurality, in this case, is not the positive result of God╒s overflowing attributes, but a problem
created by the separation of subject and object - the creature╒s alienation from the simple
Oneness of God. McGinn also notes that ╥unum ╥ should be read as ╥indistinct (not-to-be-
distinguished) for all distinct things are two or more, but indistinct things are one.22 In his
theological study on Eckhart, McGuinn quotes him in the Commentary  on John:: ╥God is
distinguished by his distinction from any other distinct thing, and this is why in the Godhead the
essence or existence...is unbegotten and does not beget.╙23 Unbegotten, unbegetting - it is
reminiscent of a sort of nirvanic quiescence, an external, un-conditioned, absolute existence. We
can say that in this system, God is also the transcendent essence or referent, but Eckhart takes
great pains to make clear that ╥going out╙ from oneself to find this ╥external╙ transcendent being
is useless because, in actuality, there is nothing but God.

    God does not need existence, since he is existence itself. He does not need wisdom or
power or anything at all added or foreign, but, on the contrary, every perfection is in need of him
who is existence itself, both because each of them in and of itself is essentially a mode of
existence itself...it would be nothing without existence itself.24

Existence (or God) is a totality, a unified vision ╥lacking nothing╙, with ╥nothing outside it.╙25
God alone exists - it is the only being/existent/dharma whose essence and existence are the same.
In this way, God resembles the early Buddhist Nirvana - a transcendent  existent dharma, the
highest good; the supreme goal.
    God╒s nature is One and utterly simple, says Eckhart; there is no room for duality. God is
╥above names and is ineffable.╙26 Therefore, one cannot make the claim that Eckhart╒s fully
transcendent, fully immanent  God belongs to the world of goodness and light alone. As Nirvana
is beyond preferences and aversions, ╥...all things that are positively said of God, even though
they are perfections in us, are no longer so in God and are not more perfect than their
opposites.╙27 The key words here are ╥no longer so in God╙ - implying that God is also in some
way a state - a state that has been changed. How can we talk about God as a state - as Nirvana is
a state - without talking about his inherent existence in creation, samsara?
    What truly becomes clear in reading Eckhart is not how wonderful he thinks it is that the
immanent/transcendent Existence exists but how wonderful he thinks it is that it is the nature of
the soul. McGinn writes:

[T]he task of theology for Eckhart was not so much to reveal a set of truths about God as it was
to frame the appropriate paradoxes that would serve to highlight the inherent limitations of our
minds and to mark off in some way the boundaries of the unknown territory where God
dwells...only when we have come to realize what it is that we cannot know can we begin to live
out of the unknowable divine ground of our being.╙28

    This divine ground is uncreated. It is a power of the soul ╥that touches neither time nor
flesh...and is wholly spiritual. God is present in this power as he is in the external now...╙.29 For
the person in touch with this power in the soul: ╥nothing new will come to him out of future
events or accidents, for he dwells always anew in a now without ceasing.╙30 This ╥power in the
spirit╙ that shares the eternal, uncreated, unconditioned properties of God is:

neither this nor that, and yet it is a something that is higher above this and that than heaven is
above earth...whatever fine names, whatever words we use, they are telling lies...It is free of all
names, it is bare of all forms, wholly empty and free as God himself is empty and free.31

Eckhart is very clear that God is not to be found outside oneself or co-identified with anything.
This power in the soul he often described in the Gnostic manner as a ╥spark╙:

The spark in the soul which has never touched time or place...is not content with the Father or the
Son or the Holy Spirit, or with the three persons so far as each of them persists in their
properties...it wants to go into the simple ground, into the quiet desert, into which distinction
never gazed...This ground is a simple silence, in itself immovable, and by this immovability all
things are moved.╙32

The unmanifest that makes appearances possible, the Yogacara alaya-vijnana [world store
consciousness], the Tathagatha-garbha or the womb of the enlightened, ╥pregnant╙ emptiness:
these are Buddhist idealizations that in the individual are realized as Buddha-nature. The
relationship of Buddha nature, or True Self, to Nirvana, enlightenment ,bears some relationship
to the soul╒s ground and God╒s ground. In Buddhism, this now is, too, the simple now of eternity,
this very body the body of the Tathagata.
    ╥Those who are equal to nothing,╙ says Eckhart, ╥they alone are equal to God. The divine
being is equal to nothing, and in it there is neither image nor form. To the souls that are equal,
the Father gives equally, and he witholds nothing at all from them.╙33 Whatever the non-limited
nature of Nirvana is, it exists in its seed, potentiality in each being by way of prajûa, or
transcendent wisdom, just as God is co-equal with the soul - for

whatever the Father can achieve, that he gives equally to this soul, yes, if it no longer equals
more than anything else, and it should not be closer to itself than to anything else...whatever
belongs to anyone should not be distant or strange to the soul, whether that be evil or good.╙34

Here we can see practice and awakening united: the practice of non-abiding in opposites, of re-
becoming ╥uncreated╙ through the realization of that uncreated little town in the soul. Eckhart
sums up the relationship and what is more, the entire ╥differentiation╙ process this way:

When I stood in my first cause, then I had no ╥God╙ and then I was my own cause. I wanted
nothing, I longed for nothing, for I was an empty being, and the only truth in which I rejoiced
was knowledge of myself...what I wanted I was and what I was I wanted and so I stood empty of
God and of everything. But when I went out from my own free will and received my created
being, then I had a ╥God╙, for before there were any creatures, God was not God but he was what
he was. But when creatures came to him and received their created being, then God was not
╥God╙...in himself, but he was ╥God╙ in the creatures.35

It is the will to remain a separate, created being that separates us from our God-nature - God╒s
place in the soul. This ignorance of our true nature leads to ╥creation╙ - in Eckhart╒s thought the
eternal re-creation in eternity - the atemporal creation by God of our-selves: a process of
differentiation, and the ╥original sin╙ of splitting the world in two. In Buddhist terms, this will-
to-be leads to name-and-form: the naming of the ╥God╙ that named us, and our setting apart of
╥God╙ from ourselves and what we perceive as existence. This name and form gives rise to a
sensation and consciousness of it, which leads to our desire for a ╥God╙ projected ╥out there╙ -

So, therefore, let us pray to God that we may be free of God and that we may apprehend and
rejoice in that everlasting truth in which the highest angel and the fly and the soul are
equal...where I wanted what I was and I was what I wanted.36

True being, true realization, is beyond name and form, beyond beginnings and ends. This
interrelationship between God and the soul comes to resemble the apratisthita Nirvana of
pratitya-samutpada. ╥[A]ll angels in the primal purity are one angel, so are all blades of grass one
in the primal purity, and all things are one.╙37 This ontology of the living ground in the soul is
coming to resemble the stainless signlessness of true Existence - the phenomenological
╥suchness and emptiness╙ of the Mayahanists.


EPISTEMOLOGY AND PRACTICE

    How is Nirvana realized or attained in Buddhist philosophy? In what way is God known -
and how does the soul ╥break through╙ to God in Eckhart? Are there similarities?
    McGinn points out in his introduction to the╥Essential Eckhart╙ that even St. Thomas
Aquinas ╥would not have been so sanguine about the ability of philosophy to penetrate divine
mysteries╙ as Eckhart.38 Not only is Eckhart willing to demystify God and allow that the veil
between God and people can be eradicated; he is clear that God can be known directly through a
mode of attitude and practice. In both Eckhart╒s philosophy and Buddhist teaching, a set of
beliefs about the divine reality is quite useless and ineffective if there is no direct experience to
back them up. This is why much Mahayana scripture reads more for sound than for sense unless
one takes into account its true status of journey ╥guidebook,╙ rather than of ╥catechism╙ or
╥primer.╙ Much of Eckhart╒s vernacular preaching serves this function as well.
    In all forms of Buddhism, ultimate truth can be known through yogic practice. There are
substantial ethical and wisdom components to Buddha╒s eightfold path, but ╥going beyond birth
and death╙ or  the this-worldly-consciousness-of-differentiated-particulars requires a sustained
mental, intuitional effort in meditative awareness which leads to the actual experience of the
Buddhist truths of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), annica (impermanence) and anatta (the lack of
personal substance). ╥The ultimate truth (tattva) is the object of a cognition without an object
(advayajnana), and thus only an object metaphorically speaking (upadaya prajnapti).╙39 This
means the inner recognition of pratitya-samutpada : the object that is not an object but a
wholistic interplay of relationships with no own-being. The emptiness of all phenomena becomes
clear to the meditator when she recognizes intuitively that her own self-nature is empty too, and
subject and object then vanish in this insight.
    The Pali scriptures, the oldest writings in Buddhism, make it clear that Nirvana is the
result of the elimination of the klesas - the purification of greed, hate and delusion. Arhatship, or
realized sainthood, is reached gradually through practice of the Noble Eightfold Path and the
guarding of the senses. Conventionally, right actions bring accumulated spiritual merit, which
ripens karma favorably toward the realization of the way.40 Yogically, however, realization
comes through mindfulness and meditation: both in sitting meditation and in daily life. The yogi
becomes aware of the arising and passing of each sensory phenomena, knows when sense contact
is made, understands how desire arises upon contact, and stops the chain of causation between
contact and desire. The practice of meditation discussed by the Buddha is recorded in the Maha
Satipatthana Sutta (The Great Discourse of the Foundations of Mindfulness) and several
techniques of contemplation and meditation are discussed therein. Briefly enumerated, they are:
unattached mindfulness of the breath; unattached mindfulness of the body - its position,
sensation and function; unattached mindfulness on the dharmas, or elements of existence;
contemplation of the repulsiveness of the physical body (viscera, fluids, etc.) and of the rotting
corpse; unattached mindfulness of the emotions and feelings; and unattached mindfulness of the
states of consciousness.41 These specific practices are used chiefly by the Theravadan Buddhists.
    Paying close attention to these dharmas and states of being should lead the meditator to
see that ╥reality╙ is but a combination of causes and conditions in constant motion where no
abiding self-nature is to be found. Pleasant and painful feelings share only the quality of being
sensations that are meaningful only in relation to one another. The naming of sensations and
ascribing to them a value of good or bad is related to our ego-based naming of those experiences.
However, ╥where the mind╒s functional realm ceases, the realm of words also ceases. For indeed,
the essence of existence is like Nirvana, without origination and destruction.╙42 Nagarjuna and
the Mahayanists went further, saying that Nirvana could be known not only through a realization
of the impermanence of dharmas  and of the skandhas,43 but through the recognition that these
dharmas ╥are but conceptualization. These arise from mere conceptual play (prapanca) which are
in turn banished in sunyata.╙44 To the Mahayanist, it is exactly the attachment to name and form
(naming and conceptualization) of dharmas that must be eliminated if one is to experience
Nirvana, because True Reality is beyond conceptualization. Therefore, Nirvana is to be known
not merely by a path of purification, but by an experiential meditative insight into the nonduality
and ╥signlessness╙ of all phenomena in their interdependency. This comes as a paradox:

There is no object of knowledge unless it is being known. But the knowing consciousness does
not exist without [its object]!...knowledge and the object of knowledge do not exist by own
being.45

    In this verse is the seed of the Yogacara tenet of ╥consciousness only╙: subject and object
arise dependently together and so the world cannot be separated by duality. We, as Nagarjuna
puts it, ╥become free from the bondage of signs╙46 by understanding that ╥all phenomena are
merely abstractions╙47 and

one is not liberated by being, one does not [transcend] present existence by non-being. [But] by
thorough knowledge of being and non-being, the magnanimous are liberated. Those who do not
see reality believe in samsara and Nirvana (but) those who see really believe in neither. Existence
and Nirvana: these two are not (really) to be found. (Instead), Nirvana may be defined as the
thorough knowledge of existence.48

This is a radical form of epistemology where subject and object disappear: the ontology of
Nirvana and Existence can thus not be separated from the ways of knowing them. The spiritual
work must be accomplished by the individual not through belief but through action, which leads
her to see that ╥the limits...of Nirvana are the limits of samsara. Between the two...there is not the
slightest difference whatsoever.╙49 The realization is not so much an ontological shift as it is a
shift in the awareness of the knowing subject!
    This shift comes about through the aforementioned practices of meditation and
awareness. In the Rahula Sutta, the Buddha instructs his son in the correct practice for a monk.
He recommends ╥renouncing the home,╙ association with good spiritual friends, living in a
remote, secluded place and practicing non-craving, disciplinary restraint and restraint of the
senses, cultivation of the mind on the body╒s impurities, meditation on the ╥signless╙ (nibbana),
ending egoism; and he tells him to ╥continually develop dispassion.╙50  ╥Let no man ever cleave
to things that are pleasant or unpleasant,╙ says the Buddha in the Dhammapada. ╥One should not
therefore hold anything dear.╙51 This freedom from desire and aversion through the practice of
morality, wisdom and meditation thus leads to Nirvana.
    As inherent True Self (enlightenment-nature) is revealed through the destruction of
╥small (ego-)self,╙ Eckhart teaches that God can be known through the cultivation of ╥the divine
ground-in-the-soul╙ through a similar path practice of purification. The first order of business to
this end is the proper attitude, which in Eckhart is informed by nonduality. The proper attitude
toward Eckhart╒s ╥enlightenment╙ is one of inner stance, inner focus - an unwillingness to
project and externalize images - even dear and cherished images of God. Images interfere with
the ╥breaking through╙ of the soul╒s ground back to God╒s ground because they are ╥created╙: in
their ╥thing-i-ness╙ they are conceptualizations. Purification of the soul in man that the divine
might manifest requires that our attention ╥remain within, that we may possess all truth, without
medium and without distinction...╙52 ╥Only that heart is pure which has annihilated everything
that is created,╙53 says Eckhart, and this attitude of annihilation is dependent on the ╥will╙ - the
will to action or practice.

So long as the will remains untouched by created things and by all creation, it is free. Christ says:
╥No one comes into heaven except him who has come from heaven╙(John 3:13). All things are
created from nothing. Therefore their true origin is nothing and so far as this noble will inclines
toward created things, it flows off with created things toward their nothing.54

The prayerful will cannot thus but help tend towards ╥nothing.╙ Eckhart recognizes, however,
that beyond the purposes of awakening the thought of enlightenment (in Buddhist terms,
bodhicitta), there is a limit to the seeking of the personal will. The soul that ╥goes out of itself╙
makes a grave mistake. Rather, the devotee is advised to ╥...let God be God in you. The smallest
creaturely image that ever forms in you is as great as God is great..[b]ecause it comes between
you and the whole of God...╙55.
    In Buddhist thought, the ego-formation is seen to be empty of a permanent existence.
Eckhart does talk about the existence of a personal soul, but this soul is but a spark of God, as
atman  is of Brahman  in Hindu Vedanta. Personal attributes - including the very will to find God
- are considered by Eckhart to be ╥created things╙ or ╥existents╙ - not eternal uncreated essences.
As created things they are not equal in import with the uncreated power in the soul. Therefore,
the seeking will is not the ultimate detective of  God: ╥The more one seeks you the less one finds
you. Now you should so seek him that you find him nowhere. If you do not seek him , then you
will find him.╙56 Nor can the soul break through to God by reason alone, as per the Platonic
philosophers and Neoplatonists whom Eckhart admired: ╥Anyone who wishes to see the deep
hidden things or God in the light of Grace (i.e., in the spirit) must hold captive his own
countenance, that is, natural intellect or reason.╙57 Thus, we can see that a certain attitude of will
is necessary to perceive the divine being in oneself, but this will (the means) must paradoxically
be transcended in order to really be One with the Divine Ground for, ╥even this desire is
something which is not our own.╙58 In addition, neither intellect nor reason is enough to help us
perceive the Simple One. We must refrain from seeking, staying centered within that internal
divine ground, understanding all ╥created╙ phenomena (existent dharmas) as Eckhartian mere
╥nothing╙ (as contrasted with the uncreated One); and we must empty the notion of our ╥created╙
self - the self-with-qualities - as well: ╥...the man who has annihilated himself in himself and in
God and in all created things; this man has taken possession of the lowest place, and God must
pour out the whole of himself into this man, or else he is not God.╙59 D.T. Suzuki writes: ╥....to
love God is to have no self, to be of no-mind, to become ╥a dead man,╙ to be free from the
constrictive motivations of consciousness.╙60
    Meister Eckhart preached to his congregation: ╥people often say to me: ╘pray for me╒
Then I think: why are you coming out? Why do you not stay in yourself and hold on to your own
good? After all, you are carrying all truth in you in an essential manner.╙61 You are carrying all
truth with you in an essential manner.  Now you approach this truth correctly, relinquishing
intellect and will, fully believing that you are - just like Christ, -╥an only son╙ who ╥the Father
has eternally borne...into that same image of his eternal Fatherhood...╙62 But how do you
practice so that this may be intuitively revealed to you right now on earth?
    The promise of heaven will indeed be kept, says Eckhart, in the same manner that Christ
promised. ╥The kingdom of heaven is within you,╙ was the internalization of Jesus╒ external
eschatological teachings. The keys to the kingdom are found in moral and mindfulness practices
that can be actualized in the world.
    All of the practices that Eckhart recommends lead to an epistemological change in the
devotee. In Christian terms, this change is due to an inpouring of God╒s grace into the soul.
Besides ╥breaking through,╙ Eckhart calls this change ╥the birth of the word (Logos) in the soul.╙
This is the terminology necessary to bring his mystical doctrines into a sightline with Catholic
orthodoxy. Because God exists outside time, the historical event of the creation of the world and
the birth of Jesus Christ must, in Eckhart╒s theology, be secondary to the atemporal significance
of these events. In linear terms, God is continually giving birth to the son (Logos, the active
principle) in the eternal moment as he continually creates the soul. What this means for the
realization of the practitioner is that in his soul, co-equal with God, the word (Logos, the Truth,
Christ) is constantly being born in the ╥simple now of eternity.╙

The Father gives birth to his Son in eternity...He gives me birth, me, his Son and the same
Son...He gives birth to me as himself and himself as me and to me as his being and nature. In the
innermost source, there I spring out, in the Holy Spirit where there is one life and one being and
one work.63

The underlying gist remains to open the devotee╒s higher wisdom to a different level of
understanding True Self (God-self) and God.
    The seeker╒s primary practices are several, but all are based on two basic practices:
nonduality, and what Eckhart calls ╥detachment.╙ The seeker is called to let go of conditioned
notions, psychological impurities and egoism so that she can participate in the divine nature here,
now, on earth without waiting for heaven╒s salvific power. The kingdom of God thus becomes
manifest in an inner eschatology; the ╥blowing out╙ of the world. Salvation, like Buddhist
salvation, is dependent upon the individual╒s practice.64
    To practice nonduality and detachment means to practice attention in the moment and not
to be confused into equating ╥external works╙ with one╒s true nature. Eckhart warns again and
again that to be possessive of such works - the eucharist, fasting, prayer and signs of Catholic
holiness- does not lead to a direct relationship with God.

...I am talking about...all those who are possessively attached to prayer, to fasting, to vigils and to
all kinds of exterior exercises and penances. Every attachment to every work deprives one of the
freedom to wait upon God in the present and to follow him in the light with which he would
guide you...free and renewed in every present moment, as if this were all that you ever had or
wanted or could do.65

Eckhart chides the holier-than-thou, the obviously reverent, the ╥professional monk╙ and, in a
spirit close to that of Soto Zen Buddhism, praises close attention to everyday work and non-
preference in activity. The actual performance of religious works, he says, is no better and no
worse than the mindful, unattached performance of daily life.

So long as you perform your works for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven, or for God╒s sake, or
for the sake of your own eternal blessedness...you are going completely astray...Because truly,
when people think that they are acquiring more of God in inwardness, in devotion, in sweetness
and in various approaches than they do by the fireside or in the stable, you are acting just as if
you took God and muffled his head up in a cloak and pushed him under a bench.66

    Means, mannerisms, rituals, even heartfelt rituals, are ╥seeking God by ways.╙ In seeking
outwardly, our True Selves are separate from our ego selves, which still have some notion of
gain, some idea of ourselves ╥doing╙ something apart from the activity. To prevent this split, we
must practice nonduality of mind, living in each moment with attention and without preference.

If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: ╥Why are you living?╙ life...would only
say: ╥I live so I may live.╙...it lives without asking why it is itself living. If anyone asked a
truthful man who works out of his own ground: ╥Why are you performing your works?╙ and if he
were to give a straight answer, he would only say, ╥I work so that I may work.╙67

Questioning the action immediately designates a questioner separate from the activity - which is
to create a split in the self. The ╥man who works out of his own ground╙ works out of that
ground in the soul. His activity is God╒s activity with no why. Between this samsara, and
Nirvana then, there isn╒t the slightest bit of difference. This attitude is bitingly expressed by the
Chinese Zen Master Lin Chi (Rinzai Zenji), quoted by D.T. Suzuki:

O Venerable sirs, when I tell you that there is no Dharma as long as you seek it outwardly,
learners fail to understand me. They would now turn inwardly and search for its meaning. They
sit cross-legged against the wall with the tongue glued to the upper palate and in a state of
immovability. They think this is the Buddhist tradition practiced by the patriarchs. A great error
is here committed. If you take a state of immovable purity for what is required of you, this is to
recognize ignorance for your lordship. Says an ancient master, ╥The darkest abyss of tranquillity
- this is indeed what one has to shudder at╙...mobility is the nature of the wind, while immobility
is the nature of the earth. They both have no self-nature.68

    Just as one should not be choosy about any exterior work, one╒s mind - the interior -
should be made free of ╥created╙ images. Eckhart counsels against ╥possessiveness╙ with regards
to mental images - by which he means conceptualizations, opinions and thought formations. The
person ╥free of all alien images╙ is ╥as free as when he was not.╙69

....if the soul contemplates God, either as God or as an image or as three, the soul lacks
something. But if all images are detached from the soul, and it contemplates only the simple One,
then the soul╒s naked being finds the naked formless being of the divine unity, which is there a
being above being...70

Eckhart understands that conditioning from birth calls up a store of mental and emotional
attachments or ╥images.╙ To be free of these in mind as well as action, one must be unpossessive
of them, ╥not looking to past or to future,╙ not calling to memory or delighting in fantasy, but
remaining in the present. As the Diamond Sutra says, one ╥raises an unsupported thought...a
thought unsupported by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables and mind objects.╙71 This
process is remarkably similar to forms of Buddhist meditation such as vipassana or zazen  in
which wandering attention is noticed and consistently brought back to the moment. The ever-
widening circle of this moment creates its own numinosity; the meditator realizes intuitively that
there is no ╥I╙ separate from the various changing activities going on in the moment. In
Eckhartian terms, this freedom from alien images leaves me empty and free to perform God╒s
will - the will of my deepest hidden uncreated self or ╥soul.╙ Our individual act of will to
practice then becomes identical to God╒s will in us or - if we are in some part God - God╒s will,
period. The late Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi put it this way: ╥it is wisdom which is seeking
wisdom.╙
    To become empty requires that virtue praised by most Christian mystics - poverty of
spirit. And if poverty of spirit is the attitude struck, the practice is that of detachment.72 In the
attitude of poverty of spirit, we are asked to keep free not only of ╥created╙ things, of images, but
of God himself. ╥Poverty of spirit,╙ says Eckhart, ╥is for a man to keep so free of God and all his
works that if God wishes to work in the soul, he himself is the place in which he wants to
work...╙73 Even in experiencing the desire to fulfill God╒s will - an incomparable desire perhaps
, but a desire nonetheless - one has not emptied one╒s self in true poverty of spirit. In poverty of
spirit, there is no will of one╒s own. This ego-will is considered a ╥created╙ thing - an existent
dharma. To really have poverty, ╥he ought to be as free of his own created will as he was when
he did not exist...so long as you have a will to fulfill God╒s will, and a longing for God and for
eternity, then you are not poor; for a poor man is one who has a will and a longing for
nothing.╙74 A poor man wants nothing - he already has everything he needs within himself. A
poor man does not even prepare the divine ground in the soul because in preparing or creating a
place for God, ╥he clings to distinction. Therefore I pray to God that he may make me free of
╥God╙ for my real being is above God if we take ╥God╙ to be the beginning of created things.╙75
This statement  is remarkable, especially for its time, and we can compare it to the Mahayana
Buddhist teachings we discussed above in their rejection of clinging to distinction. In his self-
consciousness of even ╥God╙ as a limiting concept, a linguistic referent, Eckhart comes up with
the first (perhaps only) ╥medieval deconstructive practice.╙76 Although there does not seem to
be any awareness on Eckhart╒s part of the Ultimate Reality as interdependently originated, he
certainly takes the first step by drawing his critical attention to the limited and relative
construction of terminology.
    This practice of ╥poverty of spirit╙ should gradually empty the devotee of ╥created self.╙
Only the empty self can perceive directly its divine nature. It was Eckhart╒s belief that something
of one nature cannot fully create or receive something of another nature. Nagarjuna makes the
same argument in the Mulamadhyamakakarika where he demonstrates the impossibility that
anything could really arise from anything else. Anything that is to receive must be empty, says
Eckhart. As the soul╒s ground becomes emptied, it receives and understands more of the
emptiness that is God.
    Becoming empty requires detachment. ╥Whatever is to be received must be received by
something, but detachment is so close to nothingness that there is nothing so subtle that it can be
apprehended by detachment except God alone.╙77 The attitude of detachment Eckhart compares
to that of a huge lead mountain against a breath of wind. In a Buddhist sense, it is practicing so
that one is unmoved either by joy or sorrow - one is not caught up by either.

Perfect detachment has no looking up to, no abasement, not beneath any created thing or above
it...it wants to exist by itself, not giving joy or sorrow to anyone, not wanting equality or
inequality with any created thing, not wishing for this or that...so it is that detachment makes no
claim upon anything.78

    As pertains to action, detachment requires humility ╥because perfect humility proceeds
from annihilation of self.╙79 It requires an acceptance of suffering. Bearing suffering for God╒s
sake is not difficult, says Eckhart, because it is God, not you, who is ╥carrying the burden.╙80 It
requires not holding on to impermanent things, for ╥all sorrow comes from love and from
holding dear. Therefore, if I feel sorrow because of perishable things...God still does not have the
love of my whole heart.╙81 Sounding very much like the Buddha himself Eckhart writes: ╥it is
the sign of a sick heart if a man becomes glad or sorry over the transitory things of this world.╙82
It requires unhinging from memory (past) or hope (future): ╥people...want to contemplate and
taste eternal things...and yet their hearts are still fluttering around in yesterday and tomorrow.╙83
    It requires obedience, a monastic vow, for there is no selfishness in obedience and the ego
is denuded. In Christian prayer, repentance, and works, it requires that one does not ask for
anything, prefer anything, seek for anything but accept things-as-they-are, not even wishing that
one had not committed a sin.84 In works, one goes about ╥pious practices,╙ and Eckhart suggests
mixing in various practices that work for you (prayer, penance, fasting, vigil, study, etc.) Not
everyone can take the same road, he says, nor is everyone required to imitate the asceticism and
self-mortification of the sainted. Whatever works one chooses to do: ╥whoever undertakes all his
works with the same frame of mind, then, truly all that man╒s works are the same.╙85 He should
learn to work in and from his inward-ness, ╥so that he can transform inwardness into activity and
bring his activities into his inwardness, and so that he can train himself to act in freedom.╙86
There is a very Zen Buddhist flavor of ╥doing what you are doing when you are doing it╙ in these
writings. One can also hear the echo of the words of the Buddha recommending the elimination
of greed and aversion; one-minded action; and the annihilation of self-will.
    A person first relinquishes attachment to created things, followed by his attachment to his
own ego-self, finally going so far as to relinquish the attachment to the Trinity, the image of
Christ, and to God himself. Goodness, holiness, piety - they go next - which creates a ╥flowing
back╙ to Godhead on the levels of practice (action), psychology (mind purification) and ontology
(the attainment of enlightenment, divinity) that corresponds to the original ╥flowing out.╙ The
devotee begins to mirror the radiating Godhead. The inner, meditative practice Eckhart mentions
seems to correspond to the Buddhist meditative technique of ╥closing the sense doors╙:

...his inwardness pays no heed to the five senses, except as this leads and guides...and protects
them...and whatever power the soul possesses beyond that which it gives to the five senses, it
gives wholly to the inner man...the soul draws to itself all its powers it had loaned to the five
senses. Then the man is called senseless and rapt, for his object is an image which the reason can
apprehend.87

When pure detachment is reached, the soul reposes in a state of quiescent rest or nothingness - it
has no object. God╒s nature and the soul╒s nature are co-joined, so the soul abandons its delusion
of ego-nature entirely. With it wiped away, God does his work. One could make the argument
that upon Eckhartian ╥enlightenment╙ - union with the Godhead - even the idea of a ╥soul╙
disappears: God and soul disappear in their mutual relationship. The soul was only provisionally
there through practice, and so, in some sense, was ╥God.╙

---------------------------------------------------------------------
    In 1329, Brother Eckhart was condemned for heretical teachings by Papal Bull, and he
fought these in an intelligent but headstrong attempt to show the fathers the errors of their
thought. The mind of the council was not changed; Eckhart, they said, ╥wished to know more
than he should.╙88 Eckhart╒s rhetorical strategies for fighting the charges were framed with the
logic of the philosophers; he called up the in quantum  principle in order to clarify some of his
more ╥outrageous╙ claims concerning the equality of man and God. He quoted St. Thomas and
Augustine when they appeared to be in agreement with him. He insulted the intelligence of his
superiors, calling them ╥stupid and ignorant.╙ It is true that it is easy to ╥mis-read╙ Eckhart, as
the Church fathers clearly did. Quite apart from his vernacular and ╥mystical╙ writings, he leaves
a huge body of orthodox scholastic work devoted to ╥appropriate╙ interpretations of grace, and
salvation in Christ. For example, it would be difficult to overlook his excruciating detail
concerning the operation of Logos, Christ as the Word made flesh, in the opening section of the
Gospel of John: a good example of how even Eckhart was capable of garrulously discussing (his
opinions on) the doctrinal minutiae and subroutines of ╥proper╙ Catholic theology. However, if
someone, (like myself), reads Eckhart on practice and the union of the soul with God and gets a
clear idea that, indeed, these teachings were more radically mystical and non-dual than Church
teaching could possibly have allowed, I do not think that were are dreaming it, that we are
merely ╥mis-reading╙ him as some contemporary Churchmen invested in this notion might want
to believe.
    As our world gets smaller, the languages of different religious faiths become less alien.
We are able to do comparative theology in a way that would have been impossible (and
dangerous) in earlier times. Ideas now can be seen in their interrelationships and are often found
to reflect each other over spans of time, mileage and culture. Eckhart╒s teaching about God╒s
nature as the fullness of emptiness - total potentiality unfracturable by conceptual projection -
bears not a slight resemblance to Mahayana Buddhist ontologies of emptiness (sunya). His faith
that there was an ╥uncreated╙ place in the soul where God is God in the individual and the way to
realize this place through the purification of the will and the emptying of the ego-self has much
in common with the Buddhist  notion of Nirvana-dharma and the yogic path that is taken to
realize it. Eckhart even possesses an awareness of how ╥God╙ and ╥soul╙ create each-other,
uniting in a mutual co-dependency that has its similarities to Buddhist co-dependent origination

...For in the same being of God where God is above being and above distinction, there I myself
was, there I willed myself and committed myself to create this man. Therefore I am the cause of
myself in the order of my being, which is eternal, and not in the order of my becoming, which is
temporal. And therefore, I am unborn, and in the manner in which I am unborn I can never die.
In my unborn manner I have been eternally and am now, and shall eternaly remain. ...And if I did
not exist, ╥God╙ would also not exist. That God is ╥God,╙ of that I am a cause; if I did not exist,
God too would not be ╥God╙. There is no need to understand this.89

    Although there are clear differences here between Eckhart╒s quasi-essentialist
Neoplatonism (separation between essence and existence) and Buddhist thought (which is
primarily existentialist in character), the assertion that ╥if I did not exist, God too would not be
God╙ falls thundering on ears that have just heard the same preacher counsel the eradication of
the small-willed self. If he is telling me to cease to be my ╥self╙ through practice,  to cease to
exist in my own wholistic essence, then God will no longer be ╥God╙ but I am my True Self. I
sense an interesting bit of tension and contradiction in Eckhart╒s  ideas here.
    In the final analysis, I think that although we can compare and contrast intellectually as
much as we like, the real value of observing these teachings side by side lies in the usefulness of
the models they represent. If a Christian, in this world that is increasingly religiously hostile and
intolerant in its dry literalism - its own self-will, can be inspired by the richness of Eckhart╒s
Christian tradition, and therein find a link to the ideas of other beings and a way to open to more
truth, then I will have done my job in this paper. If a Buddhist is moved out of himself to find
Truth within a tradition that is largely considered by forward thinking people to be oppressive
and unhelpful,  then I will have done my job in this paper. Within Buddhist teachings and in
Christian teaching, especially as enumerated by Eckhart, there is a realization, a potential for
enlightenment which ╥is a truth beyond speculation that has come immediately from the heart of
God.╙90 Shunning the need for an ╥other-power╙ - a mediator between myself and my own True
Self, in the practice of this truth I reach a realization of the divinity of my own soul, or of the
inherent existence of my own Buddha-nature, that shows me ╥I am neither God nor creature, but
I am what I was and what I shall remain, now and eternally.╙91 In this truth there is no coming
and no going, for, as an old frog said, ╥a tenth of an inch of difference, and Heaven and Earth are
set apart.╙
    May all beings be free from suffering and find the Truth quickly.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS  CITED

Caputo, John D. Mysticism and Transgression: Derrida and Meister Eckhart. . Xeroxed handout,
Professor    Luft.
Dhammapada, The. Translated by Irving Babbitt. New York, N.Y.:New Directions, 1965.
Diamond Sutra, The. In Edward Conze Trans., Buddhist Wisdom Books. pp. 17-74. London,
U.K.:George     Allen & Unwin, 1980.
Eckhart, Meister. Book of ╥Benedictus╙ - The Book of Divine Consolation. In Meister Eckhart,
the Essential     Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge,
O.S.A. and Bernard     McGinn, pp. 209-239. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press, 1981.
_____________.  Commentary  on Exodus. In Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher. Edited by
Bernard     McGinn, pp. 41-146. Mahwah , N.J.:Paulist Press, 1986.
_____________.  Counsels on Discernment. . In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons,
Commentaries,     Treatises and Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard
    McGinn  pp. 247-285.     Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press, 1981.
_____________.  On Detachment . In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 285-294.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
_____________.  Sermon 2 . In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and Defense.     Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp.
177-181.Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press,     1981.
_____________.  Sermon  5b . In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 181-185.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
 _____________.  Sermon 6. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and Defense.     Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp.
185-189. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press,     1981.
_____________.  Sermon15 .In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and Defense.     Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn,  pp.
189-192. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press,     1981.
_____________.  Sermon 22 .In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Semons, Commentaries,
Treatises and Defense.     Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp.
192-197. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press,     1981.
_____________.  Sermon 48. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 197-198.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
_____________.  Sermon 52. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 199-203.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
_____________.  Sermon 53. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 203-205.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
_____________.  Sermon 83. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and Bernard McGinn, pp. 206-208.
Ramsey, N.J:Paulist     Press, 1981.
Fromm, Erich; D.T. Suzuki and Richard DeMartino, Eds. Zen Buddhsim and Psychoanalysis..
New York,     N.Y.:Harper and Bros, 1960.
In Agro Dominico - The Papal Bull, March  27, 1329.  In Meister Eckhart, the Essential
Sermons,     Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and
Bernard McGinn, pp.     7-81. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press, 1981.
Lindtner, Charles, Trans. and Intro. Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master
Nagarjuna. Yesha     De Buddhist Research and Translation Project. Oakland, Ca.:Dharma
Publishing, 1986.
Maha Satipatthana Sutta. In The Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Trans, and Commentary,
Ven. U     Silananda, Ed. Ruth Inge Heine, pp. 177-208. Boston, Mass.:Wisdom
Publications, 1990.
McGinn, Bernard, Ed. and Intro. Meister Eckhart - The Essential Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises and     Defense. Eds. McGinn and Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. Ramsey, N.J.:Paulist Press,
1981.
Nagao, Gadjin M. Madhayamika and Yogacara - A Study of Mahayana Philosophies. Leslie S.
Kawamura,     Trans. Chapter 3, ╥The Bodhisattva Returns to This World,╙pp. 23-34, and
Chapter 12, ╥Ontology in     Mahayana Buddhism,╙ pp. 155-187. Albany, N.Y.: State
University of New York Press, 1991.
Nagarjuna. Acintyastava. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagajuna.
Intro and Trans.,     Charles Lindtner, pp. 14-27. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation
Project. Oakland,     Ca.:Dharma Publishing, 1986.
________.  Lokatitastava. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagajuna.
Intro and Trans.,     Charles Lindtner, pp. 2-13. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation
Project. Oakland, Ca.:Dharma     Publishing, 1986.
________.  Mulamadhyamakakarika. In Nagarjuna- A Translation of His
Mulamadhyamakakarika with an     Introductory Essay, Intro. and Trans., Kenneth K. Inada.
Tokyo, Japan: The Hokuseido Press, 1970.
________.  Yukisastika. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagajuna. Intro
and Trans.,     Charles Lindtner, pp. 72-90. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation
Project. Oakland,     Ca.:Dharma Publishing, 1986.
Stcherbatsky, Theodore. The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana. Intro, Jaideva Singh. Varanasi:
Motilal     Barnisidass, 1977.
Sutta Nipata. Trans., H. Saddatissa. London:Curzon Press, 1987.
Udana: Verses of Uplift. Quoted in An Introduction to the Practice of Serene Reflection
Meditation (Soto Zen).     Mt. Shasta, Ca.: Shasta Abbey Publications, 1990.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Altizer, Thomas J.J. History as Apocalypse. In Deconstruction and Theology. Ed. Carl Raschke,
pp. 147-177.     New York, N.Y.:Crossroad, 1982.
_______________.  Oriental Mysticism andBiblical Eschatology. Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1961.
Eckhart, Meister. Selections from The Commentary on John. In Meister Eckhart, the Essential
Sermons,     Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. Edited by Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and
Bernard McGinn, pp.     122-173. Ramsey, N.J:Paulist Press, 1981.
McGinn, Bernard. Meister Eckhart, An Introduction. In An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics
of Europe.     Paul Szarmach, Ed., pp. 237-257. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York
Press, 1984.
______________, Intro.  Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press,
1986.
Nagarjuna. Bodhicittavivarana. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master
Nagajuna. Intro and     Trans., Charles Lindtner. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation
Project. Oakland, Ca.:Dharma     Publishing, 1986.
________. Bodhisambharaka. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagajuna.
Intro and     Trans., Charles Lindtner. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation Project.
Oakland,     Ca.:Dharma Publishing, 1986.
________. Sunyatasaptati. In Master of Wisdom - Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagajuna.
Intro and Trans.,     Charles Lindtner,. Yeshe De Buddhist Research and Translation Project.
Oakland, Ca.:Dharma     Publishing, 1986.
TeSelle, Eugene. Augustine. In An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe. Paul
Szarmach, Ed., pp. 19-    33. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1984.
Tomasic, William. Neoplatonism and the Mysticism of William of St. Thierry. In An
Introduction to the     Medieval Mystics of Europe. Paul Szarmach, Ed., pp. 53-75. Albany,
N.Y.: State University of New     York Press, 1984.
Weisheipl, Thomas. O.P. Mystic on Campus: Friar Thomas. In An Introduction to the Medieval
Mystics of     Europe. Paul Szarmach, Ed., pp. 135-159. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New
York Press, 1984.

NOTES

1 John Caputo, ╥Mysticism and Transgression: Derrida and Meister Eckhart,╙ (Exact cite
unavalable - xeroxed handout, Humanities.     345- Dr. Luft).
2Dhammapada, Trans. Irving Babbitt, (New York, N.Y. : New Directions, 1965), verse 92, p. 16.
3Dhammapada., verse 97, p. 16.
4Dhammapda,  verse 184, p. 30.
5Dhammapada, verse 204, p. 32.
6Dhammapada,  verse 381, p. 56..
7Sutta Nipata, Trans. H. Saddhatissa, (London, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1985),  Rahula Sutta, vs.
342, p. 38.
8Sutta Nipata, Attadanda Sutta, vs. 940, p. 109.
9 Sutta Nipata, Vatthugatha, vs. 1061, p. 122.
10Sutta Nipata, Vatthugatha, vs. 1074-1076, p. 123.
11Udana,  chapter VIII, section iii, The Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, Part II  (London,
U.K.:Oxford University Press, 1935), pp. 97-8, Quoted in An Introduction to the Practice of
Serene eflection Meditation (Soto Zen), (Mt. Shasta, California: Shasta Abbey, 1990), p. 1.
12Theodore Schterbatsky, The Conception of Buddhsit Nirvana, (Delhi, India:Motilal
Barnisidass, 1977), p. 79.
13as opposed to the Hinayana assumption that Nirvana exists and there is no human ego self, but
external and internal dharmas do have a momentary existence.
14Charles Lindtner, Master of Wisdom,-  Writings of the Buddhist Master Nagarjuna, (Oakland,
Ca.:Dharma Publishing, 1986), Intro., p. xx.
15Nagarjuna, Lokatitastava, vs. 9, in Master of Wisdom,  p. 5.
16Nagarjuna, Acintyastava, vs. 10, in Master of Wisdom, p. 15.
17Acintyastava, vs. 37-39; p. 25.
18Gadjin M. Nagao, Madhyamaka and Yogacara - A Study of Mahayana Philosophies, (Albany,
M.Y.:S.U.N.Y. Press, 1991), p. 173.
19Meister Eckhart, Sermon 2 - In travit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier quaedam, Martha
nomine, excepit illum in domum suam.╙, in McGinn and Colledge, eds., Meister Eckhart, the
Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, (Ramsey, N.J.:Paulist Press, 1981),  p.
181.
20Bernard McGinn, Theological Summary, Mesister Eckhart, the Essential  Sermons,
Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, p. 28.
21McGinn, Essential Eckhart, p. 35.
22McGinn, Essential Eckhart,, pp. 34.
23 McGinn, Esential Eckhart, p. 35, note 63.
24Meister Eckhart, Commentary on Exodus, in Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher, Ed.
Bernard McGinn, (Mahwah, N.J.:Paulist Press, 1986), p. 48.
25Ibid.
26Meister Eckhart, Sermon 53 - Misit dominus manum suam et tetigit os meum et dixit
mihi...Ecce constituti to super gentes et regna (Jr. 1:9),  in Essential Eckhart, p. 205.
27Eckhart, Commentary on Exodus, p. 56.
28McGinn, Essential Eckhart, p. 31.
29Eckhart,  Sermon 2, p. 179.
30Ibid.
31Ibid., p. 180.
32Eckhart, Sermon 48: Ein Meister sprichet: alliu glöchiu dinc minnent sich under einander, in
Essential Eckhart, p. 198.
33Eckhart, Sermon 6: Justi vivent in aeternum (Ws. 5:16), in Essential Eckhart p 187
34ibid.
35Eckhart, Sermon 52: Beati pauperes spirtu, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum (Mt. 5:3),
in Essential Eckhart, p 200.
36ibid.
37Eckhart, Sermon 22: Ave  gratia plena (Lk. 1:28), in Essential Eckhart , p. 195.
38McGinn, Essential Eckhart, p. 28.
39Lindtner, Master of Wisdom , pp. xx-xxi.
40See discussion in Lindtner, Master of Wisdom.
41Maha Satipatthana Sutta,  Trans. and Commentary, Ven. U Silananda, in The Four
Foundations of Mindfulness, Ed. Ruth-Inge Heinze, (Boston, Mass.: Wisdom Publications,
1990), pp. 177-208.
42Nagarjuna, Mulamahyamakakarika, in Kenneth K. Inada, Trans. and Commentary, Nagarjuna,
a Translation of  His Mulamadhyamakakarika With Introductory Essay,  (Tokyo, Japan:
Hokuseido Press, 1970), Atmapariksa, vs. 7, p. 114.
43The elements that make up what is taken for the ╥self╙: name/form, feeling, perception,
impulse and mind-consciousness.
44Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika, Atma pariksa, vs. 5, p. 114.
45Nagarjuna, Lokatitastava,  vs. 10, p. 5.
46Ibid., vs. 28, p.11.
47Nagarjuna, Acintyastava, vs. 36, p. 25.
48Nagarjuna, Yukisastika, vss. 4-6, in Master of Wisdom, p. 75.
49Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika, Nirvana pariksa,  vs. 20, p. 158.
50Sutta Nipata, Rahula Sutta, p. 38. (This dispassion - disinterested awareness - becomes very
important in the Mahayana practice of the Bodhisattva path in which the Bodhisattva, who has
renounced his entry into Nirvana in order to save all beings first, practices detached non-invested
compassion, or karuna, to that end. Karuna, united with prajna - or the transcendent
wisdom/realization of emptiness,  is enlightenment.
51Dhammapada,  vss. 210-211, p. 34
52Eckhart, Sermon 5b: In hoc apparuit, charitas Dei in nobis., in Essential Eckhart, p.p 184-5.
53Ibid., pp. 182-3.
54Ibid., p. 184.
55Ibid.
56Eckhart,  Sermon 15: Homo quidam nobilis abiit in regionem longinquam accipere regnum et
reverti  (Lk. 19:12), in Essential Eckhart, p. 192.
57Eckhart, Commentary on Exodus,  p. 45.
58D.T. Suzuki, in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis,  Ed. Erich Fromm, D.T. Suzuki and
Richard DeMartino,(New York, N.Y.: Harper and Bros., 1960), p. 9.
59Eckhart, Sermon 48, p. 197.
60Suzuki,  Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, p. 16.
61Eckhart, Sermon 5b, p. 184.
62Eckhart, Sermon 22, p. 194.
63Eckhart, Sermon 6, p. 187.
64The argument may be made that the Christian idea of the extention of grace undoes the
argument that salvation can be won with self-power alone. Eckhart does not deny the operation
of grace, but he does shock the establishment with the idea that correct practice absolutely leads
to grace - i.e., there are certain things, that when confronted with them, God must extend his
grace ╥or else he is not God.╙ ╥Go completely out of yourself for love of God and God comes
completely out of hiself for love of you╙ (Sermon 5b, p. 184); ╥...God must of necessity give
himself to a heart that has detachment.╙ (On Detachment, in Essential Eckart,  p 286; emphasis
mine.) Detachment ╥compels God to love me╙ (On Detachment). Another point about grace in
Eckhart is that he extends grace not only to the elect but to the whole of humanity through Christ,
for when Christ the Word became flesh he ╥bestowed the grace of sonship or adoption on all
men.╙ (McGinn in Essential Eckhart, p 46 n. 157, quoting Gabriel ThÄry.) Although Buddha
nature is not bestowed but inherent, it is hard to see how the doctrine of grace handled in this
manner operates much differently than the realization through practice of True Self.
65Eckhart, Sermon 2, p. 178.
66Eckhart, Sermon 5b, p. 183.
67 Ibid. p 183-184.
68 Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis , pp. 39-40
69Eckhart, Sermon 2, p. 177.
70Eckhart, Sermon 83: Renovamini Spiritu (Ep. 4:23), in Essential Eckhart, p. 206.
71Diamond Sutra, Trans. and Commentary Edward Conze, (London, U.K.: George Allen &
Unwin, 1980), p 48.
72Eckhart╒s way of poverty of spirit was powerful - the Church hierarchy was not pleased with
it. It did away with the notion of priestly medium-ship, mitigating the role of the Trinity, as we
saw before, and even the unreachable specialness of Christ himself. Paradoxically, one has to be
awareof one╒s own inner divinity and its power before one can ╥go out╙ of one╒s ego-self to let
God take over. One of the articles in the Papal Bull denouncing Eckhart specifically condemned
this quote from Sermon 6: ╙Recently I considered whether there was anything I would take or
ask from God. I shall take careful thought about this because if I were accepting anything from
God, I should be subject to him as a servant, and he in giving would be as a master. We shall not
be so in life everlasting.╙ (Essential Eckhart, p 188).
73Eckhart, Sermon 52, p. 202.
74Ibid. ,p 200.
75Ibid., p 202.
76Caputo, p. 31.
77 Eckhart, On Detachment,  in Essential Eckhart, p 286.
78Ibid., p. 286-287.
79Ibid., p 286.
80Eckhart, Sermon 2, p. 180.
81Eckhart, The Book of ╥Benedictus,╙ - The Book of Divine Consolation,  in Essential Eckhart,
(pp. 209-239), p.  214.
82Ibid., p 238.
83Ibid., p. 239.
84A position the pope strongly denounced!
85Eckhart, Counsels on Discernment, in Essential Eckhart, p 255.
86Ibid., p. 280.
87 Eckhart, On Detachment,  pp. 290-291.
88In Agro Dominico - The Papal Bull, March 27, 1329, in Essential  Eckhart,  p. 77.
89 Eckhart, Sermon 52, in Essential Eckhart, p. 202-3.
90 Ibid., p. 203.
91Ibid.