The Loss of the Origin in Soto Zen and in Meister Eckhart

Reiner Schürmann

The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, Volume 42, Number 2, April

1978, pp. 281-312 (Article)

Published by The Catholic University of America Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tho.1978.0029

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/639363/summary

Access provided by SUNY @ Buffalo (6 Aug 2018 10:38 GMT)

 THE LOSS OF THE ORIGIN IN SOTO ZEN AND
IN MEISTER ECKHART

S EVERAL JAPANESE AUTHORS who have come into

contact with the Western tradition have underlined
similarities between key concepts in Zen Buddhism and in
Meister Eckhart.1 Sometimes their statements, for instance
Suzuki's, betray a rather superficial acquaintance with the
schools of thought that intersectinEckhart'shighly syncretistic
teachings. Nevertheless I trust that there are resemblances;
that they have to be located very deeply, on an experiential
level; indeed that they touch upon the core of Eckhart's mys-
ticism and the core of Zen enlightenment. Such point-by-point
comparisons as are sometimes undertaken do not lead very far
here. Rather, some hypothesis of interpretation is needed for
a re-seizure, at one's own risk, of the matter itself, that is, of
the experience to which both Zen and Eckhart testify. Let
me call this experience the way of releasement. What I mean
by this term will hopefully be clear in the end, although a full
appropriation is possible only from a personal standpoint; the
point where the interpreter stands in his own quest. The true
realm of encounter between· such foreign traditions as a £ar-
Eastern Buddhist sect of the twelfth century and our Medieval
German late Scholastic is after all my own existence. " The
reason why the Buddha so frequently refused to answer meta-
physical problems," writes Suzuki, " was partly due to his con-
viction that the ultimate truth was to be realized in oneself
through one's own effort." 2 And in Meister Eckhart: "He who
1 See the works by H. Dumoulin, H.-M. Enomiya, W. Heinrich, Dom Le Saux,

T. Merton, M. Nambara, K. Nishitani, R. Otto, H. W. Schomerus, D. T. Suzuki,

S. Ueda. See also my Meist(!ll' Eckhart, Mystic and Philosopher, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1978, pp. 221-226. The four elements of Eckhart's
teaching developed in the present article are exposed more in detail; ibid. pp. 84-121.
2 D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series. Grove Press: New York
1961, p. 61.
281
 REINER SCHURMANN

wants to understand (my teaching of detachment) has to be

himself perfectly detached" (DW II, p. 109, 1) .3 "Now I beg
you to be exactly as poor as I have said, so that you may under-
stand my instruction, for if you do not resemble the truth we
are talking about you will never be able to follow me " (DW
II, p. 487, 5 f.) . "Do not worry if you do not understand what I
say; indeed, so long as a man does not resemble that truth he
will remain unable to grasp my speech" (DW II, p. 506, 1 f.).
Thus there is no other way of responsibly dealing with the con-
vergence noticed by these Japanese authors than to somehow
involve oneself in the way of releasement.
The impossibility of escaping one's own lived experience is
even more patent in Soto Zen. As is well known, the two major
Buddhist sects in Japan are Rinzai and Soto. Rinzai stresses
abrupt means to obtain awakening, such as blows delivered by
the master, shouts, question-and-answer sessions which a ra-
tionalist would qualify as absurd, and koans. Still Rinzai has
produced an abundant literature, which is not the case with
Soto. Indeed Soto simply follows one method, that of "just
sitting" quietly in a rigorous posture called zazen. In Japanese
za means to sit and zen means meditation. The seated medita-
tion is the beginning, the end, and the essence of Soto, thus
enforcing even more the anti-intellectualist slant that charac-
terizes Zen in general. Rinzai and Soto correspond to two dif-
ferent intellectual temperaments, one relying on the concentra-
tion of the mind, the other on an intensely felt psychosomatic
unity. A Rinzai master may eventually give metaphysical in-
structions, whereas a Soto master will hardly speak of anything
more than the correct way to sit. He will show no interest for
finding solutions, and he will be bored with speculations about
nothingness. Here are some lines from a sermon entitled 'Zazen'
by Master Meiho (rn77-1S50):
• The abbreviation " DW " refers to Meister Eckhart, Die Deutschen und
lateinischen W erke. Die deutschen W erka, Stuttgart 1936 fl'. The roman numerals
refer to the volume; they are followed by page and line numbers. " LW " refers
to Die lateinischen Werke, and "Pf~· to F. Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker des 14.
Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1857.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART ~88

Zen-sitting is the way of perfect tranquility: inwardly not a

shadow of perception, outwardly not a shade of difference between
phenomena. Identified with yourself you no longer think, nor do
you seek enlightenment of the mind or disburdenment of illusions.
You are a flying bird with no mind to twitter, a mountain uncon-
scious of the others rising around it. Zen-sitting has nothing to do
with the doctrine of teaching, practice and elucidation. You do
not bother with sutras or ideas. The superior student is neither
attached to enlightenment nor to illusion. Taking things as they
come, he sits in the proper manner, making no idle distinctions ....
All (teachings) are comprised in Zen-sitting and emerge from it.
Even a moment of sitting will enable you to free yourself from life
and death.4
As the master-student relationship is the only way to learn Zen,
an implicit reference is made throughout this paper to a period
of time that I spent with Master Deshimaru from Kyoto, who
also lives part of the time in France.
The synthetic concept that I wish to develop as standing at
the core both of the experience in zazen and of Eckhart's mys-
ticism is the loss of the origin. In a first approach, let me define
this concept as the retreat of a metaphysical First, or of an
arche. By that I designate an ultimate point of reference, for
instance Substance in Aristotle, the Christian God in Scholas-
ticism, the Mind in Hegel, etc. I shall thus speak of the anarchic
essence of Zen and Eckhartian mysticism. The term ' anarchy '
has to be understood literally as the absence of a beginning, of
an origin in the sense of a first cause. It must also be under-
stood as negating the complement of arche, namely telos. I
claim that the logic of releasement as it is lived in zazen and by
Eckhart leads to the destruction of origin and goal not only in
the understanding of the world but even in human action. At
this point it may suffice, in order to substantiate my a priori,
to remind you of Eckhart's frequent injunction to "live without
why" (DWI, p. 90, U et al.) , that is, without purpose. "Those
who seek something with their action, those who act for a why,
are bondsmen and hirelings" (DW II, p. ~58, 4 f .) . "If you

'L. Stryk, ed., World of Buddha, A Read&, Doubleday Anchor: New York
1969, p. 868 f.
~84 REINER SCHURMANN

ask a genuine man who acts out of his own ground: ' Why are
you doing what you do?' he will reply, if his answer is as it
should be: 'I do it because I do it'" (DWI, p. 9~, 3 f.) . Like-
wise, a Zen master would simply laugh at questions concerning
the beginning and the end of things, the whence and where-
fore--for instance of good and evil. Meiho, in the zazen-sermon
just quoted, also states: " You must guard yourself against the
easy conceptions of good and evil." He does not mean easy
conceptions as opposed to difficult conceptions, but that good
and evil are in and of themselves easy conceptions. To make
the anarchic intention of his sermon perfectly clear he con-
tinues: you should " ask who is above either," that is, above
good and evil. A human act here is no longer understood out
of its origin and its goal, but it is a genuine act precisely in so
far only as it lacks both! The principle of anarchy may even
have political consequences, not the ones recommended by
Bakunin and Proudhon, but perhaps in the sense of a replace-
ment of the metaphor of the body in the understanding of the
city by the metaphor of play. The metaphor of the body and
its members is metaphysical; it refers the different organs in
man to the chief organ, the head, and thus allows for an efficaci-
ous exercise of authority, as the Roman consul Menenius Agrip-
pa explained to the slaves entrenched on the Aventine Hill.
The metaphor of play introduces fluidity into institutions as
it deprives corporatisms and established hierarchies of· their
arche. If the way of releasement is anarchic in its essence then
the experience of zazen as well as of Eckhartian itinerancy is
anti-metaphysical. Indeed metaphysics requires a principium,
a ' principle ' to which everything else is referred, and a political
philosophy derived from metaphysics requires a princeps, a
'prince' or some other supreme authority. Arche and telos
are two modes in which the metaphysical First-Plato's ' Good,'
the neo-Platonic 'One' or Scholastic' Being itself '-appears. I
call the loss of the origin the progressive disappearance of this
metaphysical First on the path of releasement which is the sole
design in Zen-sitting and in Eckhart's preaching. 'Release-
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 285
ment ' is the translation of the Middle High German gelazen-
heit, or the modern Gelassenheit. Another way to translate this
key concept (derived from ' laxare,' French ' laisser ') would be
' letting-be.' I should now like to suggest four steps of such
progression towards anarchy. They are simply taken from a
programmatic declaration by Meister Eckhart himself:
Whenever I preach I usually speak of detachment and that man
must become bereft of himself and of all things; secondly that one
should be remodeled into the image of the simple good which is
God; thirdly that one should remember the great nobility which
God has deposited in the mind in order for man to reach God
through it; fourthly of the purity of the divine nature (DW II, p.
528, 5 f.).

I. Detachment
The first of the four steps towards ·attainment of release is
detachment, Abgeschiedenheit. It so happens that these four
steps of destruction of the origin can very easily be traced in
the development of Zen-sitting. I shall first show how detach-
ment is the prerequisite for the seated meditation.
In Zen-sitting everything begins with a violent negation. The
masters love to speak of a duel unto death. Either the enemy
dies, they say, or I die. This moment of violence to oneself is
the beginning of the sitting experience. Zazen is a battle-posture
for "ego-killing." Quite as in fencing it is the posture that
makes you die or live. The position of the chin, the spine, the
thumbs, the pelvis: this is the material of which Soto ' mys-
ticism,' if that word applies, is made. Plus endurance. It is evi-
dent that zazen originated in the warrior class, the samurai.
As in the art of archery the starting posture must be taken with
" serene fervor" and deadly seriousness. Again, quite as in
fencing, the masters say, a moment of distraction in zazen may
bring death: in fencing because of the sword, in zazen because
without satori I am a dead man.
This violent negation is different from an ascetic rejection
of the world or of one's desires. Detachment is not more ascetic
than any other momentary effort of concentration. It is the
~86 REINER SCHURMANN

exertion of totally liberating the mind from its images and pre-
occupations. This is achieved through the perfect seated pos-
ture. Not only mental representations have to be chased, or
let pass as clouds, but also the very wish for satori, even the
very thought of death or of life. The sole object of concentra-
tion is the posture. Intellectuals definitely have difficulty with
zazen. Deshimaru loved to tell how during the Second World
War he prevented a Japanese ship loaded with gunpowder
from exploding simply by sitting on top of the dynamite for
forty-eight hours in zazen posture with extreme concentration.
Detachment here means voluntary emptiness: at the outset
of zazen one has to realize the " twentyfold void," that is, the
absence of all preoccupations except for the ferocious deter-
mination to sit correctly. If one practices zazen for the sake of
whatsoever, be it health or enlightenment, it will produce no
effect. But medical results and satori may ensue. There are
long lists of negations in this tradition: we have to rid our-
selves from the things within, any kind of thought, and the
things without, any objective quality; we have to rid ourselves
even from the quest for emptiness. The will must will not to
will. Texts on this matter abound, but I am content here with
stating what happens in the seated meditation. There is first
of all a violent negation of any object of volition and of con-
ception.
If we now pass to Meister Eckhart we find the same type of
violent negation at the beginning of the path of releasement. The
word itself that Eckhart uses for detachment expresses the idea
of riddance: abegescheidenheit, in modern German Abgeschie-
denheit, is formed from the prefix ab- which designates a separa-
tion (abetuon: to rid oneself of something; abekere: turning
away, apostasy) and of the verb scheiden or gescheiden. In its
transitive form, this verb means " to isolate," " to split," " to
separate," and in its intransitive form "to depart," " to die."
The word abegescheidenheit, " detachment " or " renunciation,"
and related verbs of deliverance evoke, in the allusive thought
of Meister Eckhart, a mind that is on the way to dispossessing
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART ~87

itself of all exteriority which might spoil its serenity.5 However,

Eckhart's speculative temperament leads him to reflect on the
ontological condition of such violent negation of all that can be
known or willed. The following lines have in this respect been
often misunderstood:
All creatures are mere nothingness. I do not say that they are
small or anything at all: they are mere nothingness (DW I, p. 69,
8 f.).
What is it that has to be negated at the outset of the way of
releasement? All creatures, Eckhart answers. Why is this so?
Because, being made, they are already nothing. " Creature "
in Eckhart designates a being which incessantly receives itself
from elsewhere; it has received existence, life and intelligence
from another. It does not possess itself, the other is its being;
in itself it is nothing.
What does not possess being is nothingness. But no creature has
being, for its being depends on the presence of God. Were God to
withdraw, for an instant, from all creatures, they would be an-
nihilated (DW I, p. 70, ~ f.).
From the condition of creature, Eckhart concludes that the
created is nothingness. Sometimes he speaks in images: "As
long as the creature is creature, it carries within itself bitterness
and harm, wrong and distress" (DW II, p. ~5, 7f .) . This is a.
metaphorical way of stating the nothingness of creaturehood.
6 Angelus Silesius, physician and poet, who died in 1674, was one of those who

no doubt have best understood the Eckhartian preaching on detachment. In his

Cherubinic Pilgrim he adopts even the vocabulary of the Master. He is, so to
speak, Meister Eckhart's versifier. Abge!lchiedenheit, .Lauterkeit, Eigensckaft,
Bildlosigkeit, Jungfrauschaft-aII the Eckhartian terms are known to him:
Weil Abgeschiedenheit sich niemand macht gemein
So muss sie ohne Sucht und eine Jungfrau sein.
Vollkommne Lauterkeit is bild-, form-, liebelos,
steht aller Eigenschaft wie Gottes Wesen bloss.
Since detachment makes itself familiar to no one I it has to be without desire
and virginal. / Perfect purity has neither figure, nor form, nor love, I it is devoid
of all property, as the being of God.
Angelus Silesius, Der cherubinische Wandersmann (hrsg. von J. Schwabe), Basel
1955, p. 41.
~88 REINER SCHURMANN

A short inquiry into Eckhart's vocabulary of being is necessary

to understand the concept of nothingness as it appears at the
starting point of the way of releasement.
Eckhart uses three groups of words for" being." The word
wesen is the most remarkable because of its semantic broadness.
Generally it is used to translate in a verbal manner the being
of beings which the Scholastics designated by ens commune.
But it covers a much wider extent and overlaps with "essence."
Wesen is the word for the totality of what shows itself, under
the aspect of its appearance. Conversely, unwesene is reserved
by Meister Eckhart for that appearance which, at the same
time, retreats into concealment, that is, into the darkness in
which the mind acts in perfect conjunction with God.
The soul acts in unwesene, and it follows God who acts in unwesene
(DWI, p. 151, 11 f.).
In a certain sense, unwesene could be translated by " nothing-
ness " ; but as it expresses the abolition of the positivity of
being, it points, so to speak, not beneath but beyond being, as
the hyper-on of the Neoplatonists. In the unwesene of the God-
head, the activity of the ground of the soul is identical with the
actuality of God. Unwesene, then, does not apply to creatures.
The opposition between being and nothingness in creatures is
expressed in a different terminology. The Middle-High-German
word for " nothing " is niht. It is composed of the particle of
negation ne- and of iht, " something " or " anything whatso-
ever." "The creature is nothing." What exactly is it that
Eckhart wants to negate in the created? Iht is denied; the crea-
ture is not " a something." Iht designates the existing as such:
the creature endowed with a borrowed being, the entitas of the
ens or the ousia of the on. Iht speaks of a being with regard
to the fact that it is. It denotes that which qualifies thought
to represent to itself a being as a being. Niht is the negation
of the fact of being. The creature in general cannot be repre-
sented as being; its iht resides in God, not in itself. The in-
dividual being is called ihtes iht, " this individual being " or
"this something." Here the terminology is most incisive. The
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART ~89

corresponding negation, nihtes niht is properly translated by

"non-being." It expresses the negation of the individual per-
fection of being. The individual being is not, it does not possess
ihtes iht.
The opposition between iht and niht provides the conceptual
tool with which Meister Eckhart grasps the domain of the
created. "All creatures are ein lUter niht " : this applies to the
created in general. As for nihtes niht, it designates that" nothing-
ness " which is the individual creature. Such a creature is ein
later nihtes niht. In all strictness, the individual creature is
not. Its being is in God. Its being does not properly belong to
itself. This applies to any particular image, to any object or
work, and most of all to man himself in so far as he is created:
all· these inhibit detachment and are nihtes niht, nothing (e.g.
DW I, p. 14, ~ f.) . The voluntary negation at the outset of the
way of releasement must not miss a single being.
The third family of words derives more directly from the verb
" to be." They are the words sin, to be, and isticheit, which is
constructed out of ist, it " is," and designates primarily God's
being. Meister Eckhart sometimes connects it with wesen and
calls God the weseliche isticheit (e.g. DWI, p. 19, 1 f.). Wesen,
too, is then mainly found in the context of divine union. Now
the union is no longer considered apophatically as a veiling
darkness, but cataphatically as an identity in the primordial
being. Isticheit should be translated by" authentic being." Sin
and isticheit have often the same extension and comprehension:
God's being is my being and God's authentic being is my authentic
being (DWI, p. 106, 1 f.).
We now understand better Eckhart's enigmatic statement that
" the creature is mere nothingness " : iht comes to a thing as
God incessantly lavishes being upon his creature. Let God's
prodigality of iht cease for an instant, and the universal presence
of the cosmos will immediately vanish.
All creatures are with God and God grants them their appearance
together with his presence (DWI, p. 106, 1 f.).
290 REINER SCHURMANN

Outside of God there is nothing but only nothingness (DW I, p.

858, 2).
Finally, in some texts "nothing" takes on a moral meaning;
sin is nothing. But by temperament as well as by conviction,
Eckhart is not a moralist. These passages are found in his
scholarly works, in Latin, and are less significant. Even here,
Eckhart proposes a " metaphysics " rather than a morals of sin.
Both in Soto Zen and in Eckhart detachment thus designates
a violent effort upon oneself. That the language of the samurai
class is reminiscent of war and that of the class 0£ theologians
rather of metaphysical abstraction is perhaps not that im-
portant a difference. The profound cleavage that I see at this
first stage 0£ the way of releasement is that Eckhart negates
attachment £or the sake of God: detachment is necessary be-
cause 0£ the mode 0£ the divine presence. This mode is called
a bestowal in fluxu et fieri, constant reception. I am not my
being, but I receive it; what I am as a creature is nothingness.
Here the principle of anarchy, that is, the overcoming of the
representation 0£ a metaphysical supreme being which would
be the beginning and the end of all that there is, is hardly sensi-
ble yet as motivating thought as well as action. But one guesses
already that Eckhart's theocentrism, which distinguishes him
on this first level from Zen, will perhaps collapse under the im-
placable logic 0£ releasement which teaches one to let every-
thing be. The boldness 0£ Eckhart's position appears clearly
when one has understood that the difference between created
and uncreated introduces identity and otherness into man him-
self: identity with God in the ground of the mind, and other-
ness in the faculties or powers 0£ the soul, and in the body. Man
is the locus 0£ union and disunion. In the " ground," man lives
in God and God in him; but in his creaturehood, man is of the
world. The difference between God and not-God is a cleft that
splits man thoroughly. Only out 0£ this cleft can one speak
0£ God, man, and the world. At this point, it should not sur-
prise us any longer that Eckhart actually abolishes the meth-
odological distinction between theology, anthropology and cos-
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART i91
mology. All these three sciences would have to develop the
same opposition between " in-God " and " with-God " which
is entrusted to man alone. He is at the same time the being-
there and the being-elsewhere of the origin; he is among all
beings the one that is alike-unlike the origin. The discovery
of this simultaneous similarity and dissimilarity to the origin is
the result of the fir.st point in Eckhart's programmatic state-
ment mentioned above.
When the Father engendered all creatures, he brought me forth.
I emanated together with all creatures and yet I remain within, in
the Father (DW I, p. 376, 7 f.).
Awakening arises from a philosophical meditation on the being
of creatures: inclining oneself towaxds creatures results in
being commingled with them in nothingness. Detachment is
an urging which demands of man that he " let nothingness be"
(DWI, p. 170, 4) and return towards his origin.

II. Remodeling
The second element of teaching announced by Eckhart is
" that one should be remodeled into the simple good which is
God." This is a step further than detachment. Until now we
have spoken of the radical dissimilarity between the created
and the Creator; now the man engaged on the way of release-
ment discovers a similarity between himself and his origin-
God as arche and telos of his road. Releasement appears as as-
similation. But again, let us first look at the second step in Zen-
sitting.
After the effort of intense negation a remodeling does indeed
take place. The tradition describes this as an assimilation to
Buddha. The remodeling of the personality through sitting oc-
curs in ten stages:
1) Hell. To the beginner Zen-sitting is literally hell; this is the
title some masters give to the sufferings in one'.s knees, legs,
shoulders, spine, etc. The mind is confused, the body feels
thoroughly uncomfortable. One feels contracted, anxious, and
 REINER SCHUHMANN

one counts the minutes left until the end of the session. The
face is twisted, all movements betray embarrassment.
~) Avidity. The masters call the second stage that of the de-
ceased who are still hungry for life but cannot satisfy their
hunger. They are totally conditioned by desire and avidity.
During zazen one is eager to obtain enlightenment. The head
is pulled slightly forwards as if one were to hit the wall before
which the meditation takes place. One is avid for peace, health,
mental tranquility and totally preoccupied by these thoughts.
The mind is all hunger for acquisition.
3) Sensuality. The next step is called bestiality: like an animal
one thinks of eating and drinking, the sexual desire becomes ex-
cessive. At the same time, one is often taken over by torpor
and drowsiness. The mind sags and easily produces auditory
and visual hypnagogic hallucinations. At this stage one sleeps
a lot at night, easily half again as long as usual. These hal-
lucinations may simply consist in a feeling of inner expansion.
This is the moment when people speak of their unity with the
universe, their cosmic soul, their identification with Buddha-
in fact, pure imagination.
4) Battle. This is a state of aggressiveness. One quarrels, tries
to win arguments and to make one's superiority felt. When
one hears the master's stick hit another adept in the dojo one
feels content and thinks: my zazen is better. To receive the
stick at this point is like a humiliation. One has but one de-
sire; to be the best. And one feels irritated when one becomes
aware of one's own irritability, because crankiness does not
fit into the picture of perfection.
5) Concern. Things become simplified, but one's mind is very
much with daily business. The posture is now good and natural.
However it is far from being light, although it is ordinary.
Family matters, job problems and the like create unending
preoccupations. There occurs a hypertrophy of concrete mem-
ory and hence of worries. Details from the past and threats
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 298
from the future weigh down the posture. According to the
Buddhist metaphors, after hell, limbo and animality, this is
properly the human condition.
6) Light. This state is compared to that of angels. The
Sanskrit term that applies here, deva, is from the same Indo-
European root as dies, day, but also deus, god. The idea is that
of radiance. The posture becomes so pleasant that one falls
into narcissism. To practice zazen is pure joy, and many take
these agreeable feelings for satori. But in genuine satori no
extraordinary kind of feeling prevails.
7) Dogmatism. At this stage one feels totally at home in Zen,
not only physically as in the previous moment, but also intel-
lectually. One has the correct answers about rel easement and
dispossession, one understands the meaning of emptiness, and
one is ready to dispense instruction to whoever wants to listen.
One has studied the scriptures and again one feels enlightened.
But this is merely intellectual enlightenment. One lives among
ideas.
8) Immobility. It now seems superfluous to practice zazen with
others. One retreats into solitude and meditates alone for long
periods. The consequence is a physical stiffness and mental
rigidity. One thinks one has outgrown the masters and refuses
to accept their correction. By excessive self-reliance the mind
grows hard. There is no compassion in such a human being.
His personality has become immobile; he does not progress un-
less he opens himself up to others.
9) Compassion. Along the roads in Japan one can see statues
of Bodhisattva: Buddha is not locked up in temples but be-
longs to all, hence the location of these statues in public places.
Likewise at this penultimate state one belongs to all. One has
somehow become :a living Buddha. All attachments are gone.
The posture is perfect. One does not desire enlightenment, yet
one communicates a sense of it. One is able to practice Zen-
sitting at any place, even in the middle of city crowds.
~94 REINER SCHUHMANN

10) Nothingness. One Japanese name for Buddha is' hotoke,'

which means to untie, release, set free, disentangle, divest, lay
bare, become nothing. This is the state of complete awakening.
Whether one sits in the Zen posture or whether one does not
sit makes no difference any longer. I shall briefly refer to this
state again a little later.
It is important to see that these stages do not necessarily fol-
low one after the other. In one single se.ssion one may pass
from :a beginner's state to a much more advanced one. One
may go through several states and then regress again very
quickly. The ideal is, as Master Dogen put it, to keep our hands
open so that all the desert's sand may pass through them; if we
close our hands we shall retain only a few grains of sand. Such
is the goal of the remodeling of the personality in Soto Zen. The
process of assimilation makes one become like Buddha.
Meister Eckhart does not hesitate to say that the process of
assimilation makes us become like God. " One should be re-
modeled into the image of the simple good which is God.'~ A
simile frequently used by him in this regard is that of fire:
when a burning straw is brought close to a tree-trunk, the
wood, at first, refuses to catch fire. The dissimilarity is too
great. But an ember buried in the ashes and smoldering over-
night will not long resist the flame; crackling will soon fill the
fireplace. Likewise man is assimilated to God. The technical
term here is gelfoheit which means both similarity and equa-
nimity.
God's endeavor is to give himself to us entirely. Just as fire seeks
to draw the wood into itself and itself into the wood, it first finds
the wood unlike itself. It takes a little time. Fire begins by
warming it, then heating it, and then it smokes and crackles be-
cause the two are so unlike each other. The hotter the wood be-
comes, the more still and quiet it grows. The more it is likened to
the fire, the more peaceful it is, until it becomes entirely flame.
That the wood be transformed into fire, all dissimilarity must be
chased out of it (DW I, p. 180, 7 f.).
Quite as in Zen, the strategy of releasement leads from dis-
similarity to similarity, and from similarity to union. The com-
 LOSS OF ORIGIN; ZEN AND ECKHART ~95

parison with the fire which, by assimilation, attracts the ig-

nitable to the perfection of the ignited, suggests a slow growth
too: in order for the blaze to absorb the wood, " it takes a little
time." The wood is reborn as the " son " of the blaze, by
gelicheit. When the absorption is completed, the wood will be
the perfect image of the fire:
Nothing is so much alike and unlike at the same time ... as God
and the creature. What is there indeed so unlike and like each
other as these whose unlikeness is their likeness, whose indistinction
is distinction itself? . . . Being distinct by indistinction, they re-
semble by dissimilarity. The more they are unlike, the more they
are alike (LW II, p. 112, 7 f.).

The like and the unlike are resolved by flames and incan-
descences. Assimilation spreads the simplicity of that to which
we are likened.
Gelicheit means more than equality. It gathers two beings
under the same becoming, such as fire and wood in combustion,
while equality is non-dialectical and exhausts itself in com-
parisons. Between the child and the father there is a likeness
based on common ancestry and destiny. Between the father and
his business associate, there is equality-for instance before the
law. Equality refers only to the present. Similarity and as-
similation, on the other hand, point upstream: gelicheit recalls
the .source or the beginning; it also points downstream: it
intimates the assimilation, that is, the goal or end of the trans-
formation. Assimilation is like an exodus; it is properly the
transition from the origin as arche to the origin as telos.
In some sermons, Eckhart expands his theory of assimilation
into a theology of the image of God: " outside of likeness, one
cannot speak of an image " (DWI, ~65, 4 f .) .
An image is not of itself, nor is it for itself. It has its origin in that
of which it is the image. To that it belongs properly with all that
it is. It does not belong to what is foreign to this origin, nor does
it owe anything to this. An image receives its being immediately
from that of which it is an image. It has one being with it and it
is the same being (DW I, p. 269, 2 f .) .
296 REINER SCHUHMANN

Eckhart's speculation on the being of images echoes patristic

ponderings on the same subject. Imagine a man standing before
a mirror. Properly speaking, where does the image that ab-
sorbs his attention reside? Does its being inhere in the body
frem which it emanates, or rather in the reflection which he
contemplates? "The image is in me, of me, towards me," an-
swers Eckhart (DW I, p. 154, 1 £.). Were I to move back a.
step, the image would no longer exist.
Every image has two properties. The first is that it receives its
being immediately from that of which it is an image, without inter-
ference of the will. Its outgoing is indeed natural, and it thrusts
itself out of nature like a branch from the tree. When an image
is cast on a mirror, our face will be reflected in it whether it likes
it or not. . . . The second property of the image lies in its resem-
blance (DW I, p. ~65, 9 f.) .
The first point accords with the conclusion on created being:
the image has no proper being, being comes to it from another,
it does not exist originarily. The image exists only in its" out-
going" (uzganc). The .second point explains from where it ex-
tracts its being: it is nothing else but that very dependence
we call reflection. Eckhart applies these considerations to the
relationship between man and God. Man, as an image of God,
remains " with " him of whom he is the image, distinct from
him and not " in " him. Man as an image emanating from God
stays at the periphery of the origin. A first application of the
principle of anarchy occurs when Eckhart states that man must
become ungelwh, unlike anything created, and totally ent-
gelwhet, no longer resembling any being, so as to be perfectly
like God.
These remarks on mirroring and on the being of an image
are one model used by Eckhart to explain his theory of similar-
ity and assimilation. According to another model, that of the
human word, he will say that man should be an " adverb,"
btwort, to the Word or Verb of God.
I have in mind the little word quasi which means " like " ; children
in school call it an adverb. This is what I intend in all my sermons.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 297
The most appropriate things that one can say of God are" Word"
and "Truth". God called himself a "Word". Saint John says:
' In the beginning was the Word ', meaning by this that we should
be an adverb to this same Verb (DWI, p. 154, 7 f.) .6
A detached human being is destined to become an ad-Verb.
Eckhart's thought proceeds along the following lines. A man
speaks. Through the numerous words of his discourse, it is
possible that one single utterance makes itself heard and stands
out to whoever knows how to listen. To the hearer, words may
then seem suddenly so transparent that he is able to declare:
" Now I know exactly what you mean." From the flow of
many statements, he is able to assimilate the single intention
that they all purport. We speak of what someone" means," al-
though he pronounces perhaps many sentences and periphrases.
The numerous words " mean " one single utterance. A single
thought or sense makes itself understood in all the vocables.
We do not only follow word after word, but we" get the idea,"
we comprehend one single utterance which is necessarily broken
up into many words.
It may also happen that this single utterance appears as the
focus where the sheaves of thought and feeling converge. It is
around this type of utterance that biographers build their re-
ports. Such a focus is a Word of existence: a forever unpro··
nounceable single Word in which a life is comprehended. From
the struggles of a man an utterance emerges which shows and
conceals itself as the impetus behind the many expressions
coming from him and transmitted to us. The gospels can be
read in this way and so can the sermons of Meister Eckhart.
This wort, Word of existence, has to become a Mwort,. adverb
for the Verb. God has not begotten man " like " his image, but
he has made him " in " or towards his image: ad imaginem,
ad-Verb. The assimilation always remains to be perfected. The
• Ein einziges Wort hilft mir, schreibts Gott mir einmal ein,
So werd' ich stets ein Lamm mit Gott gezeichnet sein.
One single word can help me, if God one day inscribes it in me, / I shall be for
always a lamb marked with the seal of God.
Angelus Silesius, op. cit., p. 114. This single word is God's Word.
298 REINER SCHUHMANN

secret of the mind, understood as an image, is ad: it is unlike

all things, yet like God. Eckhart draws perhaps too radical
a distinction between the human mind as an image of God
and creation in general; conversely, he does not distinguish the
mind enough from the divine Persons. Like the Son and the
Spirit, the mind is defined by its ad which establishes it near
to God. Just as Christ is with the Father, the detached man
should be with Christ, in turn engendering the unique Word
which he becomes himself. Then the assimilation will be per-
fect. In a sermon on Justice, Eckhart illustrates this teaching
by the proximity of Eve to Adam:
The just live eternally "with God", directly with God, neither
below nor above. They accomplish all their works with God, and
God accomplishes his own with them. Saint John says: 'The Word
was with God '. It was totally alike and next to him, neither below
nor above but alike. When God created man, he drew woman from
the rib of man, so that woman was alike to man. He made her
neither from the head nor from the feet, so that she would be
neither above nor below man, but that she would be equal to him.
Likewise the just mind is to be equal with God and next to him:
exactly alike, neither inferior nor superior to him. (DW I, p. 106,
4 f.).
The word is with God (b'i gate), Eve was with Adam, the just
man is with Justice: likewise the man devoid of all created
images is with God and is the image of God.
From likeness springs praise:
What praises God? It is likeness. Thus everything in the soul which
is like God praises God. What in any way is unlike God does not
praise God. In the same way an image praises the artist who has
imprinted upon it all the art that he has in his heart, thus making
it entirely like himself. This similarity of the image praises its
master without words (DWI, p. 318, 4 f.).
Eckhart's way of expressing man's remodeling into similarity
with the divine is certainly more abstract than the itinerary of
Zen-sitting. The concreteness of zazen stems from the impor-
tance, extraordinary for a Westerner, that Soto masters attri-
bute to the body iand its development. Also Eckhart's theory
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 299
of assimilation is far more theocentric than Zen. Despite these
two reservations-and the more we discover now the anarchic
element in Eckhart the more they will both collapse- it should
be clear at this point that the logic of the way of releasement
in zazen and in Eckhart is to deliver what is most originary in
man through the unlearning of possession and attachment. The
ultimate attachment that has to be let go is the idea of origin
in the sense of cause and end, of project and goal. This funda-
mental renewal of the human being through the apprenticeship
of releasement has now to be explained in terms of its conse-
quence, the loss of the origin.
III. N obilit;y
The third thesis in Eckhart's preaching requires "that one
should remember the great nobility which God has deposited
in the mind in order for man to reach God through it." Eck-
hart has dedicated an entire treatise, The Nobleman (DW
V, p. 109-119), to this concept. "Nobility" is a technical term
in his writings which designates the capacity of the ground
of the mind to unite itself to the ground of God. It is roughly
equivalent to Augustine's 'capax Dei.' Man's nobility lies in
his natural indistinction from God: " Where there is distinction
you will find neither the One nor being nor God nor rest nor
happiness nor satisfaction. Be One, then you find God " (DW
V, p. 115, 7 f .) . The unity that is naturally given remains at
the same time a task to he achieved: one must become " One
with the One, One from One, One in One; and in One, One-
eternally" (DW V, p. 119, 6 f.). Here the difference between
the originative and the originated has vanished. But again, let
us first look at Zen-sitting.
Zen can be qualified in general as a quest for identity, and
this in a twofold sense. On the one hand it is a quest for the
self. The following words are engraved on the meditation stick:
"We must see our true self, we must look into the truth of our
mind." On the other hand zazen as a quest for identity is also
a quest for identification, namely with Buddha-and thus a
300 REINER SCHUHMANN

loss of identity. It is the practice of sitting in the mind's im-

personal center. In his chapter On Life and Death Master
Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in the thirteenth century,
wrote: " If we release our body and our spirit, if we forget our
self and if we abandon ourselves to the power of Buddha,
mental activity becomes useless; we are ready to separate our-
selves from life or death, we awake, we become Buddha." 7 The
key to zazen lies in the realization that self-identity and identifi-
cation with Buddha are one and the same, and that they arise
from the perfect posture. Man's nobility, according to Zen,
is to become Buddha and thus to become himself. Now this is
nothing extraordinary; there is not the slightest trace of extasis
in Soto Zen. Rather the enlightenment is the awareness of our
most ordinary self, the space we live in when our mind is open
rather than constricted; when it is no longer inhibited by self-
erected obstacles. It is no surprise that zazen is useful for ac-
celerating psychoanalytic treatment, as it removes in ourselves
all that obstructs total presence to whatever there is. Zen is
the uninvolved attention to things as they are rather than as
they should or used to be. As Suzuki puts it: " Zen is our or-
dinary mindedness; that is to say there is in Zen nothing super-
natural or unusual or highly speculative that transcends our
everyday life. When you feel sleepy, you retire; when you are
hungry, you eat." 8
I do not claim any doctrinal identity betwen releasement in
zazen and in Eckhart's sermons. However, it should be patent
by now that releasement exhibits the same structure in either
case: it is an existential itinerary, its essence is the unlearning
of possession, its starting point is an effort of the will, its conse-
quence-and this is the point I want to make now-is an identi-
fication with the origin by which the distinction between origina-
tive and originated is abolished. The essential feature of the
origin is to show itself as a cause: efficent or normal cause when
it appears as arclw, final cause when it appears as telos. The prin-
7 Quoted by Taisen Deshimaru, Vrai Zen, Paris 1969, p. 71.
8 D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, N. Y. 1961, p. 3~.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN; ZEN AND ECKHART 301
ciple of anarchy which determines the way of releasement both
in Zen and in Meister Eckhart consists in the destruction of
causality as an appropriate category for the understanding of
being. It is important to see that the progressive loss of the
origin in either case is a matter of practice. By temperament
Zen insists more on the destruction of causality as the ' why '
and ' wherefore ' in daily life whereas Eckhart is a metaphys-
ician. Again, I do not claim that the concept of the origin desig-
nates the same reality in Zen and in Eckhart. It obviously does
not since already the representation of a highest being is totally
alien to Buddhism. But I do claim that in the progress of re-
leasement the idea of an ultimate-be it a principle of life, or
a supreme cause, or even an ethical reason for behavior-be-
comes meaningless. Before carrying this idea of anarchy still
further, let us look at Eckhart's theory of identity as the con-
cept of nobility suggests it. Indeed, resemblance with God is
not enough. To be an image of God is not enough:
Scripture says that we have to become like God. 'Like', the word
is bad and deceptive. If I liken myself to someone else, and if I
find someone who is like me, then this man behaves as if he were
I, although he is not and deceives people about it. Many things
look like gold, but since they are not, they lie. In the same way
all things pretend to be like God; but they are lying, since they
are not like him. God can no more suffer likeness than he can suffer
not being God. Likeness is something that does not occur in God;
what does occur in the Godhead and in eternity is oneness. But
likeness is not oneness (glicheit enist niht ein). Whenever I am
one with something, I am not like it. There is nothing alien in
oneness. In eternity there is only oneness, but not likeness (DW
I, p. 215, IO f.).

How are we to understand this oneness or identity with God?

Eckhart never speaks or thinks of substantial identity, rather
he calls this an identity" einim gewurke ", identity in operation.
We may think of what happens in music, when the hearer is
"all ears." If he does not know how to reproduce inwardly,
simultaneously, identically, that which his ears hear, if by dis-
traction or incapacity he omits to accompany in himself the
302 REINER SCHURMANN

sounds that the senses perceive, then he does not know how to
listen. Properly speaking, perfect listening implies that the dis-
tinction between the soloist, on one side, and the listener, on
the other,. is no longer true. Through the unique event of the
song which enraptures us, one identical being accomplishes it-
self. Thus the fundamental determination of existence is
"operative identity" or, in homage to Aristotle, "energetic
identity." 9 According to Eckhart, human existence seeks to
fulfill itself in identity. This trait appears particularly in the
most decisive acts of life: in the foundation of a family or of
a community, in a dialogue that actualizes what I called earlier
two" words of existence," or again in the acceptance of destiny.
These events always unite those whom they affect, but one has
to be very released, gelassens to respond properly to what
destiny sends. Eckhart suggests an example to explain this:
consider what happens in conversation. Through your words
a clearance of understanding opens up which points towards the
word of existence murmured in all that you say or do. But the
event of such an opening is the work of neither you nor me.
The " we " is not the achievement of the " I " or of the " you,"
rather it comes to be of its own accord. When it occurs there
'is' nothing else besides itself. In such moments two existences
are determined as identical: identical in the geWU.rke, that is,
in the event. When applied to the realm of deification this
scheme shows man living no longer ' with' God but ' in ' him:
God is not found in distinction. When the soul reaches the original
image [of which it is .a reflection] and finds itself alone in it, then
it finds God. Finding itself and finding God is one single process,
outside of time. As far as it penetrates into him, it is identical with
God ... not included, nor united, but more: identical· (Pf. p. 85,
36 f.).
Identical is the event as God begets me as himself and begets him-
self as me. He begets me as his essential being and as his nature.
There is one life .and one essential being and one work there (DW
I, p. 109, 9 f.) .

• In Aristotle energeia signifies neither " agent " nor "effect," but action inas-
much as it produces the effect, >Operation in progress. Aristotle, De Anima,
III, 7, 431 a 5, transl. R. D. Hicks, Amsterdam 1965, p. 139 f.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 303
The ground of the soul and the ground of God are one single es-
sential being (Pf. p. 467, 15).
Eckhart wants to insist so much on this energetic identity be-
tween God and man that he does not hesitate to accumulate
adjectives against all customary usage: ein einic ein unge-
schieden (DWI, p. ~81, 1), one unique unity without difference.
The true nobility of the ground of the soul lies in that a re-
leased man becomes the locus where the energetic identity of
God, of himself and of the world produces itself. The universe
is genuinely ' universe,' that is, turned towards the One, only
in a released man. Eckhart repeats as a kind of axiom:
All that is in God is God (DW I, p. 56, 8) ;
In God, no creature is more noble than the other (DWI, p. 55, 4);
In God, there is nothing but God (Pf. p. 83, 17) ;
What is in the first, is the first (LW V, p. 37, 8);
What is in the One is the One (LW I, p. 55, fl).
These propositions can be read with reference to the theory
of the preexistence of all things in God, or the theory of the
divine ideas. But to be content with such a Neoplatonist
reading of Meister Eckhart would mean to auscultate the letter
of his sermons, unmindful of releasement, which remains the
existential condition for the understanding of Eckhart's onto-
logy. He always comes back to this necessity of abandoning
both human and divine eigenschaft (property, selfhood, in-
dividuality) :
I wondered recently if I should accept or desire anything from God.
I shall consider this carefully, for if I accepted something from
God, I would be inferior to God like a serf, and he, in giving, would
be like a lord. But in eternal life, such should not be our relation
(DW I, p. llfl, 6 f .) .
Eternal life means that man may live again, here and now,
out of his ground, and that releasement may accomplish itself,
so that God, man, and the world play out their identity.10 Man's
10 Dies alles ist ein Spi,el, das sick die Gottheit macht,
Sie hat Die Kreatur um ihretwilln erdacht.
All this is a play that the Godhead gives itself I It has conceived the creature for
its own sake. Angelus Silesius, op. cit., p. 45.
304 REINER sCH:URM.ANN
nobility makes him be the locus of the unity of God, man, and
the world. Such identity is already in me, not in germ, but in
totality, exactly in the same way as God is in me: not ac-
cording to his effigy, but in totality.
The difficulty in reading Meister Eckhart arises because such
a bold cataphatism is mixed, as we shall see, with a no less
bold apophatism. Classing Meister Eckhart exclusively among
the defenders of either the first or the second of these intellec-
tual attitudes results in missing the very core of his thought.
On this matter, it is doubtlessly prudent to speak of the "dia-
lectic" of Meister Eckhart.11 The loss of the origin now appears
more clearly: if God were to be represented as a lord, " and
I, inferior to God, like a serf," then the classic metaphysical
titles such as prime analogate, supreme being, first cause, etc.,
would apply. But, Eckhart continues," such should not be our
relation." What, then should be our relation? Pure identity,
not difference. It is perhaps this anarchic element that the
officers of the Inquisition sensed in Eckhart. They were ob-
viously unable to grasp his teaching, and they certainly did not
share the slightest bit of Eckhart's spiritual experience. Eck-
hart was perfectly right when he accused them of" short and
imbecilic intelligence " 12-so much so that the Bull of con-
demnation had to resort to literal distortions. But these judges
probably had an instinct that sensed what I call the principle
of anarchy in Eckhart. Perhaps they even sensed that this
principle is indeed harmful, for instance for institutions. Which
institution can do without some kind of First, be it an authority
or an ideal? Likewise the hidden anarchy may be the reason
for the unforeseeable and provocative behaviour of some Zen

Der Mensch hat eher nicht vollkomme Seligkeit

Bis dass die Einheit hat verschluckt die Anderheit.
Man has no perfect happiness I Until unity has swallowed up otherness. Ibid., p. 55.
11 Cf. Maurice de Gandillac, "La ' dialectique ' de Maitre Eckhart," in La
Mystique rhenane, Paris 1963, pp. 59-94.
12 Gabriel Thery, "Edition critique des pieces relatives au proces d'Eckhart"

in Archives d'Histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age, I (1926/27) p. 205;

see similar epithets ibid. p. 196 and p. 248.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 805
masters. Man's nobility tolerates neither lord nor master above
him. A contemporary Marxist concludes from this that " Eck-
hart has claimed, at least in theory, the treasures alienated in
heaven as man's own goods." 13 Without making him into a
theoretician of the medieval peasant upheavals, however, one
can say 1at least that Eckhart's type of thought does away with
the very representation of a hierarchy-certainly in the onto-
logical sense and perhaps in the social sense. I should say that
the thrust of his argument is never ' indicative,' pointing to-
wards degrees of being, but ' imperative,' pointing towards de-
grees of existential development. Indicative thought treats of
substances, and by stressing their independence and sufficiency
in being, it assigns to man his place within the universal order.
Such a thought is unable to grasp Eckhart's teaching of identity
and identification. Imperative thought, on the other hand, ad-
dresses the hearer in his way of being; it is protreptic. There
is thus an ontological meaning to the literary form chosen by
Meister Eckhart, preaching. It is not accidental that he was
a preacher, quite as it is not accidental that language in Zen
Buddhism takes the form of oral instruction or conversation.
Such language urges our freedom to commit itself upon a
path that remains unthinkable to representational metaphysics.
As we shall now see, this path does not stop with the identity
with God. It actually leads beyond God.
IV. Pure Nature
The fourth thesis in Eckhart's program was " the purity of
the divine nature." God's nature is often called the Godhead.
"God and Godhead," Eckhart says," are as distinct as heaven
and earth" (Pf. 180, 15). It is in the name of the strictness
of releasement that Eckhart criticizes the pretension of the
supreme being to the rank of the origin. The supreme being
has still a 'why,' namely all other beings. The God entirely
deprived of a 'why' is pure nothingness. As I quoted earlier,
18 Ernst Bloch, Atheismus im Christentum, Frankfurt 1968, p. 94. Cf. H.
Ley, Geschichte der Aufklarung und des Atheismus, I, Berlin 1966, pp. 357-444.
306 REINER SCHUHMANN

"God acts in nothingness" (unwesene). It is perhaps here

that the parallel with Zen Buddhism is most obvious. Perfect
releasement leads into pure nothingness. The Zen student,
Dogen says, " passes entirely beyond the stage of the infinity
of consciousness and attains and abides in the stage of nothing-
ness." Let me simply render here some notes taken at Deshi-
maru's mondos (sessions of questions and answers) on this last
step of the way of releasement.
Nothingness means forgetfulness: of things and of oneself,
and even of zazen. Nothingness also lies beyond the opposition
between being and non-being. Nothingness does not mean ab-
sence of truth, nor even absence of error; rather the mind lets
errors be what they are and is indifferent to truth. Nothingness
is neither sacred nor profane, it has no religious connotation.
The sense of the holy is incompatible with pure nothingness.
Nothingness means total privation of forms as well as fullness
of forms at the same time, that is, all things are one in nothing-
ness. The genuine Zen experience is the discovery of nothing-
ness at the very heart of all that is pre.sent. It is also the dis-
covery of the seed from which all thinking and knowledge arises.
But no thought and no knowledge can reach it, as no thought
can reach us in our unborn condition. Another word for nothing-
ness is thus birthlessness. One master reportedly told his
disciples: " If you can tell me what pure nothingness is you
get thirty blows with the stick; and if you cannot tell me what
it is you will also get thirty blows." Does Zen Buddhism think
the absolute nothingness which in the Western tradition has
remained unthinkable? One may doubt this, for the experience
of nothingness here leads man back " among the drunkards and
the beggars " : " Carrying a gourd he goes out into the market;
leaning against a stick he comes home. He is found in company
of wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into
Buddhas." 14
If we lose sight of the practioal core of Zen we get irreversibly
lost in abstract considerations of ontological and moral meanings
14 D. T. Suzuki, <Yf'· cit., p. 876.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 307
of nothingness: that is, forms of negating being or forms of
negating purpose in action. The same is true with Meister Eck-
hart: outside the practice of releasement his statements about
man's return into the pure nature of God receive a monistic
ring which would make them sound either atheistic, as in
Nietzsche's view,1 5 or idealistic as in Hegel's.16 In other words,
active releasement is the practical a priori for any correct un-
derstanding of both Zen and Eckhart.
The principle of anarchy which governs the way of release-
ment is probably best expressed in those passages where Eck-
hart states that the pure nature of God is without a why, sun-
der warumbe, and that he who wants to penetrate into this pure
nature must himself live without why (e.g. DWI, p. 90, 12) .11
Whoever has abandoned himself entirely and ' lets ' himself live
without an arcM and a why is not motivated by any exterior
inducement, not even God:
Why do you love God?-I do not know, because of God.-,-Why
do you love the truth?-Because of the truth.-Why do you love
justice?-Because of justice.-Why do you love goodness?-Be-
cause of goodness.-Why do you live?-My word! I do not know!
But I am happy to live (DW II, p. 27 I f.).
God is, man lives, things subsist and perish-all this without
a why. Eckhart expressed this in multiple ways. His medita-
tion on the why points beyond God as an origin. God, man,
15 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science #!il9!il, transl. W. Kaufmann, Vintage

Books, New York 1974, p. !il35.

16 Frank Von Baader remarks in his diary (Siimdiche Werke, ed. F. Hoff-
man, Leipzig, 1851-1860, vol. XV, p. 159): "Very often, at Berlin, I was in the
company of Hegel. One day I read him some texts of Meister Eckhart, an author
of whom he knew only the name. He was so delighted that he gave before me an
entire course devoted to Meister Eckhart. At the end he also confided to me:
' Here we have found at last what we were seeking '," quoted by I. Degenhardt,
Studien zum Wandel des Eckhart-Bilde9, Leiden, 1967, p. 114.
17 Die Ros' ist ohn' warum, sie bliihet,

Sie acht't nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht ob man sie siehet.
The rose is without why, it flowers because it flowers I It pays no heed to itself,
asks not if it is seen, A. Silesius, op. cit., p. 35.
Martin Heidegger comments on this verse by claiming the authority of Meister
Eckhart: Der Satz vom Grund, Pfiillingen, 1957, pp. 68-72.
308 REINER SCHUHMANN

and the world are considered in their anarchic emanation

(uzbruch, Ausbruch or uzvluz, Ausftuss) where they "bubble
forth" 18 from the pure nature, the Godhead, without a why.
What is the sense of a quest which seeks to transcend even
God as the origin of all that there is? The metaphysician will
object that beyond God, the highest being, no origin can be
thought. But are the new birth and releasement thinkable as
long as the excellence of God is in this way objectified? If God
is represented as the duplicate beyond or within man, that is,
as the Perfect above our imperfection, the divine birth can only
be represented by sacrificing either identity to difference (God
as the partner of the soul, Pietism) , or difference to identity
(God as the oceanic substance which swallows up the soul,
Pantheism) . Meister Eckhart, however, maintains both iden-
tity and difference. He attempts to think the origin prior to
the manifestation of the threefold. To do so, he turns towards
man as that being who needs only to come back to himself for
the question of the origin to be raised. There is no other path

18 Eckhart does call the Godhead ' origin,' ursprunc, it is true, but in the very

literal sense of "primitive (ur-) springing" (from the verb springen, to spring).
Another Middle-High-German form, today obsolete, was ursprinc, effervescence,
efflorescence. The idea is always that of a kind of eruption. In Eckhart's Latin
works the equivalent expressiO'lls are bullitio and ebullitfo. The first of these
terms refers to the boiling within the Godhead before God, man and the world
emanate, it refers to the Life before life, in which I already was before I came
to be. The second, ebullitio, indicates the boiling-over of the archetypes from the
Godhead, that is, the emanation of all created things from their primitive ground.
'Life ' means a kind of seething in which a thing
ferments and first pours itself in to itself, all
that it is into all that it is, before spilling
over and pouring itself outside (LW II, p. 22, 3 f.).
Die Gottheit is.t ein Brunn, aus ihr kommt alles her,
Und liiuft auch wieder hin, darum ist sie auch ein Meer.
The Godhead is a well, everything comes from it, I and everything runs again
unto it: hence it is also a sea, Angelus Silesius, op. cit., p. 52.
W enn ich in Gott vergeh, so komm ich wieder hin,
W o ich in Ewigkeit vor mir geJwesen bin.
When I lose myself in God, I return I to where I have been from all eternity,
before me. Ibid., p. 72.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 309
than that of releasement which can overcome the representation
of God as the highest being. A person will be released only when
he ceases devoting and dedicating himself with attachment to
enterprises big or small, good or evil. Let God be, stop seeking
him, abandon God, and then you will find him. Only he who
does not seek will find. 19 There is no higher attestation of God
than this diffidence.
Leaving things, leaving God, living without a why: these
teachings of Meister Eckhart surely sound subversive. Indeed
they are literally a subversion, an overthrow (vertere) from
the foundation (sub-). Why the world? Why God? Why man?
Why identity? They are, Meister Eckhart answers, without a
" why." For traditional metaphysics the thought of a three£old
interplay of God, man and the world which enacts itself for no
reason is sheer folly. But Eckhart charges that the intellectual
quest for unshakable foundations keeps itself aloof from any
genuine disclosure as it is attached to the" why," to the raison
d'etre of things. One imagines what happens to the scholastic
constructions when unexpectedly a preacher comes along who
unveils the nothingness of foundations; the scholastic mind is
seized with dizziness. The God whom this other way of thinking
annihilates in his function of foundation is perhaps indeed the
God of western Christianity. If you seek God for the sake of a
foundation, Eckhart says, if you look for God even for the sake
of God himself, then:
you behave as though you transformed God into a candle in order
to find something with it; and when one has found what one looks
for, one throws away the candle (DW I, p. 69, 2 f.).
Meister Eckhart only draws the ultimate consequence of letting-
be. What is, let it be. Everything could as well not be, but
since it is, let it be. God, man, and the world could not be, but
19In Angelus Silesius, Gelassenheit receives the same meaning:
Gelassenheit faht Gott; Gott ab er selbst zu lassen
Ist ein' Gelassenheit, die wenig Menschen fassen.
Releasement grasps God, but to release God himself I is a releasement that few
people grasp. Op. cit., p. 42.
310 REINER SCHUHMANN

since they are, let them be. But the mind is invited to move
beyond them. 20
As the arche, the origin as wherefrom (represented by the
words " since they are ") , is without a why, so, too, the telos, the
origin as whereto, (represented by the words "let them be")
is without a why. For Eckhart, such thought leads man into
the desert, which is prior to God, man, and the world.
I have spoken of a power in the mind. In its first manifestation, it
does not apprehend God. It does not apprehend him in so far as
he is good, nor in so far as he is the truth. It penetrates into the
ground, it pursues and burrows, and it apprehends God in his one-
ness .and in his desert (einoede); it apprehends God in his wilder-
ness (wiistunge) .and in his own ground (DWI, p. 171, 12 f.).
The desert is not fertile in anything: likewise the Godhead is
arid, it does not create anything. In the desert everything be-
gins only: but God disappears. The desert is the vast solitude,
there is no place for two in the desert. The opposition between
a Creator and a creature vanishes. In the desert entreaties are
of no avail, there is no opposite of man towards whom he might
raise his hands. In the desert, the wind and the sand wipe out
the traces of the caravans; the steps of God disappear together
with those of man and the world.
The desert is full of seeds but they do not sprout there. The
Godhead is a house, Eckhart says, full of people but from which
no one as of yet has gone out. Let the dwellers go out into the
street and they will be hailed: " God," " Eckhart " ....
God becomes; where all creatures enunciate God, there God be-
comes. When I still stood in the ground, the soil, the river and
the source of the Godhead, no one asked me where I was going
or what I was doing. There was no one there to question me. But
20 Wo ist mein Aufenthalt? Wo ich und du nicht stehen.
W o ist mein letztes End ', in welches ich soll gehen?
Da woman keines findt. Wo soll ich dann nun hin?
Ich muss noch iiber Gott in eine Wii.ste ziehn.
Where is my stay? Where you and I are not. I Where is the last end to which
I should tend? / Where one finds none. Where then shall I go? /I must move
still higher than God, into a desert. Angelus Silesius, op. cit., p. 61.
 LOSS OF ORIGIN: ZEN AND ECKHART 311
when I went out by dehiscence, all creatures cried out: " God ".
If someone were to ask me: "Brother Eckhart, when did you leave
home? " this would indicate that I must previously have been in-
side. It is thus that all creatures speak of God. And why do they
not speak of the Godhead? Everything that is in the Godhead
is one, and of this nothing can be said (Pf. p. 181, I f.) .
Whoever speaks of God intends to speak of his most sublime
counterpart, that is, of a being opposable to other beings. He
invokes him as the one who saves, the one who judges ... , al-
ways as .the Other. But to speak of the Godhead is to think
of a pre-originary origin, prior to all opposition; it is to think
of God's "pure nature," his "concealed intimacy," his "aby-
smal," " limpid," " hidden, anarchic essence." As in Zen, pro-
perly speaking the pre-originary origin is not. The purity of the
divine nature is sheer nothingness. Indeed, if the anarchic
origin were to be, its being would make it opposable to other
beings. If the sermon "Beati Pauperes Spiritu" still calls the
negated are-he "first cause" this only indicates Eckhart's em-
barrassment in being unable to express a non-metaphysical
thought in a metaphysically fixed language:
When I still stood in my first cause, I had no God, I was cause
of myself. . . . But when by free will I went out and received my
created being, then I had a God. Indeed, before there were crea-
tures, God was not yet God, but he was what he was (DW II,
p. 492, 3 f.).
He was what he was: the anarchic origin is radically unknow-
able. The expre.ssion " I was cause of myself '" is very strong:
according to the traditional teaching God alone is e-ausa sui.
Here it is applied to man. Let me conclude by continuing the
quote from this famous sermon which suggests perfectly the
ultimate stage of the loss of the origin on the way of release-
ment:
This is why I pray to God to rid me of God, for my essential being
(min weserllich wesen) is above God in so far as we comprehend
God as the principle of creatures. Indeed, in God's own being,
where God is raised above all being and all distinctions, I was my-
self, I willed myself, and knew myself to create this man [that I
312 REINER SCHUHMANN

am]. Therefore I am cause of myself according to my being which

is eternal, but not according to my becoming which is temporal.
Therefore also I am unborn, and according to my unborn being
I can never die. According to my unborn being I have always
been, am now and shall eternally remain. What I am by my [tem-
poral] birth is to die and be annihilated, for it is mortal; therefore
with time it must pass away. In my [eternal] birth all things were
born, and I was cause of myself as well as of all things. If I had
willed it, neither I nor any things would be. And if I myself were
not, God would not be either: that God is God, of this I am a
cause. If I were not, God would not be God. There is, however,
no need to understand this.
REINER ScHtiRMANN
New School for So,cial Research
New York, N. Y.