Japanese philosopher Ueda Shizeru
"According to Meister Eckhart, God gives birth to his
Son in the solitary soul. 'The Father begets me as his Son, as his very same
Son. Whatever God works is one. Thus he begets me as his Son without any
distinction.' The 'birth of God in the soul,' spoken of here in the language of
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, is the leap to realization of his own
authentic life that man experiences in 'solitariness' with the surrender of the
ego."
(The Buddha Eye: An Anthology
of the Kyoto School, edited by Frederick Frank., p.157)
The above
quotation, along with the others in this article, are taken from the essay
'"Nothingness" in Meister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism' by Ueda
Shizuteru, a member of the Kyoto School of Buddhist philosophy and professor
emeritus of the Department of Religion in Kyoto University. As with other
Buddhist scholars, including the famous D. T. Suzuki, Ueda had a intense
interest in the writings of Meister Eckhart, the Medieval Dominican priest. Not
surprising, really, when we examine some of the parallels between Eckhart and
the teachings of the Buddha. Take the above quote, for example. Ueda extracts
the essential similarity between Buddhism and Eckhartian theology; both involve
the giving up of the sense of being a separate self or ego, which dies into the
greater reality which the Buddha named Nirvana and Eckhart called God. It is
worth noting that in the above words Eckhart apparently equates the awakened
'soul' (or 'mind') with that of Christ, when he emphasizes that the Son begat
in him is "his very same Son."
"'The Father begets me as his Son without any
distinction.' This means that the absolute event of salvation touches each and
every individual in its full originality, without first passing through a
mediator. This being the case, Eckhart stands very close to Mahayana Buddhism,
the philosophical-religious base of Zen Buddhism. According to Mahayana
teaching, the very same awakening to the very same truth transforms each and
every individual into the very same Buddha - that is, it makes each individual
the same 'Awakened One' that it made of the historical Buddha, Gautama."
(Ibid.
pp.157-158)
Ueda's
excellent insight that Eckhart's view (or experience) of the Son is
"without any distinction" parallels the Mahayana Buddhist belief that
every 'Awakened One' is the Buddha is well worth reflecting upon. For, whereas
in conventional Christian thought, Jesus is God's only begotten Son, and we are
separate from Christ and God, even at the deepest level of being, Eckhart
insists that if we practice correctly, we can merge into God, and are his Son
just as Jesus was/is. The implications of this conclusion are most dramatic
when we consider how it would affect one's relationship with the local cleric
or preacher, unless a dignified silence was maintained. Imagine declaring to a
Christian congregation, "I am the Son - and so are you!" This
identification with being God's Son is mirrored in the Zen experience of being
Buddha, that is to say, discovering that the essence of being is Buddha. (It's
certainly not the case that one's ego is the Son or the Buddha, but that which lies
beyond the sense of being an individual entity.
In essence, this realization
that we are all Buddha is the case with Theravada Buddhism also, as the Buddha
is considered the first Arahant (in this age), and that everyone that achieves
full awakening is also an arahant. ('Arahant' is a term that denotes an
enlightened person in the Theravada tradition, and is the ideal in that form of
Buddhism. It is superseded by the notion of the Bodhisattva in Mahayana
Buddhism, but that's a discussion for another time…maybe!) In Theravada
Buddhism, the title 'Buddha' is reserved for the historical Shakyamuni Buddha,
Siddhartha Gautama, and his predecessors that all discovered the Buddhist
truths independently and then established Buddhism in eras when it had
disappeared. Despite these sectarian differences in semantics, in the light of
the central truth of enlightenment or salvation as understood by the Buddha and
Eckhart, we can say that Arahant, Buddha, and Son are all descriptions of those
who have been 'saved' from life's sufferings.
"So far the similarity is only of a general nature. A
more deep-reaching spiritual kinship appears when Eckhart speaks of a
'breakthrough to the nothingness of the godhead.' 'The soul is not content with
being a Son of God.' 'The soul wants to penetrate to the simple ground of God,
to the silent desert where not a trace of distinction is to be seen, neither
Father nor Son nor Holy Spirit.' By carrying out in radical fashion his
Neoplatonically laden understanding of 'being one,' Eckhart transfers the
essence or ground of God back beyond the divine God to the simple modeless,
formless, unthinkable, and unspeakable purity that he calls, in distinction to
God, 'godhead,' and that he describes as a nothingness."
(Ibid. p.158)
This
"simple, modeless, formless, unthinkable, and unspeakable purity"
that Eckhart calls "godhead" comes very close to the Buddha's
description of nirvana as "the Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated and and
Unformed" (From Udana VIII.3 in the Tipitaka) If the godless is formless,
then its not the gendered god envisaged by most Christians, sat atop a throne
with a long beard and flowing robes. This "silent desert" without
"a trace of distinction" is not, as Eckhart clearly states, the Holy
Trinity nor any one of its Persons, but is "a nothingness." As with
Buddhist explanations of nirvana, the idea of nothingness can be easily
misunderstood. As the forest monk Ajahn Sumedho has suggested, by writing the
word as "no-thingness" we emphasize that it is not a thing, rather
than point to nothing. In a similar effort, the term "No-thing" has
often been used in the pages of 'Buddha Space,' under the influence of the
British philosopher Douglas Harding. (Links to the Forest Sangha, of which
Ajahn Sumedho is a senior member, and the Headless Way website, which based on
Harding's teachings, can be found to the right of this webpage.) Ueda has
further insights into Eckhart's concept of nothingness that may interest us:
"For Eckhart, the nothingness of the godhead is, in a
non-objective manner, the soul's very own ground. Hence the soul, in order to
return to its original ground, must break through God and out into the
nothingness of the godhead. In so doing the soul must 'take leave of God' and
'become void of God.' This is accomplished only if the soul lets go of itself
as what has been united with God. This what Eckhart understands by extreme
'solitariness,' the 'fundamental death.'"
(Ibid. p.158)
For the
Christian word 'soul' Buddhists (and nonreligious types) can substitute the
term 'mind.' Doing so, we can better relate to Eckhart's assertion that
"the nothingness of the godhead is…the soul's very ground." In other
words, these minds and bodies which are created things in a world of things are
not self; indeed, there is no such individual, separate self. At heart, the
"original ground" of our being, is this nothingness that is
"void of God." Reading Eckhart's words carefully, it would seem that
to achieve this realization, we need to practice meditation or silent prayer,
and allow the soul (or mind) to let go of its self-identification which has
surrendered to the idea of God (or Buddha) and rest in the godhead that is
nothingness. This is because self is an entity, God is an entity, Buddha is an
entity, and no-thingness is beyond all entities or things. Put another way, in
Eckhart's view, surrendering to God is an important stage to full salvation (or
enlightenment), but to achieve the latter we must let go of everything, dying
as a separate self into the nothingness of what he calls the godhead.
"In Eckhart's thought it is the category of
'substance' that is,in the last analysis, definitive. But concomitant with this
arrival at, and insistence on, the imageless and formless nature of substance
pure and simple, Eckhart advances a radical de-imaging of the soul which is
consummated in and as a ceaseless 'letting go.' This 'letting go' accords his
teaching its extremely dynamic quality, corresponding to the dynamic of the Zen
coincidence of negation and affirmation - except that in Zen, where we see a
radical execution of the Mahayana Buddhist thinking on relatedness, the scope
of coincidence is wider than it is in Eckhart."
(Ibid. p.160)
Ueda's philosophical language can be somewhat baffling at
first - at least to this mind, it can - and so we need to decipher it to
appreciate it basic meaning. By "substance," Ueda refers to that same
nothingness that we have been discussing, and which is also known as 'the
ground of being' elsewhere. By "a ceaseless 'letting go,'" Eckhart
and Ueda refer to the process of realizing the truth of not-self. We can
observe the world, the body, and even the mind (or 'soul') and see that none of
them constitute a self, and in this realization we get to the heart of the
religious life as envisaged by both the Buddha and Meister Eckhart. This
"de-imaging" is the act of letting go with mindfulness, as in
meditation and deep prayer. By the "coincidence of negation and
affirmation," Ueda alludes to the Zen tradition of the koan that leads to
an alogical experience of life, where we hear 'the sound of one hand clapping'
and where opposites merge into a single, interrelated and interdependent
understanding of existence. Ueda, as an advocate of Zen Buddhism proposes that
it has a broader significance than Eckhart's theology of nothingness, which is
an issue that the current author is unqualified to comment on.
In this
article, along with several others (which can be linked to by clicking on
'Buddha & Eckhart' in the Buddha Space Reflection Series on the right
of this webpage), the striking similarities between some of the Buddha's
teachings and those of Meister Eckhart have been shown to be well worth
reflecting upon for the open-minded Buddhist - not to mention the open-minded
Christian! Whether or not you agree with the claims of Eckhart or this blog
author, it is hoped that the material printed here has been interesting to you
and has perhaps touched your beliefs or practices, or both. Reaching out to
other traditions than our own can be of much benefit if done with kindness and
consideration. It is not the claim of this author or others such as Ueda
Shizuteru featured herein that the Buddha and Meister Eckhart experienced and
taught exactly the same (No-)thing. There are notable coincidences within their
respective teachings however, that glisten with the merest of polishings, and
it is in this spirit that the Buddha & Eckhart Reflections have been
offered. May all beings be happy!
Please click on the following link to go
to 'Buddha Space,' the origin of this article:http://buddhaspace.blogspot.com/
