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Losing the Self: Detachment in Meister Eckhart and Its Significance for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

Losing the Self: Detachment in Meister Eckhart and Its Significance for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY Charlotte Radler Loyola Marymount University The purpose of this article is to probe Meister Eckhart's concepts of self--or, rather, no-self--detachment, and indistinct union, and their positive implications for Buddhist-Christian dialogue. I will examine potential affinities between Eckhart and Buddhist thought with the modest hope of identifying areas in Eckhart's mysticism that may present themselves as particularly ripe for Buddhist-Christian conversations. On April 15, 1329, Pope John XXII issued the bull "In agro dominico" that condemned tenets of Meister Eckhart's teaching. Pope John XXII, who had also dealt harshly with the spiritual Franciscans, was truly concerned about Eckhart's seductive impact on the uneducated in the pews.1 Eckhart's claim that every human's true identity, attainable through detachment, is divine must have created dreams in some of an unmediated experience of and union with the divine, and nightmares in others of the bypassing of the Church's structures, sacraments, and hierarchies. Eckhart, a University of Paris teacher and a preacher, bases his mysticism in part on Proclus and Dionysius the Areopagite. Similarly to Proclus, Eckhart proposes that the soul's circular journey runs from the nothingness of the God beyond God, the God beyond the Trinity, into the somethingness of the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Buddhist-Christian Studies University of Hawai'I Press

Losing the Self: Detachment in Meister Eckhart and Its Significance for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

Radler, Charlotte
Buddhist-Christian Studies , Volume 26 (1) – Nov 6, 2006
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University of Hawai'I Press
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Copyright © 2006 The University of Hawai'i Press.
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1527-9472
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Abstract

COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY Charlotte Radler Loyola Marymount University The purpose of this article is to probe Meister Eckhart's concepts of self--or, rather, no-self--detachment, and indistinct union, and their positive implications for Buddhist-Christian dialogue. I will examine potential affinities between Eckhart and Buddhist thought with the modest hope of identifying areas in Eckhart's mysticism that may present themselves as particularly ripe for Buddhist-Christian conversations. On April 15, 1329, Pope John XXII issued the bull "In agro dominico" that condemned tenets of Meister Eckhart's teaching. Pope John XXII, who had also dealt harshly with the spiritual Franciscans, was truly concerned about Eckhart's seductive impact on the uneducated in the pews.1 Eckhart's claim that every human's true identity, attainable through detachment, is divine must have created dreams in some of an unmediated experience of and union with the divine, and nightmares in others of the bypassing of the Church's structures, sacraments, and hierarchies. Eckhart, a University of Paris teacher and a preacher, bases his mysticism in part on Proclus and Dionysius the Areopagite. Similarly to Proclus, Eckhart proposes that the soul's circular journey runs from the nothingness of the God beyond God, the God beyond the Trinity, into the somethingness of the

Journal

Buddhist-Christian Studies – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Nov 6, 2006

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