While Eckhert is a Christian theologian I want to draw attention to the similarity of what he has written here to Zen or Buddhist writings. I will take excerpts from this sermon, typed in black, and note my comments in red. Let’s begin by reading “kingdom of heaven” as “enlightenment,” Nirvana, or the kingdom of the real-Self, as you may choose. (Italics and bold type in most cases are mine.) Let's begin with this familiar Christian statement:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mathew 5:3)
Meister Eckhert begins, “Certain people have asked me what poverty is in itself, and what a poor man is.….This is how we will answer…..a poor man is one who wants nothing and knows nothing and has nothing.”
This sounds like Suzuki’s, Beginners Mind. Let's not forget that the "poor in spirit" in the Christian sense is blessed because that poverty of spirit allows the person to enter the kingdom of heaven. We might say that this is, at the very least a parallel if not identical with, what is pointed to when the Zen master directs his student to "become one with wanting, knowing, and having nothing," or the absence of judgment in equanimity; No-mind?
Meister Eckhert continues, “We will now speak about these three points, and I beg you, for the love of God, to understand this truth if you can: but if you can’t understand it, don’t worry, because the truth I am going to speak about is such that only a few good people will understand it.”
This sounds eerily similar to the idea that only an enlightened mind can truly comprehend the words (Koans, aphorisms, or even actions) of the one who speaks from an enlightened awareness. And as well, why the Buddha spoke to each man according to his ability to understand.
“What is a poor man who wants nothing? I would answer in this way: As long as a man still has it as his (W)ill to want to do God’s will, he doesn’t have the poverty we are talking about; for this man has (a) will with which he wants to satisfy God’s will, and that is not true poverty. For if a man is to be truly poor, he must be as empty of his created will as he was when he didn’t exist.
Is this not what is pointed to as “the true nature of mind?” As taught by Hui-Hai in the 8th Century, “Mind….is utterly serene. This is the form of our original mind…” Excerpted from The Enlightened Mind, (pg.57) by Stephen Mitchell.
“For…as long as you have the will to do God’s will, and the desire for eternity and for God, you are not truly poor. For only he is a poor man who wants nothing and desires nothing.”
Here, it would seem, we can see a connection between a lack of poverty in Eckhert’s terms, and grasping, and the ego or self (will) that clutches after all that is of this material world – wealth, fame, happiness, and life itself.
And in the last sentence we can hear the master’s admonition to “let go” because the more we try to attain enlightenment the further we are from it. The more we try to achieve the poverty that will liberate us - give us enlightenment or the kingdom of heaven - the more that desire for it and the resultant reaching after it, confounds our acquisition of it.
“Therefore let us pray to God that we may be empty of “God,” and that we may grasp the truth….(wherein) the highest angels and the fly and the soul are equal…..
Here we are likely to find ourselves in familiar territory when, in these words we hear the echo of interconnectedness, oneness, and Thich Nhat Hanh's "inter-being."….“where I (am) pure being and wanted what I was and was what I wanted."
What do we hear in the statement, “I want what I am and I am what I want?” Equanimity? Balance? Emptiness? Perfection in being with what-is, as-it-is, perhaps? Eckhert seems to be suggesting that real poverty, Pure Being, or Pure Mind is being one with each moment without the discriminations that create the world of form, and are the source of our dissatisfaction or suffering to which the Buddha awakened.
“So we say: if a man is to be poor in will, he must want and desire as little as he wanted and desired when he didn’t exist.”
His "face before his mother and father were born" perhaps; or to desire as little as he wanted and desired before those pesky discriminations arose to which the everyday mind is heir.
“And this is the kind of poverty the man has, who wants nothing.”
I can hear the master telling his pupil that the only way to achieve enlightenment is to not want/grasp after it; letting go as well, of wanting not to want.
“Next, a poor man is one who knows nothing. A man who is to have this poverty should live in such a way that he doesn’t even know that he isn’t living for himself or for the truth or for God: even more; he should be so empty of all knowing that he doesn’t know or understand that he doesn’t know or understand or feel that God lives in him: still more: he should be empty of all the understanding that live in him.”
If we read “knowing” as thinking, intellectualization, ideation, in this piece - it sounds much like the kind of instruction given by all Buddhist teachers and is spoken to by Hui-Hai (in the same speech referenced above) when he talked about a “mind that remains in the state of non-dwelling.”
“Therefore we say that a man should be as empty of his own knowing as he was when he didn’t exist, and he should let God (Life) act as he (it) wants, and he should be empty.” “….a man should be so free and empty that he neither knows nor understands that God is acting in him (no-self, an aspect of enlightened mind). This is how a man can possess poverty (beginners mind).
“The masters say that God is a being and an intelligent being and understands all things. But we say: God is neither a being nor intelligent, nor does he understand this or that. Thus God is empty of all things, and thus he is all things.”
In the words of Charlotte (Joko) Beck, “when nothing is special everything is special.”
"Whoever is to be poor in spirit must be poor of all his own knowing, so that he knows nothing of God or of creatures or of himself. Thus it is necessary that a man desire to be unable to know and understand anything of the works of God. This is how a man can be poor of his own knowing."
Is it any wonder that he was considered a heretic by Pope John XXII? He is suggesting that our “knowing” God is restricted to “each man’s own” knowing, and in terms of Zen is at best an illusion; a finger, born of our want, and pointing to the moon.
“Third, a poor man is one who has nothing……one who doesn’t even want to do God’s will, but lives in such a way that he is as empty both of his own will and of God’s will as he was when he didn’t exist.”
In this first sentence, the word want strikes me as the “desire” or “grasping after” (wanting) pointed to the second Noble Truth.
“Next we said that a poor man is one who knows nothing even of God’s activity in him. When he is empty of all things, that is the purest poverty. But the third kind of poverty…..is the most intimate kind: this is when a man has nothing. For if he finds a man as poor as this, then God alone acts - and the man allows God to act in him, and God is his own place of activity, because God is acting in himself."
Here we can hear that the Buddha is in each of us if we were but able to remove the hindrances.
“It is here in this poverty that a man attains the eternal essence which he once was and which he now is and which he will forever remain.”
It is here in this poverty of self where the Buddha in each of us can be made manifest, just as each of us has always been and will for ever be.
“So we say that a man should be so poor that he neither is nor has in himself any place where God can act. Where a man keeps a place in himself, he keeps distinctions. Therefore I ask God to make me empty of God…."
Here he speaks in a Christian way about what Buddhism says we must do in order to reach enlightenment and all that this entails. He is suggesting that the man who is truly poor is poor at the spiritual level and is above distinctions that separate him from his true essence….God, Buddha, Oneness – as you wish.
“I am my own cause according to my being….and therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn-ness I can never die. According to my unborn-ness, I have eternally existed and am now and will eternally remain…"
And to offer again the words of Hui-Hai, “Mind …it was never born and can never die…” And for those interested in the notion of Unborn one might read Dogen and Bankei.
“…..In my birth all things were born, and I was cause of myself and of all things; and if I had willed it, I would not exist nor would anything exist. I am the cause that God is “God;” if I didn’t exist, God would not be “God.”
Or in the words of the Buddha “I alone am the World Honored One,” or
“He who is in the Sun and in the Fire and in the Heart of man is One. He who knows this is one with the One.” – Hindu.
Or perhaps we could look to Mencius who said “The way is one and only One." or
Dogen when he wrote “One fist is the entire universe.”
And let’s not slight Huang Po who is credited with saying, “There exists just the One Mind.”
Or Christ who, the Bible tells us, said “I and the Father are One.”
Men of different times and perspectives seem to have experienced something which, in the words of Mr. Fields, meets his definition of Zen, i.e. “That final psychic fact that takes place when religious consciousness is heightened to extremity.”
“When I flowed out of God (born into the material world), all things said: God exists…..by this (consciousness) I understand that I am a creature. When I break through and return where I am empty of my own will and of God’s will and of all his works and of God himself (our idea of God) then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature (Emptiness, Onenness)…..I am what I was and what I will remain now and forever (Pure Mind)…..Then I am what I was, and then I neither increase nor decrease, for I am an immoveable cause that moves all things.” (“I alone am the World Honored One.") Regarding this last sentence one should also reflect on the earlier words from Hui-Hai regarding Mind.
“Whoever doesn’t understand this sermon shouldn’t trouble his heart about it. For as long as a man isn’t like this truth he will not understand this sermon…May God help us live in such a way that we experience it eternally."
And here it seems to me to be an echo of the idea that one cannot comprehend the words of one who is enlightened unless he too has had his third eye opened or his no-thought has achieved a turning on the seat of consciousness.
And in conclusion I offer this quote from I am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
“When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, expect nothing then the Supreme State will come to you un-invited and unexpected.”
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