Meister Eckhart

Who was Meister Eckhart?

Meister Eckhart lived from about 1260 to 1328 and was a German Dominican. He spent his early years at the priory in Erfurt, and he taught in Paris as a master of theology from 1302 to 1303. From around 1318 he was preaching in Strasbourg, often to nuns and Beguines, and he did it in German. That was the break with habit, because theology was written in Latin. In 1326 proceedings against him began in Cologne. He appealed to Avignon and died around 1328, before anything was decided. The bull In agro dominico dealt with twenty-eight propositions from his work in 1329, a year after his death.

What is Abgeschiedenheit, Eckhart's detachment?

Abgeschiedenheit is usually translated as detachment, and Eckhart takes it further than anyone expects. Start with things, the ones you own. Then the images in your head, including the good ones. Then your spiritual wishes, the wanting to be further along than you are. Then, and this is where he loses people, the will itself, the part of you that reaches for God. What is left is not a hole. It is room. His claim is that nothing can be born into a soul that is already full, so the emptying is not the loss, it is the condition. What he expects to happen in that room has a name, the birth of God in the soul. Love that holds too tight has stopped being love and turned into grip.

• Detachment goes beyond conventional practice. It releases even the desire for God.
• True poverty means wanting nothing, knowing nothing, having nothing, including spiritual attainments.
• Inner emptiness isn't a loss. It's the space where divine birth must occur.

Listen to the story “Radical Detachment”

What is German mysticism?

German mysticism means, first of all, Christian mysticism said in German. In the Middle Ages theology was written in Latin, and Latin belonged to the scholars. Eckhart preached to nuns, Beguines and working people in their own language instead. That forced him to find German words for things that had only been said in Latin. Abgeschiedenheit is one of them. So are Grund, Seelenfünklein and Durchbruch. What this kind of mysticism is about is not visions or miracles. It is one place in a person that was never separate from God. Mysticism turns up in every tradition. In this library Eckhart stands beside Rumi in Islam and Dōgen in Zen.

What did Meister Eckhart teach?

Meister Eckhart taught detachment, which he called Abgeschiedenheit, and he pushed it further than people expected. Let go of things. Then of the images in your head. Then of your spiritual wishes. Then, finally, of the will that reaches for God. What is left he calls the ground, the place where the bottom of the soul and the bottom of God turn out to be one bottom. He also taught the divine spark, something uncreated deep in you that damage cannot reach. And living without a why, which is action that comes out of what you are instead of out of what you expect to get for it.

What is the divine spark?

The divine spark, Seelenfünklein in his German, is something in the soul that was never created. Eckhart says it shares God's own nature. It is not a skill you build up over years. It is a presence, and nothing gets at it. Sin does not damage it, time does not age it, failure does not shrink it and success does not enlarge it. That lands strangely if you grew up being told to earn your worth. His point is exactly that. The thing you have been trying to earn is already there, untouched, waiting for enough quiet to be noticed.