Meister Eckhart on Disinterestedness
In a previous discussion, I used the awkward term “inner states” to describe the religious experience, attempting to distinguish internal from external events, such as “miracles”. Basically, I was trying to say that the latter are much easier to prove or disprove than the former, which being so wholly individual are hard for outsiders to even comment on.
One of the things I had in mind was Meister Eckhart’s essay about abgescheidenheit, a somewhat tricky word that Raymond Blakney translates as ‘disinterest’, instead of the more typical ‘seclusion’, ‘solitude’ or ‘detachment’. Personally, I agree that solitude doesn’t work; but I also think Eckhart really is talking about something like total detachment, both from the self and external things, an idea a bit like ‘nothing’ in zen meditation. Here, again, the external world is totally beside the point and really a barrier to an inner ‘bubbling forth’ of God. Eckhart believes this detachment or disinterest is the highest of all virtues.
It’s a somewhat strange suggestion given the Christian emphasis on works, and it’s helpful to remember that Eckhart was a fairly important mystic at a time rife with Christian mystics; also remember that Eckhart himself was at last embroiled in the merely nominal world of politics- as a Dominican in the early 1300s, he was put at odds with the Franciscans, two of whom, associated with the Archbishop of Cologne, had him brought up on charges of heresy. His defense is worth reading as well, summed up by his statement: “I may err but I may not be a heretic- for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!” The Pope eventually decided his statements were heretical, although by this time Eckhart had died and the Church, having never declared the man himself to be a heretic, today feels he has been suitably exonerated. Pope John Paul was fond of quoting him.
The essay on detachment invites comparisons to Aquinas and Socrates- who one imagines would sympathize with the idea of emptying the soul of all external unrealities. There is a strong Neoplatonic undertone and the first image that bubbled forth in my mind was Socrates standing dead to the nominal world and lost in thought. Like Socrates, Eckhart ranks disinterest higher than love, which compels man to suffer, and thus focus on his suffering. Love also compels him to move closer to God, while disinterest brings God closer to man. Disinterest is also higher than humility, which makes us pay attention to the creatures we humble ourselves before. It is even higher than mercy, which is a form of attention to others.
The ideal state of disinterest is a pure ‘nicht’ (not), which Blakney translates as pure zero, but I think nothingness will work as well. The soul is detached from other creatures and from the self, and thus at a state of total sensitivity to God. Elsewhere, Eckhart describes grace as not stationary, but always found in a Becoming. We could think of disinterest as clearing the soil of weeds and stones in order for a connection with God to sprout forth. Because Eckhart sees this bubbling forth as an act of grace, the individual is completely passive; prayer is nice, but not key.
Eckhart also sees God as indifferent in some sense. Because He sees the future and past spread out like neighboring mountaintops, God lives outside of time and place. The ideal that Eckhart aims for in himself is a sort of Godly timelessness and placelessness, manifest as indifference to time and place. It would be glib to call this Nirvana- but it’s essentially the same precondition with different hoped-for events.
Where this is relevant for our previous discussion is when Eckhart answers the obvious counterargument- if disinterest is higher than suffering and love, why do Christians value figures like Mary and Jesus who excelled at both? He answers by making a distinction between the inner man and the outward man, explaining that each individual is thus two men. The senses operate by agents of the soul, and man is required to use all of the agents of the soul. While a person who is dominated by the senses is more animal than man, pure quiescence is neither possible, nor is it pious. Activity, though, needn’t disturb the soul: “A man may be ever so active outwardly and still leave the inner man unmoved and passive.” Whew.
The similarities between these concepts and certain ideas in Buddhism have been long noted; Schopenhauer, for instance, actually claimed that Meister Eckhart and Siddhartha Gautama teach the same lessons, with Eckhart cloaking them in Christian concepts. Among all the other great things at Sacred Texts is a very interesting essaythat notes the similarities between disinterest in Eckhart and emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism. It’s an interesting line of thought and probably very fruitful, but I’m not sure if it doesn’t take Eckhart to a place he wouldn’t recognize. Regardless of what we might think he was doing, Meister Eckhart thought he was clearing a space for grace- his terms were not just terms- they were central to his thought. With all due respect to Gautama, he left the question of God open; Eckhart, of course, doesn’t, and (pardon the glibness) there is a difference between emptying your house of all clutter in order to reach a state of higher living and doing so because company’s coming.
The basic problem I have with the essay, Eckhart only addresses in passing: who in the world could actually reach this sustained and total state of disinterest? Eckhart answers: “no one living in such times as these.” And this is a Dominican theologian in the fourteenth century! What chance would any of us have, in a time in which it often seems hard to focus on one thing, much less on no things? That Platonic detachment from the world that is so significant in Western thinking, and the same Buddhist detachment that is so important in Eastern thinking- is this goal maybe too narrow to be accomplished in a human life? Is it, in some sense, anti-life, or even anti-human? Isn’t there enlightenment and grace to be found in the body as well as the soul? Must we always turn away from the body to come to the soul?
I’ve regrettably not read Meister Eckhart, and so I have little on which to anchor my thoughts and believe it’s best to proceed with a caution and a willingness to revise everything I will say. As a religious person, I’m drawn to the ideas of self-emptying, disinterestedness, and silence—I love T.S. Eliot’s lines in Ash Wednesday: “Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled / About the center of the silent Word.” I would, however, stress love as the primary pathway of the spiritual journey. Mine, at least. There’s something about the idea of disinterestedness that seems a little too individualistic for my liking. Of course, if one is making room for God, then one isn’t being truly individualistic, but I wonder if such a process can lead to a sort of spiritual individualism, an openness to God that results in closing doors to others. Maybe I’m simply describing a spiritual preference, and that’s fine; I don’t wish here to judge the spiritual and non-spiritual journeys of others. My own sense of the journey, though, leads me to say that it is best undertaken in love—in community, through an interest in others, through a shared journey and a journey that takes me through others. That path to God is through and with my neighbor (friend and foe).Report
I think the key to mysticism is basically that it is highly individualistic in practice, while aiming at a sort of selflessness.
It’s crazy that you mention Eliot- when describing the idea of timelessness in Eckhart, what I was thinking specifically was the oft-quoted passage in the first of the Four Quartets that reads:
“If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”Report
And, of course, from Little Gidding (III):
“There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle.”Report
Despite the assurances of athletes who have been chosen to serve as vehicles for the Divine’s wishes, this
God as indifferent
sounds about right to me.Report
The Greeks had sort of the same idea about the seers- if you already know everything that’s going to happen, and you have always known everything that’s going to happen, it’s pretty hard not to be, in some sense, indifferent about what happens.Report
And, right on cue, Greg Jennings gives the glory to God. All that practice and preparation be damned.Report
Suppose that instead he’d thanked his wife for inspiring him and believing in him. Would you feel it necessary to point out that that can’t be the reason he won, because the other team has wives too?Report
I would certainly claim that it wasn’t the reason he won. He won because he worked his ass off, his teammates worked their asses off and the play calling happened to fall the right way at the right time and they took advantage of the breaks they either made for themselves or were handed by the opposition, regardless of what his wife feels.
Besides, he could actually point to examples of his wife’s support and encouragement. Harder to do with what God has done to actively support his mission.Report
Given that pseudo-Denis’s ‘Theologia Mystica’ annouces the idea of the so-called ‘mystic’ and follows up with the differentiation of natural, dogmatic, and speculative theology only to be defeated in the latter medieval age by those inclinded toward the more worldly/immanent phenomenon found in dogmatism. One might be forgiven in thinking that if the ‘mystics’ had won that debate we’d all know more of ‘space’ and other matters dealing with physics.
Two schools of thought on the matter appear to prevail; one, is the idea that the mystical phenomenon is of a ‘social construction..’, and two, and the one I prefer, that “God can reveal himself…either by internal or external criteria…”
Following Carmel Beldon Davis’s seminal study, “Mysticism and Space” where she explicates the ‘mystical space’ as physical, textual, social space with the possiblity of God present both to initiate the experience and to focus it. In something of a stroke of genius Ms. Davis expresses this ‘place/space’ as the ‘literary figure’ of the ‘mise en abime’, a passing into the emptiness(?) of the abyss which includes the necessity of infinite regress (receding circles of space) often encountered in works of art.
It strikes me that Mr. Eichert’s theme of ‘disinterest’ suggests not only an understanding of the ultimate metaxical experience but the dangers inherent in the possibility of hypostatizing the tension of existence.Report
Maybe I’m too hard on the Buddhists. If they find the comparisons fruitful, more power to them. Here’s an interesting Buddhist discussion of Eckhart and detachment:
http://buddhaspace.blogspot.com/2010/12/buddha-eckhart-on-detachment.htmlReport
Thanks for the tip; I’ve been meaning to get to Eckhart for some time.
Question: Did ME teach any kind of meditation exercise to achieve the end of detachment?
“The basic problem I have with the essay, Eckhart only addresses in passing: who in the world could actually reach this sustained and total state of disinterest? Eckhart answers: ‘no one living in such times as these.’ And this is a Dominican theologian in the fourteenth century! What chance would any of us have, in a time in which it often seems hard to focus on one thing, much less on no things?”
I’ve come across a number of folks, mainly Eastern, but a few self proclaimed “Judeo-Christians” who claim to have achieved this state. Though I think this may be braggadocio or hyperbole.
One group claims you know you are at this state when you no longer feel any anger, fear, anxiety or irritations, no matter WHAT happens. One fellow claimed he could come home find a man raping his wife and he — a lawful gun owner — would righteously execute the man in defense of his wife and not feel angry or upset.
Likewise once having achieved this state, you are immune to post traumatic stress disorder, when such horrific things happen to you.
They call this state being “objective.” And believe it to be freedom from original sin. Anger, as an emotion, (NOT, for instance, righteous indignation as a stance — indeed that was the point of the raping the wife example — he would take the UTMOST righteous indignation at the man, but not get angry with him) as it were, is always a sin.Report
Question: Did ME teach any kind of meditation exercise to achieve the end of detachment?
I haven’t found anything yet, although I’ve only read about half of his works. Since there was a similar tradition in Christianity, I wonder if there wasn’t an understood methodology.Report
Meister Eckhard famously said “If God wants to speak to me, let him come to me. I’m not going out.”Report
Thanks!Report
Here’s a really bad translation of the essay: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sermons_(Meister_Eckhart)/Sanctification
They’ve translated abgescheidenheit as “sanctification” which makes the essay much blander and doesn’t really get the right meaning, in my opinion.Report
I think some of the meaning gets lost in the term “disinterest” though that’s probably as good a word in English as can be found. It’s easier than saying “the quality of having been judged to legally not be joined in any fashion.”
But while that’s just a fun linguistic argument, the meat of the argument is that Eckhart’s theories are pretty well directly against the teachings of Jesus. Far from urging that people become disinterested, Jesus taught that one should take a lot of concern about the people around them – humbling one’s self, as it were. I think his work could be called many things, and it’s very interesting, but it isn’t Christian anything.Report