An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3

 

Icon by Chantal Heinigg

An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3:

Over the last 12 years, I’ve repeatedly returned to Meister Eckhart’s sermons. This practice has become an informal morning discipline. More often than not I'll read a bit of a sermon at the beginning of the day — not all of it, because the sermons are so rich and dense and beautiful that just a bit of one is enough to ponder for a day or two. 

Or even a week, or a year.

Every sermon by Meister Eckhart is an excursion deep into the unknown territory of the soul. 

Individually, each one presents a dauntingly complex and sophisticated set of insights into the human psyche and its action, as well as the nature of the Christian life and human relationships. Collectively, they represent one of the world’s great bodies of insight into religious philosophy and practice: all from a single man, but representative of the very high ground occupied by Medieval monasticism in general. Meister Eckhart did not, after all, work alone; he was the product of a community engaged in efforts the likes and results of which were rare even then. To the present, it is a lost world; but that lost world buried extraordinary treasures in its arts and scriptures.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm publishing an eight-part series in this space commenting on the entire text of Sermon 3. 

My notes on the sermon are intended to lightly touch on various aspects of practice which Meister Eckhart mentions so deftly, and with so many different details, that they may seem difficult to digest. Things said 800 years ago do not always yield their relationship to modern understandings so easily. Yet when they do, we may uncover commonalities of insight that surprise us. 

Meister Eckhart’s sermons cast light on some profound similarities between medieval Christian monastic practice and Buddhism; and of course this has not gone unnoticed among scholars. The relationship between Meister Eckhart’s writings and Gurdjieff’s ideas have been somewhat less investigated; yet here, once again, the territory is rich for exploration, and the commentaries will explore it at as much depth as the vehicle of essays reasonably allows.

The commentary is intended to establish some points of departure for further contemplation, and nothing more.

The Sermon will be reproduced in its entirety during the eight-part series. 

All quotations from Meister Eckhart's Sermons 3 are reprinted with the kind permission of The Sangha Trust, and are taken from The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart.

Lee van Laer

Sparkill, NY

January 2021