God is without name, for no one can say or understand anything of him… Hence if I say: ‘God is good’, this is not true. I am good, but God is not good… If I say further: ‘God is wise’, this is not true, I am wiser than he. If I say also: ‘God is a being’, this is not true; he is a being above being and a superessential negation. A master says: If I had a God whom I could know, I would not think him to be God…
– Master Eckhart
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VII
Become as a child,
become deaf, become blind!
Your very something
must become nothing,
drive all something, all nothing away!
Leave place, leave time,
and images as well!
Go without way
on the narrow path,
thus you will come to the desert trace.VIII
O my soul,
get out, god in!
all my something sink
into god’s nothing,
sink into the bottomless swell!
If I flee from you,
you come to me.
If I lose myself,
I find you,
O goodness beyond being!
– Master Eckhart, from Granum sinapis de divinitate pulcherrima (tr. W. Franke)
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The higher circle, to which K. would like to gain access, where indeed he would like to take up residence, since he has ‘come here to stay’, is certainly not the home of the good, as benevolent interpreters say, nor is it the home of evil, as malevolent interpreters say; rather, it is the site where good and evil arrange themselves into shapes that can’t be recognised or distinguished by those who have encountered them only in other circles. The ancient Chinese would not be surprised by this; they would say that they are the two elements united in the Holy Place. But who nowadays is able to reason like the ancient Chinese?
– Roberto Calasso, K. (tr. G. Brock)
God is without name, for no one can say or understand anything of him… Hence if I say: ‘God is good’, this is not true. I am good, but God is not good… If I say further: ‘God is wise’, this is not true, I am wiser than he. If I say also: ‘God is a being’, this is not true; he is a being above being and a superessential negation. A master says: If I had a God whom I could know, I would not think him to be God.
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Kafka, Master Eckhart, Roberto Calasso
Your very something
must become nothing,
drive all something, all nothing away!
Leave place, leave time,
and images as well!
Go without way
On the narrow path,
Thus you will come to the desert trace.
– Master Eckhart (tr. W. Franke)
Posted in Master Eckhart
It is the same as when the fire wants to draw the wood into itself and, again, itself into the wood; then it finds first that the wood is unlike itself. Hence it needs time. First it makes the wood warm and hot, and then the latter smokes and cracks because it is unlike the fire. Now the hotter the wood grows the quieter and calmer it becomes, and the more like the fire it is, the more peaceful it is, until it is itself wholly fire.
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Master Eckhart
The God who is without a name is inexpressible, and the soul in its ground is equally inexpressible, as he is inexpressible.
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Master Eckhart, Religion
- God is without name, for no one can say or understand anything of him… Hence if I say: ‘God is good’, this is not true. I am good, but God is not good… If I say further: ‘God is wise’, this is not true, I am wiser than he. If I say also: ‘God is a being’, this is not true; he is a being above being and a superessential negation. A master says: If I had a God whom I could know, I would not think him to be God…
- God becomes God when the creatures say: ‘God’.
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Master Eckhart, Religion
It is as if a man had a violent thirst. He could yet do something else but drink and could also think of other things; yet, whatever he did or with whomsoever he were together, whatever his intention or thought or work, the image of the drink will not leave him as long as his thirst lasts; and the greater his thirst, the more intense, the more interior, present and constant the image of the drink.
– Master Eckhart (trans. Hilda Graef)
Posted in Master Eckhart, Religion
A pessimist is someone who is waiting for it to rain. But I’m already soaked to the skin.
– Leonard Cohen
If I knew for certain that all my rocks would be changed into gold, the more and the larger rocks I had, the more pleased I would be.
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Leonard Cohen, Master Eckhart
If a man looks for nothing, what right does he have to complain if he finds nothing?
– Master Eckhart
Posted in Master Eckhart
