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Selected Writings
Composed during a critical time in the evolution of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and the Christian faith. Writing with great rhetorical brilliance, Eckhart combines the neoplatonic concept of oneness - the idea that the ultimate principle of the universe is single and undivided - with his Christian belief in the Trinity, and considers the struggle to describe a perfect God through the imperfect medium of language. Fusing philosophy and religion with vivid originality and metaphysical passion, these works have intrigued and inspired philosophers and theologians from Hegel to Heidegger and beyond.
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
Meister Eckhart
248books466followersEckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in Thuringia.
Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris. Coming into prominence during the decadent Avignon Papacy and a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preacher Friars, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition. Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defence" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent. He purportedly died before his verdict was received, although no record of his death or burial site has ever been discovered.
Meister Eckhart is sometimes (erroneously) referred to as "Johannes Eckhart", although Eckhart was his given name and von Hochheim was his surname.
"Perhaps no mystic in the history of Christianity has been more influential and more controversial than the Dominican Meister Eckart. Few, if any, mystics have been as challenging to modern day readers and as resistant to agreed-upon interpretation."
—Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart
Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris. Coming into prominence during the decadent Avignon Papacy and a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preacher Friars, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition. Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defence" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent. He purportedly died before his verdict was received, although no record of his death or burial site has ever been discovered.
Meister Eckhart is sometimes (erroneously) referred to as "Johannes Eckhart", although Eckhart was his given name and von Hochheim was his surname.
"Perhaps no mystic in the history of Christianity has been more influential and more controversial than the Dominican Meister Eckart. Few, if any, mystics have been as challenging to modern day readers and as resistant to agreed-upon interpretation."
—Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
April 10, 2025
BETWIXT THE CRADLE AND GRAVE
ONLY ONE SMILE CAN BE -
BUT WHEN AT LAST IT IS SMILED
THERE’S AN END TO ALL MISERY.
William Blake
The vast Panoply of Beings are continuously passing into, and out of, Eternity: with thoughts like these it’s no wonder the medieval church excluded this man from its polite society!
No intent = no needs = no world = no self. Yikes! Either this guy was a fully enlightened master or a danger to the social order....
To those of us who have worked their way arduously, degree by painful degree, to a fuller and more widely-encompassing vision of the full spectrum of Christian theology, Meister Eckhart seems to stand all by himself, off in a radiant little corner of history of his own somewhere!
‘Well, he sure knows how to cut corners, doesn’t he?� I can hear many a dour medieval bishop mutter into their beards.
Or words to that effect.
You see, Eckhart had a (bad? Certainly unpopular) habit of speaking with a pure, naively unabashed, but modest candour.
Let me put it more poetically: he didn’t believe that the coloured glass windows of churches should “stain the white radiance of eternity�, as Shelley would later boldly put it.
No wonder his church elders were aghast!
But, you know, they had good reason to be wary of him.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel is no child’s play, but he had attained its summit.
In his long periods of meditation, he had discovered the Abyss of Pure, Empty Peace at the heart of Divine Being. His thought grew radical.
When I was five or six, I stared into the reflection of the coloured ornaments on our Christmas tree, and saw them as doorways to a wonderful, hidden world. My mistake was, I clung to that intuition.
My immersion in Asperger’s Syndrome intensified!
But Eckhart tells us we must be comfortable in Both worlds - the world of Logic - as well as that of Intuition. He was a great teacher.
And even today many a preacher in the twilight zones of religion tries to pawn off a new, improved, quicker way to Heaven like snake oil.
A dime a dozen... but Eckhart was Not one of them.
And can we chide Eckhart the Master for giving away the end of life’s long, complex novel - and hinting at that faraway time when all of its loose ends will have been neatly tied up in one deeply satisfying dénouement, like The Magic Flute claims?
You know, sometimes a little spoiler inspires us to read right through to the end of all that prolixity!
So, I’ll give you one of Eckhart’s heavenly spoilers to inspire you to read the meister’s own writings, and as your OWN help to reach your journey’s end...
“Whoever has God in himself has Him in a divine manner, for He SHINES out to him in ALL things, and for that person all things TASTE of God.�
And it doesn’t get any more mystical than that!
(If that’s Heaven, where do I sign up?!)
ONLY ONE SMILE CAN BE -
BUT WHEN AT LAST IT IS SMILED
THERE’S AN END TO ALL MISERY.
William Blake
The vast Panoply of Beings are continuously passing into, and out of, Eternity: with thoughts like these it’s no wonder the medieval church excluded this man from its polite society!
No intent = no needs = no world = no self. Yikes! Either this guy was a fully enlightened master or a danger to the social order....
To those of us who have worked their way arduously, degree by painful degree, to a fuller and more widely-encompassing vision of the full spectrum of Christian theology, Meister Eckhart seems to stand all by himself, off in a radiant little corner of history of his own somewhere!
‘Well, he sure knows how to cut corners, doesn’t he?� I can hear many a dour medieval bishop mutter into their beards.
Or words to that effect.
You see, Eckhart had a (bad? Certainly unpopular) habit of speaking with a pure, naively unabashed, but modest candour.
Let me put it more poetically: he didn’t believe that the coloured glass windows of churches should “stain the white radiance of eternity�, as Shelley would later boldly put it.
No wonder his church elders were aghast!
But, you know, they had good reason to be wary of him.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel is no child’s play, but he had attained its summit.
In his long periods of meditation, he had discovered the Abyss of Pure, Empty Peace at the heart of Divine Being. His thought grew radical.
When I was five or six, I stared into the reflection of the coloured ornaments on our Christmas tree, and saw them as doorways to a wonderful, hidden world. My mistake was, I clung to that intuition.
My immersion in Asperger’s Syndrome intensified!
But Eckhart tells us we must be comfortable in Both worlds - the world of Logic - as well as that of Intuition. He was a great teacher.
And even today many a preacher in the twilight zones of religion tries to pawn off a new, improved, quicker way to Heaven like snake oil.
A dime a dozen... but Eckhart was Not one of them.
And can we chide Eckhart the Master for giving away the end of life’s long, complex novel - and hinting at that faraway time when all of its loose ends will have been neatly tied up in one deeply satisfying dénouement, like The Magic Flute claims?
You know, sometimes a little spoiler inspires us to read right through to the end of all that prolixity!
So, I’ll give you one of Eckhart’s heavenly spoilers to inspire you to read the meister’s own writings, and as your OWN help to reach your journey’s end...
“Whoever has God in himself has Him in a divine manner, for He SHINES out to him in ALL things, and for that person all things TASTE of God.�
And it doesn’t get any more mystical than that!
(If that’s Heaven, where do I sign up?!)
August 3, 2022
Ultimate truth is and should always be elusive, not easily grasped by the finite and limited human intellect. Perhaps the mystical writers help us to grasp this best of all spiritual teachers. They know the dangers of trying to contain the vast expanse of eternal truth within a minute and limited human intellect. They know the treachery of the ego that will try to contain God with human knowledge and understanding.
Meister Eckhart perhaps captures this best in his infamous quote from his 22nd sermon in this book: “Therefore we ask God to free us from ‘God� in so far as we conceive of God.�
I wrestled with my rating of this book, as I'm not sure I “really liked it� because of how difficult and “thick� (to quote one of my soul stream partners) Eckhart writes much of the time. Nevertheless, I have come to recognize the value of suspending my mental faculties and allowing the truth of God to penetrate to a much deeper place in my soul. And I was grateful for Eckart’s encouragement for the reader to be patient and gracious with self, as illustrated in his following invitation: “I beseech you for the love of God to understand me if you can. But if you do not understand, then do not worry, for I shall be speaking of a particular kind of truth which only a few good people can grasp.� Quite often I was humbled in my recognition that I was the beneficiary of his encouragement.
Perhaps one of the essential guiding values of the mystical journey is the recognition that beauty precedes knowledge. I conclude with a quote from my favourite mystical musician, Bruce Cockburn. This is the refrain from his song ‘Understanding Nothing� from his album Big Circumstance.
Weavers' fingers flying on the loom
Patterns shift too fast to be discerned
All these years of thinking
Ended up like this
In front of all this beauty
Understanding nothing
Meister Eckhart perhaps captures this best in his infamous quote from his 22nd sermon in this book: “Therefore we ask God to free us from ‘God� in so far as we conceive of God.�
I wrestled with my rating of this book, as I'm not sure I “really liked it� because of how difficult and “thick� (to quote one of my soul stream partners) Eckhart writes much of the time. Nevertheless, I have come to recognize the value of suspending my mental faculties and allowing the truth of God to penetrate to a much deeper place in my soul. And I was grateful for Eckart’s encouragement for the reader to be patient and gracious with self, as illustrated in his following invitation: “I beseech you for the love of God to understand me if you can. But if you do not understand, then do not worry, for I shall be speaking of a particular kind of truth which only a few good people can grasp.� Quite often I was humbled in my recognition that I was the beneficiary of his encouragement.
Perhaps one of the essential guiding values of the mystical journey is the recognition that beauty precedes knowledge. I conclude with a quote from my favourite mystical musician, Bruce Cockburn. This is the refrain from his song ‘Understanding Nothing� from his album Big Circumstance.
Weavers' fingers flying on the loom
Patterns shift too fast to be discerned
All these years of thinking
Ended up like this
In front of all this beauty
Understanding nothing
December 17, 2022
Meister Eckhart is one of the very best friends I met during my last years of college.
Or ever.
Obv, I never met him in the flesh. Actually, I don't even know how I came to own a tattered secondhand paperback of his work.
All I know is that his voice as a writer, his presence, his words in translation... went straight to my heart.
Mostly, Meister Eckhart brought me hope.
Or ever.
Obv, I never met him in the flesh. Actually, I don't even know how I came to own a tattered secondhand paperback of his work.
All I know is that his voice as a writer, his presence, his words in translation... went straight to my heart.
Mostly, Meister Eckhart brought me hope.
August 23, 2016
Meister Eckhart was born around 1260 but some of the insights he writes about are pertinent today almost 800 years later. The book is a selection of his writings, often philosophical and mostly theological, concerning God and the soul. The key message of the book is that when there is nothing between you and God (not even images which our mind inadvertently creates when we “think�) then that is when we are closest to him. He believed that one’s intellect is not something that is passive but only manifests itself when activated and ideally activated in doing good pious religious deeds. Eckhart talked about many disparate subjects all revolving around the concept of God. One of the interesting points he makes is about language. He believed that purifying language into its most abstract forms enabled human beings to better engage with God who, although real, to the human mind can only exist in the abstract. Our ability to conceptualise in the abstract being surrounded by data and information and various forms of positivism only hinders this ability which he believed was a critical form of intelligence. Another interesting point that the Meister makes is that if you are to receive divine knowledge then you need to absolve yourself of all knowledge like a receptacle emptying itself. An eye that has a film of blue surrounding it will not know that it is blue and it will not know that all that it sees around it is blue also. (Do fish know they are surrounded by water?) The caveat that Meister Eckhart puts against all this knowledge of God is summed up in his rather anti-synaesthesia sentiment when he says that as the mouth cannot see colours and the ear cannot smell so we will not be able to know God! Wtf!!! What's the point then ???!? I had to skip this in places as it got a bit boring for my liking but in a way you had to admire the belief and the simplicity with which the Meister’s love of God comes through his words.
May 7, 2012
Great introduction to Meister Eckhart teachings, but I more recommended The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart..
April 25, 2007
Crazy old Dominican who's writings were declared heretical. Sounds interesting, right? Wrong. It's totally metaphysical, speculation about the body, soul, God, the oneness of all matter . . . Eckhart was a big neo-Platonist, and many of his followers eventually became members of the Free Spirit heresy. But unless you really like theology, it is very dull.
July 10, 2024
Amen to bro! 🙏 Eckhart can hang with the best of the mystic lit as far as I'm concerned. At times it does get repetitive and can drag on, but overall fire book.
March 12, 2022
Neoplatonism kinda wack not gonna lie, but Eckhart’s gotten me close to enjoying it as a concept!
Incredibly dense stuff, but ultimately most of these selected writings revolve around the same metaphysical abstract reflections on God’s Oneness and Wholeness, which is interesting in small doses but gets a lil tiresome over time
Incredibly dense stuff, but ultimately most of these selected writings revolve around the same metaphysical abstract reflections on God’s Oneness and Wholeness, which is interesting in small doses but gets a lil tiresome over time
May 7, 2018
I read this for a Medieval Philosophy class and this is the final paper I wrote that attempts to explain what Eckhart is going on about. But beyond just an assignment, I really loved Eckhart's writings and what he was attempting to do. He's a remarkable figure and I am glad to have discovered him.
---
As a preacher, Meister Eckhart seems to be very much in touch with what actually is useful to the ordinary person and the sorts of things that troubles them. Unlike many of the other philosophers we have studied who were engaging with philosophy at a level that has little benefit to the everyday person - though Augustine could be an exception - Eckhart seems only interested in explaining how each person can best live their life through the elimination of suffering by obtaining a real relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Eckhart adresses, head-on, the question “Why does God allow me to suffer?� by turning that question back around at ourselves and how we are, in fact, the cause of our suffering, but not because we are somehow bad - God does not make bad things - but because we do not align our will with the good in the world around us, including within ourselves. Eckhart tells us that “we are good� - “I am good� - and with that simple statement he explains how we can achieve a perfect unity with God and eliminate suffering.
I Am Good
While it might seem at first glance that Eckhart is only making a linguistic argument about how a good person shares the same essence with goodness itself, upon closer examination of the statement, “I am good�, we can begin to see more clearly that he is making a strong argument for how the individual shares the same essence of goodness with God.
First of all, when we consider the statement “I am good� and closely examine what this “good� is, we can infer that good and happiness are structurally the same thing. Happiness is, after all, getting what we want, and what we want is what is good for us, therefore happiness and goodness are synonymous; we want happiness, therefore we are wanting what is good. Next, when we eliminate all other qualifications as to what “I am� could be referring to, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�, and only consider that what I am is good, we recognize that the “good� is defining the “I�; the object “good� is begetting the subject “I�. Following this logic there wouldn’t even be an “I� if it weren’t for the “good� because the “good� is, by analogy, filling up the “I� with the essence of good, or goodness.
Finally, it may seem as if this logic would lead us to conclude that the statement “I am good� just equates to “goodness is goodness�, but there is a priority relationship we need to consider. The object, “good� is informing (filling up) the “I�. Without the “good� there would be no “I� because the good is the begetter (or the source) to be found within the “I�; the subject “I� is begotten by the object “good�. And now we can understand how God enters into the equation because, according to Eckhart, God is the “good�, he is the begetter, but not begotten, of not just a single “I� but of all creation itself. When the bible says "And God saw the light, that it was good" (Genesis), this does not only mean that God is pleased with what he has (thus far) created, but that the light is also good - “light = good� - because all things God creates is good, including the I. Thus each person, in fact each creature and all the things found in the universe, share in this (prioritized) essence of goodness that is poured into them from God.
I Give Up To Get
When we examined the statement “I am good�, we excluded all other qualifications that “I am� could be referring to. And while we have shown how what “I� wants is goodness (to be happy), there is still the issue of the “I� being able to also be defined by a myriad possibilities, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�. In and of themselves these things are also good in that they are sharing in essence of goodness; a human being is good just as the light God created on the first day is good. Yet when these things are also present in us, we become only partial expressions of goodness and thus we are not fully “good�. Therefore Eckhart tells us that we must give up what is limiting our ability to be fully “good� in order to be filled up only with goodness.
However, what Eckhart is proposing can sound misleading. First of all, Eckhart is saying that the “I� should not be defined by anything other than the “good�. When the “I� is defined by, say “human being�, a thing whose nature is, in part, to become sick and die, we are focusing our desires not towards wanting goodness, but towards wanting to be human. The same could be said of focusing what we want towards sex, or money; these things, though good in and of themselves, are not the “good� that begets us, they do not give us goodness (happiness), they only get in the way of us being filled up by goodness and therefore they must be given up by redirecting our will to be aligned only with the good.
The same is true for loving a creature, such as a wife; while a wife is a good thing because God beget her, she is not the goodness itself and so if we only desire her, we are not desiring what truly makes us happy: the good. We must give her up and only love the goodness present in her. In this way we are no longer only loving just the creature called wife, but we are loving God himself. This also has the effect of us receiving something once we have given something up in that by giving up the wrong thing our desire was attached to, we gain the correct thing that we want: happiness / good / God.
I Will Good
When we correctly give up our wrong-headed desires and focus them only towards God, we are thus aligning our will with God’s will. When we understood that “I am good� is just a way to explain the priority relationship of the goodness God begets in us - goodness = goodness - we are also saying that the will of God is to do good. God is not doing anything else, such as begetting money, or handing out A’s in medieval philosophy classes, God is only begetting goodness. Of course goodness is found in all things, even in money since he created that too, therefore money isn’t inherently bad, it’s only our relationship with it that is bad when we desire the money but not God. Yet when we align what we want, our will, with what is good then our will and God’s will are identical because we are both willing the same things. However, we are still in a priority relationship in that God begets the good and we receive it, yet when we desire the good we are both willing the same thing.
I Am Christ
We have defined God as a father who begets goodness onto all things, so now let’s attempt to do the same for the remainder of the Godhead, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Christ is God’s only son, and like us, he too was begotten. Yet when we recall the statement “I am good� and how this explains that we are in a priority relationship where goodness is begotten into us and that it also follows that we are then not the same as God because we only reflect God’s essence, we can better understand Christ because he is identical in essence to God - he is God - as well as being a human being like us. That priority relationship which we are a part of, “I am good�, is the very internal structure of God. The Holy Ghost then is the love between the Father and the Son and we are part of this internal structure of the Godhead because by participating in Christ, who like us was begotten by the good (God), we can ultimately become identical in essence to God - in fact the entire Godhead. Eckhart is saying that we can participate in the same essence as God and that by participating in the very structure of the Godhead itself, through Christ, we become, literally, sons of God. Thus we are not merely experiencing some aspect of being in union with God, we literally become the same in essence as God, through Christ and the love between Christ and the Father.
When we are participating in goodness, when we align our will with God’s will, we become united with the Godhead and are participating in the eternal goodness of God even as we live out our lives in bodies that will one day become sick and die. We can actually experience the eternal kingdom of God right now without having to wait to travel to some atemporal place after we die, we can become one with the atemporal goodness that is present within us which is being continually begotten by God.
I Suffer
Now that we’ve established that we can be in complete union with the essence of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, how does this actually do us any good in our everyday lives, specifically how can we be consoled of our suffering? First of all, we need to define suffering. Our original, unqualified statement “I am good� is another way of saying that goodness is being goodness (as in a priority relationship) and it is the ideal state of our will, but our will can also point away from the goodness when we add non-good qualifiers to what we are, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�. We’ve also established that these qualifiers are, in themselves, good because God created them, but they are not the actual essence of God because they are only reflections of God in that they have goodness in them, but are not the goodness itself; Christ being the exception in that he is both God in essence that begets the goodness and also that which is begotten, like the rest of us. When our will points to these non-Christ reflections we are pointing away from from goodness, from what truly makes us happy, therefore when our will is not directed towards this happiness we are existing in a state of unhappiness, thus we suffer.
To achieve happiness and end suffering, our will must be redirected back towards the good, towards God. To accomplish this turning back towards the good we need to give up our attachment to everything this is not God. For example, a student whose will is not pointed correctly towards God will suffer if he does not get in A in his medieval philosophy class, however, students are the very type of things that are capable of not getting A’s and so it would be silly to suffer if this perfectly logical thing were to occur. Our suffering is caused by directing our will towards something we don’t want - getting an F - instead of directing our will to what we do want, happiness. We would not suffer if we directed our will towards being happy by loving the fact that a student is exactly the sort of thing that can get a poor grade, which is how God made students because all things God makes is good. By loving the good within a thing we are loving goodness, not some thing that contains the goodness, or to put it another way, when we give up the thing we gain the good and the happiness, which is what we really want anyway, and thus we cease to suffer.
We need to be careful, however, and not assume that Eckhart is excusing poor behavior - sin - such as the sin of slothfulness which could lead a student to not study and thus get a poor grade. Eckhart is not saying we can somehow love this sin and thus be in union with God, he is saying that if we will only the good we will not love slothfulness and therefore we will not sin in the first place. A student who loves the good will not backslide in his studies but rather he will will what is good which is to study. Conversely, he is not loving studying either, he is loving the good in studying because God created studying, like he did the light, and therefore the student will not suffer when he must study for an exam.
As we explored above when we showed how we are part of the internal structure of the Godhead when our will is the same as God’s, it is this union with the good that relieves us from our suffering because God is only happiness and by his nature does not suffer. By always directing our will towards God we will the good which is also what God wills and with our wills willing the same thing we are thus one with God, through Christ, whose love is the Holy Spirit that connects them. Paradoxically, even if God were to will our damnation, as long as we truly love God then we would, in fact, not be damned because God does not punish someone whose will is aligned with his own.
---
As a preacher, Meister Eckhart seems to be very much in touch with what actually is useful to the ordinary person and the sorts of things that troubles them. Unlike many of the other philosophers we have studied who were engaging with philosophy at a level that has little benefit to the everyday person - though Augustine could be an exception - Eckhart seems only interested in explaining how each person can best live their life through the elimination of suffering by obtaining a real relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Eckhart adresses, head-on, the question “Why does God allow me to suffer?� by turning that question back around at ourselves and how we are, in fact, the cause of our suffering, but not because we are somehow bad - God does not make bad things - but because we do not align our will with the good in the world around us, including within ourselves. Eckhart tells us that “we are good� - “I am good� - and with that simple statement he explains how we can achieve a perfect unity with God and eliminate suffering.
I Am Good
While it might seem at first glance that Eckhart is only making a linguistic argument about how a good person shares the same essence with goodness itself, upon closer examination of the statement, “I am good�, we can begin to see more clearly that he is making a strong argument for how the individual shares the same essence of goodness with God.
First of all, when we consider the statement “I am good� and closely examine what this “good� is, we can infer that good and happiness are structurally the same thing. Happiness is, after all, getting what we want, and what we want is what is good for us, therefore happiness and goodness are synonymous; we want happiness, therefore we are wanting what is good. Next, when we eliminate all other qualifications as to what “I am� could be referring to, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�, and only consider that what I am is good, we recognize that the “good� is defining the “I�; the object “good� is begetting the subject “I�. Following this logic there wouldn’t even be an “I� if it weren’t for the “good� because the “good� is, by analogy, filling up the “I� with the essence of good, or goodness.
Finally, it may seem as if this logic would lead us to conclude that the statement “I am good� just equates to “goodness is goodness�, but there is a priority relationship we need to consider. The object, “good� is informing (filling up) the “I�. Without the “good� there would be no “I� because the good is the begetter (or the source) to be found within the “I�; the subject “I� is begotten by the object “good�. And now we can understand how God enters into the equation because, according to Eckhart, God is the “good�, he is the begetter, but not begotten, of not just a single “I� but of all creation itself. When the bible says "And God saw the light, that it was good" (Genesis), this does not only mean that God is pleased with what he has (thus far) created, but that the light is also good - “light = good� - because all things God creates is good, including the I. Thus each person, in fact each creature and all the things found in the universe, share in this (prioritized) essence of goodness that is poured into them from God.
I Give Up To Get
When we examined the statement “I am good�, we excluded all other qualifications that “I am� could be referring to. And while we have shown how what “I� wants is goodness (to be happy), there is still the issue of the “I� being able to also be defined by a myriad possibilities, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�. In and of themselves these things are also good in that they are sharing in essence of goodness; a human being is good just as the light God created on the first day is good. Yet when these things are also present in us, we become only partial expressions of goodness and thus we are not fully “good�. Therefore Eckhart tells us that we must give up what is limiting our ability to be fully “good� in order to be filled up only with goodness.
However, what Eckhart is proposing can sound misleading. First of all, Eckhart is saying that the “I� should not be defined by anything other than the “good�. When the “I� is defined by, say “human being�, a thing whose nature is, in part, to become sick and die, we are focusing our desires not towards wanting goodness, but towards wanting to be human. The same could be said of focusing what we want towards sex, or money; these things, though good in and of themselves, are not the “good� that begets us, they do not give us goodness (happiness), they only get in the way of us being filled up by goodness and therefore they must be given up by redirecting our will to be aligned only with the good.
The same is true for loving a creature, such as a wife; while a wife is a good thing because God beget her, she is not the goodness itself and so if we only desire her, we are not desiring what truly makes us happy: the good. We must give her up and only love the goodness present in her. In this way we are no longer only loving just the creature called wife, but we are loving God himself. This also has the effect of us receiving something once we have given something up in that by giving up the wrong thing our desire was attached to, we gain the correct thing that we want: happiness / good / God.
I Will Good
When we correctly give up our wrong-headed desires and focus them only towards God, we are thus aligning our will with God’s will. When we understood that “I am good� is just a way to explain the priority relationship of the goodness God begets in us - goodness = goodness - we are also saying that the will of God is to do good. God is not doing anything else, such as begetting money, or handing out A’s in medieval philosophy classes, God is only begetting goodness. Of course goodness is found in all things, even in money since he created that too, therefore money isn’t inherently bad, it’s only our relationship with it that is bad when we desire the money but not God. Yet when we align what we want, our will, with what is good then our will and God’s will are identical because we are both willing the same things. However, we are still in a priority relationship in that God begets the good and we receive it, yet when we desire the good we are both willing the same thing.
I Am Christ
We have defined God as a father who begets goodness onto all things, so now let’s attempt to do the same for the remainder of the Godhead, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Christ is God’s only son, and like us, he too was begotten. Yet when we recall the statement “I am good� and how this explains that we are in a priority relationship where goodness is begotten into us and that it also follows that we are then not the same as God because we only reflect God’s essence, we can better understand Christ because he is identical in essence to God - he is God - as well as being a human being like us. That priority relationship which we are a part of, “I am good�, is the very internal structure of God. The Holy Ghost then is the love between the Father and the Son and we are part of this internal structure of the Godhead because by participating in Christ, who like us was begotten by the good (God), we can ultimately become identical in essence to God - in fact the entire Godhead. Eckhart is saying that we can participate in the same essence as God and that by participating in the very structure of the Godhead itself, through Christ, we become, literally, sons of God. Thus we are not merely experiencing some aspect of being in union with God, we literally become the same in essence as God, through Christ and the love between Christ and the Father.
When we are participating in goodness, when we align our will with God’s will, we become united with the Godhead and are participating in the eternal goodness of God even as we live out our lives in bodies that will one day become sick and die. We can actually experience the eternal kingdom of God right now without having to wait to travel to some atemporal place after we die, we can become one with the atemporal goodness that is present within us which is being continually begotten by God.
I Suffer
Now that we’ve established that we can be in complete union with the essence of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, how does this actually do us any good in our everyday lives, specifically how can we be consoled of our suffering? First of all, we need to define suffering. Our original, unqualified statement “I am good� is another way of saying that goodness is being goodness (as in a priority relationship) and it is the ideal state of our will, but our will can also point away from the goodness when we add non-good qualifiers to what we are, such as “I am a human being�, or “I am a student who likes getting an A in his medieval philosophy class�. We’ve also established that these qualifiers are, in themselves, good because God created them, but they are not the actual essence of God because they are only reflections of God in that they have goodness in them, but are not the goodness itself; Christ being the exception in that he is both God in essence that begets the goodness and also that which is begotten, like the rest of us. When our will points to these non-Christ reflections we are pointing away from from goodness, from what truly makes us happy, therefore when our will is not directed towards this happiness we are existing in a state of unhappiness, thus we suffer.
To achieve happiness and end suffering, our will must be redirected back towards the good, towards God. To accomplish this turning back towards the good we need to give up our attachment to everything this is not God. For example, a student whose will is not pointed correctly towards God will suffer if he does not get in A in his medieval philosophy class, however, students are the very type of things that are capable of not getting A’s and so it would be silly to suffer if this perfectly logical thing were to occur. Our suffering is caused by directing our will towards something we don’t want - getting an F - instead of directing our will to what we do want, happiness. We would not suffer if we directed our will towards being happy by loving the fact that a student is exactly the sort of thing that can get a poor grade, which is how God made students because all things God makes is good. By loving the good within a thing we are loving goodness, not some thing that contains the goodness, or to put it another way, when we give up the thing we gain the good and the happiness, which is what we really want anyway, and thus we cease to suffer.
We need to be careful, however, and not assume that Eckhart is excusing poor behavior - sin - such as the sin of slothfulness which could lead a student to not study and thus get a poor grade. Eckhart is not saying we can somehow love this sin and thus be in union with God, he is saying that if we will only the good we will not love slothfulness and therefore we will not sin in the first place. A student who loves the good will not backslide in his studies but rather he will will what is good which is to study. Conversely, he is not loving studying either, he is loving the good in studying because God created studying, like he did the light, and therefore the student will not suffer when he must study for an exam.
As we explored above when we showed how we are part of the internal structure of the Godhead when our will is the same as God’s, it is this union with the good that relieves us from our suffering because God is only happiness and by his nature does not suffer. By always directing our will towards God we will the good which is also what God wills and with our wills willing the same thing we are thus one with God, through Christ, whose love is the Holy Spirit that connects them. Paradoxically, even if God were to will our damnation, as long as we truly love God then we would, in fact, not be damned because God does not punish someone whose will is aligned with his own.
May 10, 2018
Rating: Infinity, give or take / 5
The reason why my progress on this book has been so slow is not because I don't absolutely love it to the innermost depths of my soul, but rather, because of that exact reason. Every single chapter, sermon, lesson--in short, every single thing that Meister Eckhart wrote is so profound and meaningful, that I digested the book slowly, progressing through it sometimes just one chapter at a time, even if that said chapter was only four pages long.
The writing is something that you have to be attuned to in order to understand. As taking both an English and History major at uni, I was able to look at these works through both a literacy-based and historical perspective. I first encountered Meister Eckhart whilst searching for someone to write my final essay on for a Medieval History course. One of the broad topics that we were allowed to choose from was "mysticism", and, this being a subject that I was no previously acquainted with in detail, I decided to take it on as my topic--knowing, of course, that the majority of people would focus on the Crusades, something which did not particularly interest me. Then, in searching up mystics, I wanted one who was both obscure and yet influential, someone whose ideas I myself agreed with and could argue for in an essay.
One quick Google search and Wikipedia article later, and I was hooked on Meister Eckhart.
This not only turned out to be a complex academic undertaking, but also a spiritual one. I checked out a lot of books related to this man, of course, but didn't stop after the conclusion of my essay. In fact, I purchased this book on his selected writings and placed it in my "spiritual corner", wanting to read and know more about his teachings and what they meant.
This man knew God. Maybe he was deemed a heretic by the close-minded and hypocritical Catholic Church (as anyone who's studied history can attest to), and maybe his writings are obscure and hard to understand and even to discuss, but they speak to truth and universality, which I believe is one of the reasons why Meister Eckhart is deemed a champion of modern spirituality. Things in this consideration need to be broad, obscure, and even controversial--it's the only way to learn and make one's own conclusions to perplexing problems.
Taken all from a faith-based perspective with mystic connections that most people cannot understand, this was a perfect man for me to learn from, his works a perfect tool to help me in my own spiritual journey. My favourite of the works were Eckhart's "Talks of Instruction", the first one in this collection, particularly because of his elaboration on the principle of "detachment", which is by far the one most applicable to me spiritually.
As such, this book has spoken to me spiritually, thus becoming spiritual for me in nature, alongside the Bible and other select works. In finding faith outside of a purely Biblical context, I think that the modern youth can themselves be brought closer to faith, via philosophy and the ultimate examination of what is truth.
There are a few close-minded references to such outdated topics like the role of women in these works, but those are a product of the times, and are very few in the works. They can be easily overlooked and substituted for a gender-less meaning. The messages and teachings are what remain universal, and, again that is what makes Eckhart a champion of the philosophy and spirituality of the modern day.
Such a shame that more people don't read these works or have even ever heard of Eckhart before. He's not exactly brought to the spotlight, that's for sure. But still, his obscurity and uniqueness are part of what attract me to him, and will encourage me to discuss him in the future, if ever the situation should arise.
Other than that, I see this collection of works as something to be re-read over and over and over again throughout my lifetime. Here's hoping that I can put the lessons into practice as well as learn them.
The reason why my progress on this book has been so slow is not because I don't absolutely love it to the innermost depths of my soul, but rather, because of that exact reason. Every single chapter, sermon, lesson--in short, every single thing that Meister Eckhart wrote is so profound and meaningful, that I digested the book slowly, progressing through it sometimes just one chapter at a time, even if that said chapter was only four pages long.
The writing is something that you have to be attuned to in order to understand. As taking both an English and History major at uni, I was able to look at these works through both a literacy-based and historical perspective. I first encountered Meister Eckhart whilst searching for someone to write my final essay on for a Medieval History course. One of the broad topics that we were allowed to choose from was "mysticism", and, this being a subject that I was no previously acquainted with in detail, I decided to take it on as my topic--knowing, of course, that the majority of people would focus on the Crusades, something which did not particularly interest me. Then, in searching up mystics, I wanted one who was both obscure and yet influential, someone whose ideas I myself agreed with and could argue for in an essay.
One quick Google search and Wikipedia article later, and I was hooked on Meister Eckhart.
This not only turned out to be a complex academic undertaking, but also a spiritual one. I checked out a lot of books related to this man, of course, but didn't stop after the conclusion of my essay. In fact, I purchased this book on his selected writings and placed it in my "spiritual corner", wanting to read and know more about his teachings and what they meant.
This man knew God. Maybe he was deemed a heretic by the close-minded and hypocritical Catholic Church (as anyone who's studied history can attest to), and maybe his writings are obscure and hard to understand and even to discuss, but they speak to truth and universality, which I believe is one of the reasons why Meister Eckhart is deemed a champion of modern spirituality. Things in this consideration need to be broad, obscure, and even controversial--it's the only way to learn and make one's own conclusions to perplexing problems.
Taken all from a faith-based perspective with mystic connections that most people cannot understand, this was a perfect man for me to learn from, his works a perfect tool to help me in my own spiritual journey. My favourite of the works were Eckhart's "Talks of Instruction", the first one in this collection, particularly because of his elaboration on the principle of "detachment", which is by far the one most applicable to me spiritually.
As such, this book has spoken to me spiritually, thus becoming spiritual for me in nature, alongside the Bible and other select works. In finding faith outside of a purely Biblical context, I think that the modern youth can themselves be brought closer to faith, via philosophy and the ultimate examination of what is truth.
There are a few close-minded references to such outdated topics like the role of women in these works, but those are a product of the times, and are very few in the works. They can be easily overlooked and substituted for a gender-less meaning. The messages and teachings are what remain universal, and, again that is what makes Eckhart a champion of the philosophy and spirituality of the modern day.
Such a shame that more people don't read these works or have even ever heard of Eckhart before. He's not exactly brought to the spotlight, that's for sure. But still, his obscurity and uniqueness are part of what attract me to him, and will encourage me to discuss him in the future, if ever the situation should arise.
Other than that, I see this collection of works as something to be re-read over and over and over again throughout my lifetime. Here's hoping that I can put the lessons into practice as well as learn them.
May 9, 2011
Sincerely surprised about how much I liked this book! I thought it'd be trolling through dry medieval theology to find some gems (the stuff usually quoted in other books) but, literally with the exception of a few of the "sermons" in the second half, the book was beautiful. It is inspirational, moving and life-changing. This is one of the enlightened ones who truely got it - one who sets a high bar for others to reach.
March 29, 2021
I read one chapter a day for two months and I didn't understand any of it but I felt like I had been gifted something otherworldly
September 17, 2024
"The kernel of salvation lies in understanding."
August 18, 2024
It is always a delight to read the insightful view of Eckhart. This edition is pretty good and has many of his best sermons.
April 15, 2024
These selected writings were so rich that I want to get a translation of all of Eckhart’s writings. Saw a lot of parallels with my Tibetan Buddhist studies about how to give up the ego and clinging to sense desire to become in union with truth, I found his quotation of Saint Augustine to be profound: “God became man so that man could become God,� but not in the ego maniacal way we see with psychopathic ceos and dictators who have god or messiah complexes, but to be a being of infinite compassion and an unshakeable drive to make the world more equitable no matter the cost to oneself.
The Joseph Campbell quote comes to mind, turn your passion into compassion, whether it is art, tech or medicine, do these things to share happiness with others rather than to stroke our egos.
A term I like to use is sensual madness which is what we are in a globalized world afflicted with, like an Orwellian ad that getting unlimited sense pleasures and having emperor like status our the keys to salvation whereas we see celebrities, ceos and world leaders who have more misery and delusion than those in abject poverty.
The last episodes of the Good Place really nailed home that a heaven of unlimited sense pleasures and being able to go where ever you want would be another hell, Just like in Buddhism those in God realms become like zombies and are even more in pain when they are dying than those in the Avici hell for wasting all of their karma and dread of eons of torment.
I need to reread and mediate on these writings again and again, these are just my fresh observations, but a keen focus is that you become like god by purifying your heart. That the main point is to dig away at the selfish ego which attached to praise and sense pleasure and truly want to have immeasurable compassion and the capacity to help all with that compassion.
A final point I think this book brings home, I am guilty of obsessing over others issues as a projection of fixing my own or want to change people whose behavior I can at times even come to disdain. But what I learned is, one do not self-flagellate over that, we are all guilty of that and self punishment would just make it worse. 2. Love people and yourself for who they are, not what you ideally want them to be and all focus on changing or barraging people’s behavior at the expense of your own strength just takes away from you.
The most important thing is to work on empowering yourself, focus less on trying to change others and focus on changing yourself with kindness. To push yourself to be a little better than yesterday but to avoid self pity, to have the compassion that it may take many life times till one’s heart is pure.
The Joseph Campbell quote comes to mind, turn your passion into compassion, whether it is art, tech or medicine, do these things to share happiness with others rather than to stroke our egos.
A term I like to use is sensual madness which is what we are in a globalized world afflicted with, like an Orwellian ad that getting unlimited sense pleasures and having emperor like status our the keys to salvation whereas we see celebrities, ceos and world leaders who have more misery and delusion than those in abject poverty.
The last episodes of the Good Place really nailed home that a heaven of unlimited sense pleasures and being able to go where ever you want would be another hell, Just like in Buddhism those in God realms become like zombies and are even more in pain when they are dying than those in the Avici hell for wasting all of their karma and dread of eons of torment.
I need to reread and mediate on these writings again and again, these are just my fresh observations, but a keen focus is that you become like god by purifying your heart. That the main point is to dig away at the selfish ego which attached to praise and sense pleasure and truly want to have immeasurable compassion and the capacity to help all with that compassion.
A final point I think this book brings home, I am guilty of obsessing over others issues as a projection of fixing my own or want to change people whose behavior I can at times even come to disdain. But what I learned is, one do not self-flagellate over that, we are all guilty of that and self punishment would just make it worse. 2. Love people and yourself for who they are, not what you ideally want them to be and all focus on changing or barraging people’s behavior at the expense of your own strength just takes away from you.
The most important thing is to work on empowering yourself, focus less on trying to change others and focus on changing yourself with kindness. To push yourself to be a little better than yesterday but to avoid self pity, to have the compassion that it may take many life times till one’s heart is pure.
July 15, 2019
The very last thing Eckhart wanted to cultivate in the minds of his listeners was the comfortable feeling that they now ‘understood� what God was: for that, he was sure, would be the greatest error and ignorance of all. (Introuction)
�
The selected writings of this edition:
The Talks of Instruction
The Book of Divine Consolation
On the Noble Man
Selected German Sermons (30 sermons)
Selected Latin Sermons (3 sermons)
�
O noble soul, consider your nobility! For until you have entirely abandoned yourself and have cast yourself into the fathomless ocean of the Godhead, you cannot know this divine death
I say further that all suffering comes from attachment and affection
Those who have taken leave of themselves are so pure that the world cannot endure them
What is a pure heart? That heart is pure which is detached from all creatures . . .
Heart to hear, one in one, is how God loves
God is in all things
�
The selected writings of this edition:
The Talks of Instruction
The Book of Divine Consolation
On the Noble Man
Selected German Sermons (30 sermons)
Selected Latin Sermons (3 sermons)
�
O noble soul, consider your nobility! For until you have entirely abandoned yourself and have cast yourself into the fathomless ocean of the Godhead, you cannot know this divine death
I say further that all suffering comes from attachment and affection
Those who have taken leave of themselves are so pure that the world cannot endure them
What is a pure heart? That heart is pure which is detached from all creatures . . .
Heart to hear, one in one, is how God loves
God is in all things
October 11, 2020
Many of my favorite authors are influenced by Eckhart, so it was fascinating to see where these interesting ideas originated
December 1, 2019
Full of wisdom, especially about the inner work to find God. It is at many times a hard read bordering on theologically tedious but then it rewards with gems.
January 5, 2022
mad dope
July 6, 2021
really interesting and unique theology. the introduction is great -- my mind was blown every other page. gets a little boring when eckhart is splitting hairs over bible quotes, and he has some bizarre metaphors he takes from those at times. it feels like eckhart was constrained by the church he lived in, and he struggles too much to reconcile dogma with his own thought. i wish i could see what eckhart would think if he had access to Eastern religious texts, or if he lived in an era where you didn't have to fear being accused of heresy (as he was.) regardless, eckhart is a brilliant metaphysician.
"God is creating the world even now as he did on the first day when he created the world."
"As long as you have any regard for yourself in any way or for anything, then you will not know what God is."
"People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about who they are... We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works."
"God is infinite in his simplicity and infinite in his simplicity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere complete. He is everywhere on account of his infinity, and is everywhere complete on account of his simplicity. Only God flows into all things, their very essences. Nothing else flows into something else. God is in the innermost part of each and every thing, only in its innermost part, and he is one."
"God is creating the world even now as he did on the first day when he created the world."
"As long as you have any regard for yourself in any way or for anything, then you will not know what God is."
"People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about who they are... We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works."
"God is infinite in his simplicity and infinite in his simplicity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere complete. He is everywhere on account of his infinity, and is everywhere complete on account of his simplicity. Only God flows into all things, their very essences. Nothing else flows into something else. God is in the innermost part of each and every thing, only in its innermost part, and he is one."
July 13, 2012
Meister Johannas Eckhart has a marvelous way of explaining Christian theological concepts in pure and simple language and metaphor. Eckhart also tackles one of the difficult questions facing Christian practice (incidentally also a major stumbling block in Buddhism in a way) of how one can both desire the fruits of grace AND maintain a selfless love of God. For Eckhart even the splendors of faith have to be negated in order to remove obstacles between the soul and God.
I will never quite be Eckhart's biggest fan due to that, that which the book I borrowed mentions 100x over, neoplatonist streak. For Eckhart God is something of a pure Form or Image, scripture is no more than codified mysticism and gnosticism leaks through like a torn umbrella. For Eckhart, messages against poverty in the Gospel speak to spiritual attachment to material things, but for me it's about giving the actual impoverished actual food and assistance. While I do adore and practice Christian mysticism, I'm way too much of a materialist to get 100% behind Eckhart, but I very highly recommend reading him if you're Christian or interested in mystic traditions (Zen, Sufism, etc.)
I will never quite be Eckhart's biggest fan due to that, that which the book I borrowed mentions 100x over, neoplatonist streak. For Eckhart God is something of a pure Form or Image, scripture is no more than codified mysticism and gnosticism leaks through like a torn umbrella. For Eckhart, messages against poverty in the Gospel speak to spiritual attachment to material things, but for me it's about giving the actual impoverished actual food and assistance. While I do adore and practice Christian mysticism, I'm way too much of a materialist to get 100% behind Eckhart, but I very highly recommend reading him if you're Christian or interested in mystic traditions (Zen, Sufism, etc.)
July 11, 2022
The Talks of Instruction that Eckhart gave to his student monks around 1300 are about how to be a Christian, and are just as practical and relevant in the 21st century. Don't be concerned about following a particular way, as all good ways are of God. If you stop worrying about yourself and your life, God will enter in by the space that is left, and fill it. Develop the habit of seeing God in all things, for "whoever truly possesses God in the right way, possesses him in all places: on the street, in any company, as well as in a church or a remote place." If I had to have only one spiritual guide beside the Bible, this is it: robust, genial, authoritative, humane.
February 28, 2013
Too religious for my tastes.
November 27, 2014
Always love Meister Eckhart.
July 13, 2017
Each time I read Eckhart, I get something new out of it. Though sometimes he skates a little close to the edge of orthodoxy, he never crosses. Solid, dependable teaching.
February 3, 2020
This book will provide you with a very interesting take on gnostic Christianity (if you can call it that), a breathe of fresh air in regards to Christian literature.
March 14, 2024
I’ve read enough references to Eckhart that I decided to dive into the source material. These texts are challenging on lots of levels, and also rewarding.
- You have to let go of any semblance of a dualistic mindset.
- The language is unique and definitions are important. For example, he uses the word “intellect�, which more like “consciousness� than our current sense of the word. I had to keep referring back to the introduction to remember the vocabulary.
- The intro explains that Eckhart got into trouble for his writings and sermons, especially when read out of context. This is understandable, and a reminder that some things about society haven’t changed in 750 years.
- He lived soon after Thomas Aquinas and made me dust off some memories of my Jesuit education, especially related to God as first cause.
- It’s easy to feel I was reading a philosophy book, and so I enjoyed how the German Sermons ended with a little prayer like “We ask God, our dear Lord, to help us move from a life which is divided to a life which is one. So help us God. Amen� (Sermon 14.) He would occasionally add “May those who do not understand this, not be troubled.� (which is also a prayer that I needed.)
A few of my favorite quotes:
This is the best example of the challenging language:
“You should sink your 'being-you' into his 'being-him', and your 'you' and his 'him' should become a single 'me' so that with him you shall know in eternity his unbecome "isness' and his
unnameable 'nothingness�.� - Selected German Sermons #28 p. 237
By chance or by the Spirit, these quotes helped me understand a part of Ephesians I had just heard at mass.
“People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fullness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 4, p7
For God does not notice the nature of the works but only the love, the devotion and the spirit which is in them. For he is not so much concerned with our works as with the spirit with which we perform them all and that we should love him in all things. Talks of Instruction, Ch 16, p. 27
…and so I have a better understanding of “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.� (Eph 2: 8-10)
Other good quotes:
“Not everyone can follow the same way, nor can all people follow only one way, nor can we follow all the different ways or everyone else's way. Everyone should maintain their own good devotional practice, embracing in it all other ways and thus grasping in their own way all goodness and all ways.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 17, p. 29
“So do not complain but complain rather that you do still complain and find no peace.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 23, p. 50
“But these people, who practise many external devotions, have great status in the eyes of the world, which comes from their likeness to it. For those who understand only physical things, have a high regard for the kind of life which they can perceive with the senses. Thus one ass is adored by another!� - Selected German Sermons #30 p. 241
Be sure of this, that if someone acts in such a way that their actions reduce other people, then they are not acting on the basis of God's kingdom. - Selected German Sermons #30, p. 250
“The just person seeks nothing through their works, for those whose works are aimed at a particular end or who act with a particular Why in view, are servants and hirelings, If you wish to be formed and transformed into justice then, do not intend anything particular by your works and do not embrace any particular Why, neither in time nor in eternity, neither reward nor blessedness, neither this nor that; such works in truth are dead. Indeed, even if you make God your goal, all the works you perform for his sake will be dead, and you will only spoil those works which are genuinely good.� - Selected German Sermons #10 p. 145
- You have to let go of any semblance of a dualistic mindset.
- The language is unique and definitions are important. For example, he uses the word “intellect�, which more like “consciousness� than our current sense of the word. I had to keep referring back to the introduction to remember the vocabulary.
- The intro explains that Eckhart got into trouble for his writings and sermons, especially when read out of context. This is understandable, and a reminder that some things about society haven’t changed in 750 years.
- He lived soon after Thomas Aquinas and made me dust off some memories of my Jesuit education, especially related to God as first cause.
- It’s easy to feel I was reading a philosophy book, and so I enjoyed how the German Sermons ended with a little prayer like “We ask God, our dear Lord, to help us move from a life which is divided to a life which is one. So help us God. Amen� (Sermon 14.) He would occasionally add “May those who do not understand this, not be troubled.� (which is also a prayer that I needed.)
A few of my favorite quotes:
This is the best example of the challenging language:
“You should sink your 'being-you' into his 'being-him', and your 'you' and his 'him' should become a single 'me' so that with him you shall know in eternity his unbecome "isness' and his
unnameable 'nothingness�.� - Selected German Sermons #28 p. 237
By chance or by the Spirit, these quotes helped me understand a part of Ephesians I had just heard at mass.
“People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fullness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 4, p7
For God does not notice the nature of the works but only the love, the devotion and the spirit which is in them. For he is not so much concerned with our works as with the spirit with which we perform them all and that we should love him in all things. Talks of Instruction, Ch 16, p. 27
…and so I have a better understanding of “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.� (Eph 2: 8-10)
Other good quotes:
“Not everyone can follow the same way, nor can all people follow only one way, nor can we follow all the different ways or everyone else's way. Everyone should maintain their own good devotional practice, embracing in it all other ways and thus grasping in their own way all goodness and all ways.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 17, p. 29
“So do not complain but complain rather that you do still complain and find no peace.� - Talks of Instruction, Ch 23, p. 50
“But these people, who practise many external devotions, have great status in the eyes of the world, which comes from their likeness to it. For those who understand only physical things, have a high regard for the kind of life which they can perceive with the senses. Thus one ass is adored by another!� - Selected German Sermons #30 p. 241
Be sure of this, that if someone acts in such a way that their actions reduce other people, then they are not acting on the basis of God's kingdom. - Selected German Sermons #30, p. 250
“The just person seeks nothing through their works, for those whose works are aimed at a particular end or who act with a particular Why in view, are servants and hirelings, If you wish to be formed and transformed into justice then, do not intend anything particular by your works and do not embrace any particular Why, neither in time nor in eternity, neither reward nor blessedness, neither this nor that; such works in truth are dead. Indeed, even if you make God your goal, all the works you perform for his sake will be dead, and you will only spoil those works which are genuinely good.� - Selected German Sermons #10 p. 145
November 17, 2024
Meister Eckhart fascinates in this collection of writings and sermons, not simply because of his positions - that the soul is one with God and that we should divest ourselves of everything - all creatures, images, memories - which keep us from experiencing the disappearance of the soul in union with God. His other interest is in that he was a historical preacher and administrator who, on the evidence of these sermons, stood before his congregation and regaled them with such a challenging, breathtaking and potentially liberating version of Christianity. It's little wonder he was persecuted by the authorities, as he encourages his listeners and readers to break through into that which passeth understanding. He takes the scriptures and draws out the most extraordinary similes and illustrations of his positions. It's little wonder that he has never quite been accepted into the orthodox roll-call of the saints, yet has been seen as a bridge between medieval European Christianity and Buddhism, and as an inspiration to those involved in contemporary "New Age" spirituality. The work, from the earliest sermons to the last, is a developed series of riffs and reiterations of his vision of the truth about our relationship with and return home to the Godhead.
December 18, 2024
This review is solely for “Talks of Instruction.�
An incredibly beautiful Neo-Platonist dialectic between nothingness and God. Instead of Being and Nothingness, God replaces everything that is an object of joy, peace, security, wealth, and all desires that are placed outside of God become misdirected. Eckhart has a quasi-“Buddhist� notion that the “emptier� you are, the less attached to one or another thing, the more you divest yourself from concrete desires, the more God will “fill� the vacuum in you. It’s a series of very interesting observations about suffering, trials, and the redemptive arc of “nothingness.�
An incredibly beautiful Neo-Platonist dialectic between nothingness and God. Instead of Being and Nothingness, God replaces everything that is an object of joy, peace, security, wealth, and all desires that are placed outside of God become misdirected. Eckhart has a quasi-“Buddhist� notion that the “emptier� you are, the less attached to one or another thing, the more you divest yourself from concrete desires, the more God will “fill� the vacuum in you. It’s a series of very interesting observations about suffering, trials, and the redemptive arc of “nothingness.�
October 14, 2021
I found myself most interested in The Book of Consolation, the first section of this compendium. In my opinion, the selected German and Latin sermons which followed were somewhat repetitive in themes, albeit with a few exceptions. The translation into English was excellent. Eckhart was an extraordinary religious philosopher. This was my first exposure to him. Although I found myself at times disagreeing with him, I respected his arguments and reasoning and spent much time weighing his perspectives on God and humanity against my own.
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