Another Eckhart

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Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a Christian Mystic. Some of his pronouncements

were similar to the 'Saguna Brahma' and 'Nirguna Brahma' of Hinduism. The

present Eckhart also have similar ideas as presented in Vedanta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart

" Novel concepts Eckhart introduced into Christian metaphysics clearly deviate

from the common scholastic canon: in Eckhart's vision, God is primarily fertile.

Out of overabundance of love the fertile God gives birth to the Son, the Word in

all of us. Clearly (aside from a rather striking metaphor of " fertility " ), this

is rooted in the Neoplatonic notion of " overflow " of the One that cannot hold

back its abundance of Being. Eckhart had imagined the creation not as a

" compulsory " overflowing (a metaphor based on a common hydrodynamic picture),

but as the free act of will of the triune nature of Deity (refer

Trinitarianism). Another bold assertion is Eckhart's distinction between God and

Godhead (Gottheit in German). These notions had been present in

Pseudo-Dionysius's writings and John the Scot's De divisione naturae, but it was

Eckhart who, with characteristic vigor and audacity, reshaped the germinal

metaphors into profound images of polarity between the Unmanifest and

Manifest Absolute. (This may interestingly be paralleled with Hinduism's Brahma

Nirguna and Brahma Saguna, or, God without form and God with form) One of his

most intriguing sermons on the " highest virtue of disinterest, " unique in

Christian theology both then and now, conforms to the Buddhist concept of

detachment and more contemporarily, Kant's " disinterestedness. " "

Regards

Venugopal

 

 

 

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