Buddha and GodContemplations - Maurice Walsh
It is of course the Buddhist claim — according to certain scriptural passages which are probably of late date — that the truth of Enlightenment, that leads to Nibbana, is only revealed by Buddhas, who appear at vast intervals of time. This may be quite true, but I somehow doubt it. It would of course be the height of folly, as well as supremely tactless, to debate about the possible relative degrees of 'enlightenment' attained by, say, the Buddha Gotama and Jesus. 1 think, however, that it is perhaps permissible to say that Jesus himself, like his disciple Eckhart only more so, was unlucky in his audience. The Buddha lived to be 80 and was never persecuted, though we are told of real or alleged attempts on his life. The transmission of his message was not so perfect as we could wish, and has left his followers — and modern scholars — quite a few things to argue about, but it certainly seems a great deal less dubious than that of the message of Jesus. I may remark in parenthesis that a distinguished New Testament scholar with whom I was once acquainted, and who died recently, was reported to have produced, on the basis of his research among the manuscripts, a new version of the New Testament that was so radically different from current versions that it was only published privately, in a limited edition, for his friends. I don't know what he found out, or believed he had found out, and haven't seen the book — and if I were to see it it would probably strain my poor knowledge of Greek to the limits and beyond to attempt to understand it — but it may be that it contains some new — and seemingly disconcerting — insights into the mind of Jesus.
What is enlightenment? Silly question — not being enlightened 1 can't tell you, and don't propose to try. Perhaps, however, it is possible to hazard a theory about the mechanics of 'disendarkenment'. Let us start with an analogical case in which not indeed enlightenment, but certainly some remarkable powers of the mind have been revealed. An interesting article in the Independent entitled 'Brilliance in a Benighted Mind' discusses the cases of some people who, despite grave physical and/or mental handicaps, display powers far beyond the capacity of most of us. A blind man suffering from cerebral palsy can play any tune faultlessly on hearing it only once. An animal sculptor with an 1Q of about 50 and a vocabulary of about 50 words needs only a fleeting glance at a picture to be able to reproduce it in perfect three-dimensional detail. A 12-year-old autistic boy drew an accurate architectural sketch of St Pancras Station after a brief visit, and so on. The author refers to left- and right-hand brain-halves, the possible effect of hormones, etc., all of which may be perfectly true without going very far towards explaining the phenomena. I )l course we now know that one function of the brain is to act ;i« a kind of sieve through which the vast mass of sense-impressions passes to enable us to cope without being overwhelmed by them. The brain, in fact, is not so much a memory as a forgettory. It seems to me that these people have, as it were, a hole in some odd corner of the sieve through which some knowledge streams unhindered. The knowledge is unconscious and unselective, and certainly cannot in any way be equated with 'enlightenment', but it is genuine knowledge or skill of a high order, often with an aesthetic quality about it. It also seems clearly to contain, often at least, an element of extrasensory perception. In passing, I would like to suggest that it is questions such as these to which science should pay much more attention than it does. The time has surely come by now to stop brushing scientifically inconvenient facts under the carpet. Anyway, the phenomena I have mentioned, though clearly not themselves forms or aspects of 'enlightenment', may well be considered as possibly analogous to it.
The arising of the Dhamma-eye is described in the Suttas as follows: 'And just as a clean cloth from which all stains have been removed receives the dye perfectly, so in the Brahmin Pokkharasati (or whoever), as he sat there, there arose the pure and spotless Dhamma-eye, and he knew: "Whatever things have an origin must come to cessation (Yam kind samudaya-dhammam sabbarn tarn nirodha-dhammam)"' — at first sight an almost trivial-sounding statement like 'What goes up must come down'. We may even think, too, of the Devil's version in Goethe's Faust: 'Alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht' — 'Whatever comes into being deserves to perish'. Perhaps its profounder significance begins to dawn when we contemplate another 'celebrated verse', as Rhys Davids calls it:
Anicca vata sankhara uppada-vaya-dhammino uppajjitva nirujjhanti tesarn vupasamo sukho —
'Impermanent are compounded things, prone to rise and fall, Having risen, they're destroyed, their passing truest bliss,'
Said to have been uttered at the Buddha's passing-away by Salcka king of the gods, and often quoted. The transience of all mundane things — things not of this world alone but even of the highest heavens — is here pointed up sharply, and the bliss of non-attachment to them is stressed. This is not full enlightenment but the moment of stream-entry or First Path, after which full enlightenment is certain. This comes with the total destruction of the asavas or 'corruptions'. I have already suggested that the opening of the Dhamma-eye is comparable to the birth of the Word in the soul in Eckhart's terminology. About a century before Eckhart, Wolfram von Eschenbach the greatest medieval German poet, wrote what I consider the finest version of the Holy Graal story, Parzival, which can be read in a fine Penguin translation by my friend Arthur Hatto. For Wolfram, uniquely, the Graal was not the chalice of the Last Supper or anything of that sort, but a stone which had come down from Heaven. The French scholar Rene Nelli thought that Wolfram drew on astrological conceptions of his time for his idea of a precious stone fallen from heaven which, by grace, had kept its pristine purity, thus participating in the incorruptible nature of the firmament. It is thus a (mythical) physical symbol of that spark in the soul of which Eckhart speaks, that is incorruptible and uncreated. Surely what Eckhart, and the Buddha, and Wolfram von Eschenbach are pointing to is the same knowing, differing only in degree — most completely in the Buddha, and perhaps if we could only find it, equally in the teachings of Jesus, less profoundly but very poetically in Wolfram. It must be, too, what my own venerable teacher, Ajahn Chah, calls establishing the Buddha in our mind, the Buddha bcing*not the historical Gotama but 'the one who knows' — somehow impersonal and formless, but attainable if we make the
effort and truly seek. This should of course not be literally taken to suggest that the Buddha is something like a personal God who knows — which would naturally be quite alien to the Buddhist way of viewing things and utterly foreign to the Ajahn's way of thought. The Buddha', he says in A Taste of Freedom, 'is just this "One who knows" within this very mind. It knows the Dhamma, it investigates the Dhamma. It's not that the Buddha who lived so long ago comes to talk to us, but this Buddha-nature, the "One who knows", arises. The mind becomes illumined.' Are he and Eckhart, using different but not totally dissimilar words, groping towards an expression of the same thing? For Eckhart, understanding is the most important thing — he even differed from St Thomas in placing God's understanding above His being.
Conventional Buddhist wisdom would have it that Ajahn Chah, for instance, could be — indeed doubdess is — on the Path, whether as Stream-Winner, Once-Returner, Non-Returner or even Arahant. Eckhart on the other hand, not having been exposed to the teaching of Dhamma and being rooted in a theistic tradition, could not, it would be said, have even 'entered the Stream'. I think all that shows is that people who set much store by statements of that kind have themselves not made much progress along the Path, however learned they may be. They are blind like Eckhart's accusers. I don't profess to know whether Eckhart had reached First Path, or Second Path, or whatever, but I think he was further along the Path than many professing Buddhists.
I think by now I have interposed myself and my probably foolish opinions sufficiently between Eckhart and you. I will conclude therefore by allowing him to speak for himself. In an eloquent passage in his 87th sermon he says that which should provide you with ample food for thought — and meditation. Eckhart says:
'Now pay earnest attention to this! I have often said, and eminent authorities say it too, that a man should be so free of all things and all works, both inward and outward, that he may be a proper abode for God where God can work. Now we shall say something else. If it is the case that a man is free of all creatures, of God and of self, and if it is still the case that God finds a place in him to work, then we declare that as long as this is in that man, he is not poor with the strictest poverty.... So we say that a man should be so poor that he neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, for my essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures. For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die. According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now and shall eternally remain. That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things: and if I had so willed it, I would not have been, and all things would not have been. If I were not, God would not be either. I am the cause of God's being God: if I were not, then God would not be God. But you do not need to know this.
'A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his emanation, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God, all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this I acknowledge myself as a creature. But in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all His works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. There I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all His divine works: for this breaking-through guarantees to me that I and God are one. Then I am what I was, then I neither wax nor wane, for then I am an unmoved cause that moves all things. Here, God finds no place in man, for man by his poverty wins for himself what he has eternally been and shall eternally remain. Here, God is one with the spirit, and that is the strictest poverty one can find.
'If anyone cannot understand this sermon, he need not worry. For so long as a man is not equal to this truth, he cannot understand my words, for this is a naked truth which has come direct from the heart of God.'
None of Eckhart's accusers, so far as we know, made any reference to this passage. I commend it to you for your contemplation. Buddha and God
Related Documents:
- Buddha and God - Current Page
- Joy is Born - Eckhart and Nagarjuna
- Meister Eckhart and Religious Comparison
- Buddhism God and Meister Eckhart
External Sites on Meister Eckhart:
