Mysticism - Christian and Buddhist

I have a bit of time so shall continue. Regarding the "dying to self" and living for God (this being the true fulfilment of ourselves as persons). Eckhart gave a fine sermon once, number 22 of his German Sermons, delivered in the vernacular of his day and intended for all. The biblical verse that inspired his words was the verse from the Gospels:- "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and his sermon spoke of "True Poverty".

His words are far too radical for some, as he speaks of true poverty being to have nothing, to know nothing, to desire nothing . Here is a longer excerpt:-

If it is the case that someone is free of all creatures.........if God finds a place to act in them, then we say: as long as this exists in someone, they have not yet reached the ultimate poverty. For God does not intend there to be a place in someone where He can act, but if there is to be true poverty of spirit, someone must be so free of God and all His works that if God wishes to act in the soul He must Himself be the place in which He can act, and this He is certainly willing to be. For if God finds us this poor, then God performs His own active work and we passively receive God in ourselves and God becomes the place of His work in us since God works in Himself. In this poverty, we attain again the eternal being which we once enjoyed, which is ours now and shall be for ever.

Or, as St Paul said, as recorded in the NT, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

As said, this can seem far too radical for some, as though we are ceasing to exist, and yet the mystics would argue that it is actually the finding of the true self, the total fulfilment of the person made in the image of God.

This all relates to the anatta teaching of the Dharma. Not-self. Which is often misunderstood as "getting rid of the ego" or by Christians as the Buddha denying the existence of the soul. In fact it has nothing to do with either one or the other.

As D T Suzuki insists, nothing is being got rid of because it was not there in the first place! As he says:- we are empty from the beginning.

As found in St John's Gospel:-

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Again Merton, and many Christian mystics like him, speak of the need to go beyond the "I-Thou" relationship (though, he also says, "there is a definite place for it") and move towards a state where we release our grasp on a self that seeks a goal, and our ideas of just who it is that will "attain" such a goal.

"To cling too tenaciously to a 'self' and its own fulfilment would guarantee that there would be no fulfilment at all.................hence the paradox that as soon as there is someone there to have a transcendent experience, the experience is falsified and indeed becomes impossible."

(Merton, in "Zen and the Birds of Appetite")

Anyway, just to throw in a few more words concerning ego's and what not.....this from Joseph Bobrow....."I think it takes a distinctive, personal self to fully embody our essential no-self nature. And as one unravels, experiences, and realises the empty, multicentered nature of all beings and of consciousness itself, the particular, personal self and its unique qualities are potentiated, brought to life and fruition."

Within the Dharma there is much on this (and in fact D T Suzuki insists that the Dharma and zen are not mysticism at all. In fact, more a simple matter of fact way of being in the world)

Anyway, whatever, I must finish with my man of the moment () the zen master Dogen (13th century Japan) who spoke often of the "dropping of body and mind". One of his finest commentators is Hee-Jin Kim, who explained Dogen's sense in this way:-

To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness.

For anyone looking deep into the abyss of ultimate nihilism, a mood that seems to be growing in the modern mind, then such understanding turns the abyss of nullity into the Kingdom of Heaven - here, now, in this world, not this world betrayed for some imagined "other" beyond the grave.