Empty Fullness in the Eternal Now: Eckhart and the Buddhists

Abstract

I do not know if Meister Eckhart counted any Buddhists among his ‘friends of God’, but I do know that the Meister is considered a friend of many Buddhists, Hindus, and other pilgrims from the spiritual traditions of the East. It seems to me that Eckhart’s writings create a wonderful forum for dialogue with people of other religious traditions largely because he approached the Great Mystery we call God on an intuitive and spiritual level. As a preacher, he artfully used words to point to the Great Mystery, but as mystic he was careful not to allow his experience of God to be fenced in by those very same words. Eckhart communed with the scriptures sacramentally, thus allowing him to do far more than provide information about God. His sermons, in a way not so unlike the koans of a Zen master, have the ability to shake us into a new way of seeing, making it possible to glimpse the face of God. Though Eckhart probably did not engage in any kind of direct dialogue with people of other religions, his style and his insights certainly prepared the way for what – many centuries later – would become the Second Vatican Council’s bold challenge to enter into friendly and respectful dialogue with people of other faith and spiritual traditions: ‘The Catholic Church ... regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings [of other world religions] which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all people’.1 The late Pope John Paul II, in words that sound surprisingly fresh today, made an even more urgent appeal, emphasizing the link between dialogue and love: