MEISTER ECKHART’S SERMON ON DETACHMENT
Though I have spoken a great deal on on how “internal poverty” allows for detachment, I have said not said nearly so much as to how this internal poverty should affect our external lives (Eckhart 199). For it is one thing to profess inward detachment, and another to give examples of how a detached man lives his life. As I will demonstrate and explain, he who is detached must refrain from all extraordinary or excessive behaviors. As such, he need not spend his time on activities, for instance, such as prayer; for neither riches nor poverty are of any consequence to the detached heart and, therefore, prayer as it is commonly understood is an unnecessary activity, as I will more fully explain. To pray is to want, to desire, and he who wants nothing has everything he needs. Were I to summarize a life of detachment, it would be with this maxim: ‘Live by whichever methods allow you to think as little as possible on the methods by which you’re living.’ One who lives by such a principle, removing all notions of selfhood and livelihood, will have taken the first step toward preparing their external being for a life lived as an internal being characterized by pure detachment.
To be detached is to live with internal poverty, for “a poor man wants nothing, and knows nothing, and has nothing” (Eckhart 199). I have previously given examples of “some people who do not understand this well,” which I will clarify by stating that to focus on outward displays of poverty are just that: outward displays, or ephemeral images. “Penances and external exercises” are but distractions, so do not trouble yourself with this exaggerated form of external poverty. “The man is truly poor in spirit who can well forgo everything that is not necessary,” but that is not to say that all should be fleeing civilization to live the meager lives of hermits (Eckhart 282). Rather, “God gives to every man according to what is best and most fitting for him,” so you should be at peace whether you receive God’s gifts or not (Eckhart 283). Whatever happens to me, whatever gifts I receive or do not receive in this life, I am contented, for if I were to receive a thousand treasures I would be thankful, and if I were to lose all my earthly possessions I would patiently accept it as an exercise, a form of suffering, and thus the poor man is a man who is always at peace, whether he lives in a lordly estate or a lowly hovel (283-84). For, though I will accept what gifts God chooses to grant me, I nonetheless am ever ready to relinquish them, but whether I receive “honors and ease” or “hardships and disgrace” I have put my trust not in any images of wealth or even of “God” but instead look only to empty myself of all such images, of all such attachments, leaving room only for God (269).
What does this mean? It means that the individual should live according to his means, and whatever sort of external existence given to him by God should be carried out with as little distracting effort as possible. Farmers and shepherds and beggars must work for their food, but why should someone born into a higher estate lower their external conditions? Perhaps “their intention is good,” and for this reason “external poverty…is greatly to be esteemed in a man who voluntarily practices it for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he himself used it when he was on earth” (199). They could do better, however, by not caring at all whether they are living poorly or richly, and I say that in living within their given station they are more detached than if they lower their circumstances of living to a form of external poverty. That is because a man who could have lived comfortably but who lowers his external conditions is voluntarily imposing upon himself a host of distractions, all of which threaten to preoccupy the mind and the heart with earthly troubles that prevent the detachment necessary to become equals with God. Hours that could have been devoted to the removal of the self and the achievement of oneness with God are now spent securing the mean verities of life.
To illustrate just one way in which one may apply these principles into their daily conduct, I will expound upon that aforementioned assertion that, just as it is harmful to move out of one’s means by living in excessive luxury or disproportionate poverty, the wants and needs of either are often expressed through prayer—and so he who is detached need not pray but in his heart. To provide an illustration of a man who possessed many virtues but did not have pure detachment in his spoken prayers, I look to Solomon, whose heart was in the right direction when he had “not asked riches, wealth, or honour, nor the life of [his] enemies, neither yet hast asked long life; but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for [himself]” (2 Chronicles 1:11). And because “this was in [his] heart,” he was given “riches, and wealth, and honour” (2 Chronicles 1:12). Still, I would say that although he was blessed by with the wisdom which he sought, Solomon was not truly one with God, for this prayer was far from pure detachment, the reasons for which are numerous. First, the intention behind his prayer was that he desired the ability to “judge [God’s] people,” demonstrating an outwardness of his soul that precludes detachment altogether (Eckhart 287). Though it might be said that this request of God was commendable for demonstrating the virtue of mercifulness, this again shows an inability to achieve detachment, as it is “man’s going out of himself to the shortcomings of his fellow men, and through this the heart becomes troubled” (Eckhart 287). The prayer was not intended to bring himself closer to God but to deal with other mortals, increasing his success on earth but drawing him further away from heaven.
Even though he did not have detachment when he prayed, for his many other virtues, such as mercifulness and humility and love, Solomon was rewarded with wisdom, “for whoever does well will also be well rewarded,” and “whoever does evil will be rewarded accordingly” (Eckhart 289). This is clear enough, but the detached man would have responded no differently than if he had not received anything at all. That is why there is so much truth in the proverb: “Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me” (Proverbs 30:8). Ask not for God to adorn you with wealth or to render you poor; the detached heart asks for “nothing else than for uniformity with God” (Eckhart 292). If your desire is only to be brought closer to God, then you will understand instead that whatever you receive is what is “convenient” for you, in accordance with God’s greater will.
Solomon’s prayer shows that he was not detached, as all prayers are indicative of one who has not yet achieved pure detachment, “because if someone prays he asks God to get something for him, or he asks God to take something away from him” (Eckhart 292). To continue my previous example, had Solomon been detached, he would not have spoken his prayer at all, because even though he insisted that he was not asking for his troubles to be removed—such as his enemies, and the infirmities of age—it remains that ‘”a heart in detachment asks for nothing, nor has it anything of which it would gladly be free” (Eckhart 292). Had Solomon been detached, the judging of God’s people would not be left to a particularly wise yet ultimately fallible man, but would have been put in the hands of God himself, since the detached heart “achieves the highest uniformity with God, and is most susceptible to the divine inflowing” (Eckhart 292). That is why a detached heart “is free of all prayer,” and why the external act of praying is not necessary (Eckhart 292). Devote your hours not to praying for this or that, but spend your time working toward a greater detachment.
I have delved into great detail regarding this example of prayer, and in showing how this fixation on worldly status reveals itself in prayers for change, so too can this notion extend itself toward your every action. Whether you are aiming to gather new luxuries or to rid yourself of your property to live the life of an ascetic, in either case you are working for yourself and not for God. That is because if God “finds a man so poor” as to have pure detachment, true poverty of spirit, then “God performs his own work, and God is his own place to work in, and so God is his own worker in himself,” which means that if you live in this notion of pure poverty, then neither may be, for the accumulation nor abandonment will be the intent behind your tasks, whatever they for everything you do at such a point is surely the pursuit of “that everlasting being which [God] was and which he is now and which he will evermore remain” (Eckhart 202).
God in the abovementioned case proves unity is unchanging, heedless of the various freaks of Fortune that lie beneath earthly events, so why should you not leave you daily works in the hands of God? To summarize this I am reminded of a dictum of my own devising: “let God perform what he will, and let man be free” (201). That means, above all else, that he who understands my teachings will already be willing to accept the idea that living with detachment, of obtaining that holiest of virtues, necessitates not a state of becoming but of being (200-201). Thus, as I hope I have demonstrated, it is not that typical struggle that characterizes the average man’s existence that will alloy that crucial detachment, but it is the very act of putting these struggles aside that will show that you are truly poor. People of good sense, hear me: when you go about your day, do not pray to gain food or to have famine taken away; do not work toward becoming a rich man or becoming a hermit, but keep within your means while understanding that any weal or woe will be by God’s will alone; and you will be one step closer to understanding how to persist detached, as unchanged and unmoved by those earthly instances around you that you are most like God Himself.
WORKS CITED
Bible (King James Version). The Zondervan Corporation, 1995. Web.
<http://www.biblegateway.com>.
Eckhart, Johannes. Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and
Defense. Trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. New York: Paulist, 1981. Print.