When earth discovered that its nature was unlike that of heaven and far from it, it fled from heaven to the lowest place it could find and remained t… - Meister Eckhart

For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.

If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.

Even when Meister Eckhart writes as a Christian about suffering — the topic where we should least expect common ground with Buddhism — he finds this common ground with sleepwalking sureness, as long as it is the mystic in him who speaks. Take this, for instance: “Our Lord says in the Psalms of a good man that he is with him in his suffering.” With him! This is not the God above the clouds, enthroned in immovable detachment. This is a lover who suffers when we suffer. I ponder this mystery, and a word of the Dalai Lama comes to my mind; it shall stand at the end of this foreword, since his name stands at its beginning. “Your Holiness,” someone asked, “your Buddhist tradition has so wonderful a way of overcoming suffering. What do you have to say to the Christian tradition that seems to be preoccupied with pain?” With his compassionate smile the Dalai Lama gave an answer that went straight to the common ground of the two traditions. “Suffering,” he said, “is not overcome by leaving pain behind. Suffering is overcome by bearing pain for the sake of others.” (Christ and Bodhisattva embraced at that moment. Across seven hundred years of history I could hear Meister Eckhart laughing with joy. Or was it God’s eternal laughter?) BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST, O.S.B. Big Sur, California Summer Solstice 1995