I have heard a lot about Meister Eckhart (especially through the writing of D.T. Suzuki) but was not serious enough to find the information until recently. Then, I stumbled into this site developed by Deb Platt - and more…. As other files on my home page, this file is developed to share what I think is intriguing along with my comments and underlines, etc. added. At the top are some lines I chose as my favorite quotes. What I found from this file is that it appears that there is one to one relationship between him and Zen. God and individual becoming one is the state of enlightenment, living according to the laws of nature. A wonderful reading!!!

Just before my search of Eckhart on the net, I had an interesting experience in my evening meditation. As I was writing an essay, I realized that the thought I had was very much in line to that of Eckhart. It is about "It is what it is" and the quote here is corresponding to such thought/experience: The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, scorn, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting until death without a why. There is a lot of Zen in it. If interested on my essay, please refer to the #567-570 at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/philosophylifemanagement

Sources:

- A Tremendous resource on Eckhart: http://www.oocities.org/janushead/eckhart.html

- Eckhart home page: http://www.wwisp.com/~srshanks/Meister_Eckhart/index.html

- Eckhart Society: http://www.op.org/eckhart/default.HTM

- Deb Platt: http://digiserve.com/mystic/Christian/Eckhart/about.html or for copyright information: http://digiserve.com/mystic/index.html (Thanks Deb Platt.)

(The tiles of these quotes seem to be set by Deb (except the first one). There are page numbers but I do not know the source. I assume it is taken from some book(s). Her web site covers world religions and I very much recommend to visit the site as referred above. Again, thank you Deb for the efforts. Best wishes!!! - Kio (1/13/2001)

Few of My Favorite Quotes: *

Few of My Favorite Quotes:

1) Quotes found from the second source (janushead's site) **:

* The Eye of Eckhart!

"The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same--one in seeing, one is knowing, and one in loving."

"When I came out from God, that is, into multiplicity, then all proclaimed, 'There is a God' (i.e., the personal God, Creator of all things). Now this cannot make me blessed, for hereby I realize myself as creature. But in the breaking through (i.e. through all limitations), I am more than all creatures, I am neither God nor creature; I am that which I was and shall remain evermore. There I receive a thrust which carries me above all angels. By this sudden touch I am become so rich that God (i.e., God as opposed to the Godhead) is not sufficient for me, so far as he is only God and in all his divine works. For in this breaking through I perceive what God and I are in common. There I am what I was. There I neither increase nor decrease. For there I am the immovable which moves all things. Here man has won again what he is eternally (i.e., in his essential being) and ever shall be. Here God (i.e., the Godhead) is received into the soul."

"No idea represents or signifies itself. It always points to something else, of which it is a symbol. And since man has no ideas, except those abstracted from external things through the sense, he cannot be blessed by an idea."

"The mind never rests but must go on expecting and preparing for what is yet known and what is still concealed. Meanwhile, man cannot know what God is, even though he be ever so well of what God is not; and an intelligent person will reject that. As long as it has no reference point, the mind can only wait as matter waits for him. And matter can never find rest except in form; so, too, the mind can never find rest except in the essential truth which is locked up in it--the truth about everything. Essence alone satisfied and God keeps on withdrawing, farther and farther away, to arouse the mind's zeal and lure it to follow and finally grasp the true good that has no cause. Thus, contented with nothing, the mind clamors for the highest good of all."

"You could not do better than to go where it is dark, that is, unconsciousness."

"To seek God by rituals is to get the ritual and lose God in the process, for he hides behind it. On the other hand, to seek God without artifice, is to take him as he is, and so doing, a person 'lives by the Son,' and is the Life itself."

"The course of heaven is outside time--and yet time comes from its movements. Nothing hinders the soul's knowledge of God as much as time and space, for time and space are fragments, whereas God is one! And therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know him above time and outside of space; for God is neither this nor that, as are these manifold things. God is one!"

"...where the soul is informed with the primal purity, stamped with the seal of pure being, where it tastes God himself as he was before he ever took upon himself the forms of truth and knowledge, where everything that can be named is sloughed off--there the soul knows with its purest knowledge and takes on Being in its most perfect similitude."

"God does not seek his own. In all his acts, he is innocent and free and acts only out of true love. That is why the person who is united to God acts that way--he, too, will be innocent and free, whatever he does, and will act out of love and without asking why, solely for the glory of God, seeking his own advantage in nothing--for God is at work in him."

"God's being is my life, but if it is so, then what is God's must be mine and what is mine God's. God's is-ness is my is-ness, and neither more nor less. The just live eternally with God, on a par with God, neither deeper nor higher. All their work is done by God and God's by them."

"God...does not constrain the will. Rather, he sets it free, so that it may choose him, that is to say, freedom. The spirit of man may not will otherwise than what God wills, but that is no lack of freedom. It is true freedom itself."

"Man's last and highest parting occurs when, for God's sake, he takes leave of God."

"The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same--one in seeing, one is knowing, and one in loving."

======================

2) Quotes taken from http://www.wwisp.com/~srshanks/Meister_Eckhart/index.html

THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD HID NOTHING

1. Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love, godly fear and perfect faith may, and he will, receive God’s body every day at the priest's hands.

2. The question is what does God do in heaven? The answer given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work: the works God crowns his saints for he created in them himself.

3. Meister Eckhart says, I have been asked what God is doing in heaven. I answer; He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth forever. (((He/Nature is the creator in action!))) The Father being in labor, as a woman giving birth to a child, in every virtuous soul. Blessed, three times blessed, is the person within whose soul the heavenly Father is brought to bed in this manner. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary through the Spirit was better pleasing to God than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul, it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth.

4. Meister Eckhart says, He who is at home everywhere is God-worth; to him who is ever the same is God present, and in him in whom creatures are stilled, God bears his one-begotten son.

5. Meister Eckhart says, Holy Scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled, and self-controlled is self-possessed, and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything that God ever made. I say to you, as true as God is God and I am a man, if you were quite free from self, free as the highest angel, then you would be as much like the highest angel as you would be yourself. This method gives self-mastery. (((((No -Self like Buddha's teaching))))

6. According to Meister Eckhart, Grace does not come except with the Holy Spirit. It bears the Holy Spirit upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey God. Grace makes the soul conformable to the will of God. God, the ground of the soul, and grace go together.

7. Question, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and nothing else, and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace, to be grace, must have the soul for substance, for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so, he instills it into her essence, and essence works by grace in all her powers.

8. Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If I wanted a teacher of theology, I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. However, if I came to ask about the perfect life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve your anxious questions. Why, good people, search among dead bones? Why not seek the living part that is directly connected with creation and that gives eternal life? The dead neither give nor take. An angel seeking God as God would not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, scorn, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting until death without a why. (((This correspond to the notion of "It is as it is" as I shared in my note.)))

9. Meister Eckhart says, He who is ever along is Godworth and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly.

10. God's every inflection is a lure. I give no thanks to God for loving me because he cannot help it, it is his nature to; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving me.

11. Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God's greatest gift to him answered, There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything I do. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace, and happiness.

12. Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue. -- I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God's sight.

13. Meister Eckhart says, we ought not to have to ask God for his grace, his divine goodness, we ought to contrive to take it ourselves without asking. God has gotten himself in his divine outflow just as the flowing ...

14. Mind you, all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends on our traversing and transcending creature, time, and state; and entering the cause that is causeless.

15. God being still sets everything going. So desirable a thing starts them all running back into that from whence they came: to that which stays unchanged in its own self; and the nobler the thing the more jubilantly it runs.

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

17. Speaking of man we mean a person; speaking of manhood we mean human nature.

18. Doctors define what nature is. It is the thing that essence can take on. God took on manhood and not man. I say: Christ was the first man. How so? What is first in intention is last in execution, as the roof is the finish of the house.

"We shall find God in everything alike and find God always alike in everything."

"Whoever possesses God in their being, has him in a divine manner, and he shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see."

"People should not worry as 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."

"It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else." Talks of Instruction

In 1985 the Pope, John Paul II, said: "Did not Eckhart teach his disciples: 'All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself - and let God be God in you'? One could think that, in separating himself from creatures, the mystic leaves his brothers, humanity, behind. The same Eckhart affirms that, on the contrary, the mystic is marvelously present to them on the only level where he can truly reach them, that is in God."

* From: http://www.op.org/eckhart/Essay.html (Rebecca Stephens)

If I say that 'God is good, this is not true! I am good, but God is not good! In fact, I would rather say that I am better than God, for what is good can become better and what can become better can become the best! ... Or if I say that 'God exists', this is also not true. He is being beyond being: he is a nothingness beyond being ... Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin.¹¹

• 11 Eckhart, Selected Writings, German sermon 28: 236.
  

Whoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God.¹⁸

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 or in their cell. No one can obstruct such a person, if only they possess God in the right way, and possess him alone.¹⁹

If God is to write on my heart up in the highest place, everything that can be called this or that must come out of my heart, and in that way my heart will have won detachment. ²⁰

(((I believe Detachment here means…. Detachmet from ego…)))

(Eckhart denies any literary force to his sermons. He insists that language, particularly the language we use of God, must be de-mystified: any mystical significance, a talismanic quality that it is said to possess must be stripped away in the admission that it is useless as an expression of the experience of the divine. As there are no words that are exempt from this category, silence is a more fitting choice for the soul that desires to be freed from human constructs. )

• this is the comment by an essay writer

It is the soul, naked and empty of all expressible things, which stands [as] one in the One, so that it can go forward in the naked Godhead . . . The intellect pulls off the coat from God and perceives him bare, as he is stripped of goodness and of being and of all names.²²

Whoever does not truly have God within themselves, but must constantly receive him in one external thing after another, seeking God in diverse ways, whether by particular works, people or places, such a person does not possess God ... We should not content ourselves with a God of thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God. Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of all people and all creatures.³⁹

4) Quotes from: http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_eckhart_meister.html

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If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance... (pp. 236-7)

But those who understand in truth that even when they have given themselves up and have abandoned all things, this is still absolutely nothing -- those who live in this way, truly possess all things. (p. 186)

If you love yourself, then you love everyone as much as yourself. But as long as there is anyone whom you do not love as much as yourself, then you have never properly loved yourself -- unless you love everyone as yourself, loving all in one person, in someone who is both human and divine. (p.176)

If your works are to be living works, then God must spur you to action from within, from your innermost part, if they really are to be alive. For that is where you own life is, and that is the sole place where you are truly alive. (p. 146)

do not embrace any particular Why … if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. … Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. (p. 145)

... there is one work which is right and proper for us to do, and that is the eradication of self. But however great this eradication and reduction of self may be, it remains insufficient if God does not complete it in us. (p. 46)

That person who is thus rooted in God's love must be dead to themselves and to all created things so that they are no more concerned with themselves than they are with someone who is over a thousand miles away. Such a person remains in likeness and in unity and is always the same... This person must have abandoned themselves and the whole world ... Whoever entirely renounces themselves even for a moment would be given all things. (p. 179)

It is the nature of the Holy Spirit that I should be consumed in him, dissolved in him, and transformed wholly into love. (p. 148)

God must become me and I must become God, so entirely one that "he" and this "I" become one "is" and act in this "isness" as one, for this "he" and this "I", that is God and the soul, are very fruitful. (p. 238) (((Wow!!! This is the same as as-it-isness, and my thought on "It is as it is." Or, heart and brain to become one. Or Hui Neng's "there is no good or bad and see the original self." No wonder, Daisetz wrote highly of Eckhart!))))

Thought

This section is taken from the second source (janushead's site)

Eckhart, in his writings, distinguished 'God' from the 'Godhead.' 'God' as "Godhead' is that eternity from which all things spring forth -- that infinite 'Deity' which lies within and beyond all that is finite. The 'Godhead' exists as pure potentiality; that which is before all distinctions have been made. This does not mean that the 'Godhead' is in a state of becoming, but that the 'Godhead' resides in Being. It is the form which is formless, the cause which is uncaused, the no-thingness which is as no-thing -- which is the living God from which all things spring forth, yet are drawn toward eternity and unity in the 'Godhead.' The problem with describing the 'Godhead' in these terms is that we cannot name the 'Godhead," for it may only be understood as a "naught," for to distinguish the 'Godhead' is to make the 'Godhead' into a finite 'God.' It is to such a finite 'God' towards which we send our praise in worship. How then, per Eckhart, can be touch the 'Godhead' with our faith? Eckhart answers: "Because he has only God and thinks only God and everything is nothing but God to him. He discloses God in avery act, in every place..."

It was from out of Martin Heidegger's long-time fondness for Eckhart that he developed an interest in the question of Being. Similar to Eckhart, Heidegger's Being is that which cannot be grasped as a thing, but is the no-thingness from which all beings spring forth. One can also find in Eckhart similarities to Taoism. Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching also writes that "the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao." The Tao is that which exists before all distinctions have been made -- before beings have become severed from their eternal unity by our naming of them.

Eckhart's contemplation of God also bears great similarity to the phenomenological method. He writes:

"...a man should shine with the divine Presence without having to work at it. He should get the essence out of things and let the things themselves alone. That requires at first attentiveness and exact impressions, as with the student and his art. So one must be permeated with the divine Presence, informed with the form of beloved God who is within him, so that he may radiate that Presence without working at it."

Of course, Eckhart's method of letting "the things themselves alone" bears great similarity to the Husserlian method of "bracketing," by which the natural attitude is set aside, so that one may attend to phenomena as they show themselves. In Heidegger's terminology, the phenomenological method is described as "letting the things show themselves from themselves in the very way in which they show themselves from themselves." To me, this again bears great similarity to the Taoist conception of Wu Wei, or "non-action," by which one effortlessly allows that which is natural to takes its course. Using an analogy, the Taoist plays the part of the tree which bends, rather than the role of the strong, rigid tree. (((Flexible mind - Dogen))) The rigid tree is torn from its roots in the storm, which the tree that bends yields to the mighty winds, thus surviving the ordeal intact. In this sense, the Taoist 'method' is a matter of letting things be. Regarding Eastern though, Eckhart's Godhead also has striking similarities to the concept of Sunyata, or "nothingness."

Eckhart writes:

"So I say that the aristocrat is one who derives his being, his life, and his happiness from God alone, with God and in God and not at all from his knowledge, perception, or love of God, or any such thing....This much is certain: when a man is happy, happy to the core and root of beatitude, he is no longer conscious of himself or anything else. He is conscious only of God...(((Or, may I suggest true "Life (energy)" also…))))To be conscious of knowing God is to know about God and ((True)))self. As I have just been explaining, the agent of the soul which enables one to see is one thing and the agent by which one knows that he sees is another."

Here Eckhart foreshadows the phenomenological understanding (i.e. Merleau-Ponty) that our lived world is lived in a pre-reflective manner (what Husserl called the "natural attitude). And this pre-reflective or implicit understanding is different from the "knowing" which is reflective understanding. For Eckhart, these two modes of engagement with the world are mutually exclusive.

Further, Eckhart has a profound understanding of the human being as a being-in-the-world. Faith cannot be something which points toward something other than the world. The human being, after all, lives, and he can know nothing other than life as a being-in-the-world -- or, as Merleau-Ponty would say, that finite horizon in which I find myself as I move through the world. (((This is the same as Dogen's fish and bird analogy!!)))Eckhart's faith is not the faith which Nietzsche denounces. Eckhart does not urge the faithful to be life-denying nor to follow the church like pathetic sheep. Eckhart writes:

"For if Life were questioned a thousand years and asked: 'Why live?' and if there were an answer, it could be no more than this: 'I live only to live!' ((((YES, YES, YES……Means and end are the same!!!!! Absolute affirmation!!!!!)))) And that is because Life is its own reason for being, springs from its own Source, and goes on and on, without ever asking why - just because it is life. Thus, if you ask a genuine person, that is, one who acts (uncalculatingly) from his heart: 'Why are you doing that?' - he will reply in the only possible way: 'I do it because I do it!'"

Eckhart, like Kierkegaard would assert centuries later, distrusted the artifice of ritual and church dogma (thus, his charge of heresy). He writes:

"To seek God by rituals is to get the ritual and lose God in the process, for he hides behind it. On the other hand, to seek God without artifice, is to take him as he is, and so doing, a person 'lives by the Son,' and is the Life itself."

Eckhart's approach to theology is known as negative theology, since it is an attempt to negate what is not the Godhead, since such ideas are necessary limiting and finite; thus, Eckhart asserts that "for God's sake," we must "take leave of God." Eckhart's mysticism, in this sense, is again similar, though not identical with Heidegger's ontological phenomenology. Of this mystical element in Heidegger, Zimmerman writes that Heidegger's concept of "inauthenticity is an intensification of everyday egoism; authenticity is a dimunition of it." More centrally, however, is the similarity of Heidegger's 'ontological difference" between Being and beings: "Being is not the product of thinking; it is more likely that essential thinking is an event (Ereignis) of Being."

While the similarities and differences between Eckhart's negative theology and ontological phenomenology are still very much under debate, it is clear that Eckhart's mysticism is, without a doubt, a valuable contribution to contemporary thinking. (((Well…..I wonder if we can call this as "thinking"!!!! It is the eye of Eckhart, the wisdom, love,…life itself as it is!!!!!)))

******From here below are from Deb's site. I am not certain about these categorization is a good way. (Headings are made by Deb, I believe.) But, here they are.*****

Uncreated

If I say that "God is good", this is not true. I am good, but God is not good! In fact, I would rather say that I am better than God, for what is good can become better and what can become better can become the best! Now God is not good, and so he cannot become better. Since he cannot become better, he cannot become the best. These three are far from God: "good", "better", "best", for he is wholly transcendent. If I say again that "God is wise", then this too is not true. I am wiser than he is! Or if I say that "God exists", this is also not true. He is being beyond being: he is a nothingness beyond being. Therefore St. Augustine says: "The finest thing that we can say of God is to be silent concerning him from the wisdom of inner riches." Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God. If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance... (pp. 236-7)

Understanding the nature of desire

...God is in himself so exalted that he is beyond the reach of either knowledge or desire. Desire extends further than anything that can be grasped by knowledge. It is wider than the whole of the heavens, than all angels, even though everything that lives on earth is contained in the spark of a single angel. Desire is wide, immeasurably so. But nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want, is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness, and there God shines.
(p. 185)

Becoming unattached

We should indeed follow our Lord, but not in all ways. Our Lord fasted for forty days, but no one should attempt to imitate him in this. Christ performed many works, whereby he intended that we should follow him in the spiritual rather than physical sense ... You should follow (his fasting) by considering what you are most inclined or ready to do, and then you should give yourself up in that, while observing yourself closely. It is often better for you to go freely without that than to deny yourself all food. And sometimes it is more difficult for you to refrain from uttering one word than it is to refrain from speaking altogether. Sometimes it is more difficult for us to endure a single word of insult, which is insignificant in itself, than a heavy blow for which we have prepared ourselves, and it is far more difficult to be solitary in a crowd than it is in a desert, and it is often more difficult to give up a small thing than a big one, or to perform a small work rather than one which we regard as major. Thus we can easily follow our Lord (even though we are weak). (p. 30)

... we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this ever been right, however successful we may have been. (p. 40)

In return for stripping myself of myself for his sake, God will be wholly my own possession with all that he is and can do, as much mine as his, no more and no less. He will belong to me a thousand times more than anything ever belonged to anyone which they keep in their chest, or than he was ever his own possession. Nothing was ever my own as much as God will be mine, together with all that he is and all that he can do. (p. 48)

People think that they have more when they have both things and God than when they have God without things. But this is wrong, for having all things as well as God is nothing other than having God alone. (p. 125)

Now there are certain people who turn from things out of love, but who still have great regard for what they have left. But those who understand in truth that even when they have given themselves up and have abandoned all things, this is still absolutely nothing -- those who live in this way, truly possess all things. (p. 186)

That person who has detached themselves from everything and who is detached, never glancing even for a moment at what they have given up, who remains steadfast, unmoved in themselves and immutable -- such a person alone has truly attained detachment. (pp. 170-180)

Love/Forgetting about preferences

If you love yourself, then you love everyone as much as yourself. But as long as there is anyone whom you do not love as much as yourself, then you have never properly loved yourself -- unless you love everyone as yourself, loving all in one person, in someone who is both human and divine. Such a person, who loves themselves and everyone as much as themselves, is doing the right thing. Now some people say: I love my friend, who is a source of good things in my life, more than I do someone else. This is not right; it is imperfect. But we must accept it, just as some people cross the sea with a slack wind and still reach the other side. It is the same with those who love one person more than another, although this is natural. But if I loved him or her as much as I love myself, I would be just as happy that whatever happens to them, whether joy or pain, death or life, should happen instead to me, and this would be true friendship.
(p. 176)

Not working for personal gain

(God) 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. They for whom God is not enough are greedy. The reward for all your works should be that they are known to God and that you seek God in them. Let this alwyas be enough for you. The more purely and simply you seek him, the more effectively all your works will atone for your sins. (p. 27)

When we find ourselves under pressure or constraint, it will be apparent that we are more worked than working, and so that we may learn to enter into a relationship of cooperation with our God. It is not that we should abandon, neglect or deny our inner self, but we should learn to work precisely in it, with in and from it in such a way that interiority turns into effective action and effective action leads back to interiority and we become used to acting without any compulsion. For we should concentrate on this inner prompting, and act from it, whether through reading or prayer or -- if it is fitting -- some form of external activity. Though if the external activity destroys the internal one, we should give priority to the latter. But if both are united as one, then that is best for cooperating with God. (p. 45)

In so far as it is something external that prompts you to act, to that extent your works are dead, and even if it is God who prompts you to act from outside, then such works too are dead. If your works are to be living works, then God must spur you to action from within, from your innermost part, if they really are to be alive. For that is where you own life is, and that is the sole place where you are truly alive. (p. 146)

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 with 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. Not only will you spoil your good works, but you will also commit sins, for your will be behaving like a gardener who is supposed to plant a garden, but who pulls out all the trees instead and then demands his wages. That is how you will spoil your good works. And so, if you wish to live and wish your works to live too, then you must be dead to all things and be reduced to nothing. It is a property of creatures to make one thing from another, but it is a property of God to make something from nothing. And so if God is to make something of you or in you, then you must first yourself become nothingness. Enter your own inner ground therefore and act from there, and all your works shall be living works. That is why 'the wise man' says that 'the just person lives in eternity' since it is because they are just that such a person acts, and all their works are living works. (p. 145)

Redirecting your attention

Make every effort then to let God be great and to ensure that all your good intentions and endeavors are directed to him in all that you do and in all that you refrain from doing. Truly, the more you do this, the better your works will be, whatever they are. ... Indeed, if you trod on a stone while in this state of mind, it would be a more godly act than if you were to receive the body of our Lord (during the Eucharist) while being concerned only for yourself and having a less detached attitude of mind. (p. 8)

Being devoted

For however devoted you are to (God), you may be sure that he is immeasurably more devoted to you... (p. 25)

Many people think that they are achieving great things in external works such as fasting, going barefoot and other such practices which are called penances. But true penance, and the best kind of penance, is that whereby we can improve ourselves greatly and in the highest measure, and this consists in turning entirely away from all that is not God, or of God in ourselves and in all creatures, and in turning fully and completely towards our beloved God in an unshakeable love so that our devotions and desire for him become great. (p. 26)

God's Work/Grace

... there is one work which is right and proper for us to do, and that is the eradication of self. But however great this eradication and reduction of self may be, it remains insufficient if God does not complete it in us. For our humility is only perfect when God humbles us through ourselves. Only then are they and the virture pefected, and not before. (p. 46)

If I were good and holy enough to be elevated among the saints, then the people would discuss and question whether this was by grace or nature and would be troubled about it. But this would be wrong of them. Let God work in you, acknowledge that it is his work, and do not be concerned as to whether he achieves this by means of nature or beyond nature. Both nature and grace are his. What is it to you which means he best uses or what he performs in you or in someone else? He should work how and where and in what manner it suits him to do so. (p. 51)

There are some who say that they do not have (God's) grace. To these I reply: "I am sorry. But do you ask for it?" -- "No." "Then I regret that even more." Even if we cannot have grace, we can desire it. If we cannot desire it, then we can at least desire to have a desire for it. (p. 118)

Dying and being reborn

But the soul must abandon her own being. This is where the death that is spiritual begins. If the soul is to undergo this death, then she must take leave of herself and all things, holding herself and all things to be as insignificant as they were before they existed ... I do not mean that the being of the soul falls into nothingness as she was before she was created, rather we should understand this cessation to be the eradication of possessing and having. (p. 244) (((meaning our ego…identity should be gone, and to be replaced by God)))

That person who is thus rooted in God's love must be dead to themselves and to all created things so that they are no more concerned with themselves than they are with someone who is over a thousand miles away. Such a person remains in likeness and in unity and is always the same... This person must have abandoned themselves and the whole world ... Whoever entirely renounces themselves even for a moment would be given all things. (p. 179)

The light

It is the peculiar characteristic of this birth that it always brings new light. It constantly introduces a strong light into the soul since it is the nature of goodness to pour itself forth wherever it may be. In this birth God pours himself into the soul with light so much that the light gathers in the being and ground of the soul and spills over into the faculties and the outer self. This happened to Paul too when God bathed him in his light as he journeyed, and spoke to him. A likeness of the light in the ground of the soul flows over into the body, which is then filled with radiance. But sinners can receive nothing of this, nor are they worthy to do so, since they are filled with sin and evil, which are called "darkness". ((((Their conditioned minds are taking over.)))))Therefore it is said: "The darkness shall neither receive nor comprehend the light" (cf. John 1:5). The problem is that the paths which this light should take are blocked with falsehood and darkness. After all, light and darkness cannot coexist any more than God and creatures can. If God is to enter, then the creatures must leave. (p. 216)

Experiencing union

It is the nature of the Holy Spirit that I should be consumed in him, dissolved in him, and transformed wholly into love. Whoever is in love and is wholly love, feels that God loves nobody other than themselves, and they know of no one who loves or indeed of anyone but themselves. (p. 148)

God does not enter those who are freed from all otherness and all createdness: rather he already exits in an essential manner within them. (p. 171)

You should know (God) without image, unmediated and without likeness. But if I am to know God without mediation in such a way, then "I" must become "he", and "he" must become "I". More precisely I say: God must become me and I must become God, so entirely one that "he" and this "I" become one "is" and act in this "isness" as one, for this "he" and this "I", that is God and the soul, are very fruitful. (p. 238) (((Wow!!! This is the same as as-it-isness, and my thought on "It is as it is." Or Hui Neng's "there is no good or bad and see the original self." NO wonder, Daisetz wrote highly of Eckhart!))))

If every medium were removed between myself and a wall, then I would be at the wall but not in it. But this is not the case with spiritual things, for with them one thing is always in another. That which receives is the same as that which is received, for it receives nothing other than itself. This is difficult. Whoever understand it has been preached to enough. (p. 192)

((( I liked the last line!)))

©1999 by Deb Platt