The dialogue of Lu Yu, let's come back to that, conveys the same teaching. Through a progressive process of forgetting and self-emptying, a detached person finally achieves enlightenment. He sees the one in the myriad things and perceives the unity of all things. Thus, Lu Yu speaks of his disciple. Having seen the one, he was then able to abolish the distinction of past and present. Having abolished the past and present, he was then able to enter the realm of neither life nor death. The well-known Chinese philosopher comments on this passage. When this unity is perceived, the philosopher Feng Yulan, when this unity is perceived, the distinctions between past and present, life and death, are obliterated. And one reaches eternity. Thus, we can see that it is by forgetting life

[01:02]

that one may attain to immortality, a goal which would be impossible if the distinction between existence and nonexistence were not first obliterated. So far, we have presented something of John's recent view of vision through emptiness. So my second task is to present something of our friend Eckhart in order to come to a comparison on the third section. Manifestation of the divine image through detachment in Meister Eckhart. If Zhangzi indicates the way to become a true person, a true knowledge through self-emptying, forgetting, or disregarding things in the world, Eckhart's key word is detachment.

[02:04]

And it permeates in all his writings. But the classical places, of course, the small treatise on detachment. The treatise is an attempt to portray detachment after Shidenheit as the highest virtue, because it brings humans closest to God. After Shidenheit means being cut off or away from something. John Caputo, a scholar on Heidegger and Eckhart, well sums up the meaning of detachment in Eckhart's treatise bearing this title. He says, here after Shidenheit means the state of having cut off one's affection from everything creative and creaturely, from the world and the self. It is a condition of purity from creative things, from attachment to them.

[03:06]

It does not refer to a physical or spatial separation, but to a detachment of the heart from working goods. In this treatise, Eckhart explores detachment above love. He says, love constrains me to love God, but detachment compels God to love me. Everything tends to rest in its natural place, and God's natural place is unity and purity, which come from detachment. That's why God is most willing and glad to stay in a detached heart. The key for his affirmation that detachment is the highest virtue that brings humans closest to God, the key lies in the fact that God is pure detachment. He says, for the reason why God is God is because of his immovable detachment.

[04:07]

And from this detachment, he has his purity, his simplicity, and his immutability. Detachment is the most distinctive hallmark of God. God's purity and detachment completely separates from all things. It ends separatissimo. Now, for us to understand this, we need to come to and refer to Eckhart's doctrine of God from his other writings. His doctrine of God can be said as based on a foundational proposition, that is, existence is God. Existence is God. Not God is existence, but all existence is God. From this, he draws two conclusions. First, creatures are nothing in themselves. Attention. Considered in themselves, creatures are nothing. Second, God is the existence of things,

[05:11]

all the things that exist. I think Frank Baum brought out, together they brought out St. Catherine's expression. God is my being. So Eckhart would say, God is the existence of all things that exist. As Catherine would say, God is my being. And I just think it would be more cautious to say, God is the ground of my being. From this second conclusion, he further draws the paradoxical double aspect of divine immanence and transcendence as the existence of existing things, the ground of existence. God is certainly immanent, inherent in all things. But at the same time, he transcends. Precisely because he's immanent, he transcends. God, the ground of existence, God as the ground of being,

[06:12]

exists on a totally different level. He's not one thing among many things, one object among many other objects. God is not this or that, Eckhart insists again and again. God is not this or that. He's nothing in the sense of no thing or not a thing. So he's at the same time entirely, utterly immanent and utterly transcendent. And as transcendent, God is completely detached. In this sense, immovable detachment is the basic character of God. Now in God, detachment is an attribute of his metaphysical nature for humans in order to become like God. We need to practice detachment as a moral virtue, in a moral sense.

[07:18]

So he says, as God is immovable detachment by nature, humans are brought into the greatest likeness to God by the same quality. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honor, shame or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by the breath of weight. This immovable detachment brings a man into the greatest likeness of God. Then Eckhart continues with his famous statement that the reason why God is God is because of his immovable detachment. Eckhart also employs another term for the same idea, that is, letting be. Letting be has a twofold meaning.

[08:19]

On the one hand, it means letting go. On the other hand, letting God work freely. So negative and positive aspect. So is the term detachment. It has a twofold aspect. Negative and positive. Negatively, detachment frees a person, empties oneself of creatures. So the negative side would be to be filled with God. He says to be empty of all creatures is to be full of God. And to be full of creatures is to be empty of God. He also compares the human mind to a wax tablet. In order for God to write something on it, everything written previously has to be erased. Everything called this and that, attachment to this and that

[09:22]

must be expunged before God can act, can write freely on the tablet of our mind. Then we come to another aspect of the Eka. That's the theme of manifestation of God's image hidden in humans. And I find it could be the use of the three A's. No way! No, it's not his three minutes, it's his own three minutes. If he would have responded... Oh, oh, oh. [...]

[10:22]

Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. So, it means... No, no, no. I still got nine. This discussion didn't count. Okay. Now, I find that between treatises, beautifully two treatises, small treatises, On Detachment, and the other one is The Noble Man, that would give us material to reflect on the idea of manifestation of divine image hidden in humans. And they are providentially also printed together in volume three of the English translation of The Noble Man and On Detachment. On Detachment

[11:25]

On Detachment talks about the excellence of the virtue of detachment. And the small treatise The Noble Man describes the realization of the noble man in each one of us through detachment. Even though the term detachment itself is not used in this small treatise, but he used similar terms like forgetting, renouncing, putting aside, and so on. And the title is taken from Mark A Rook, 1912 A Certain Noble Man his version of that A Certain Noble Man went away to a distant country to gain a kingdom for himself and returned. So, the title of the treatise is taken from there. And Eckhart distinguishes between twofold nature in a human person. Body, he calls the outer man, and spirit, the inner man, the noble man.

[12:27]

And he compares the noble man to a field where God has planted the seeds of divine nature and has impressed his image on it. And citing from origin, he says, this divine image can be covered up, can be concealed, but can never be destroyed or extinguished. It's indelible. And he uses and applies three beautiful similes to explain this idea of some reality, a hidden reality waiting to be unveiled, waiting to emerge. First simile is also from origin. It's a living fountain. In the ground of the soul, there is a living fountain of water. It can happen that it's covered by earth, stone particles. But, very gradually, when the earth

[13:29]

is removed, the fountain appears again visually. And he interprets earth upon the fountain as firstly desire. Second illustration is about an artist. He says, Eckhart offers another example, that of an artist wanting to make an image from wood. Eckhart's contention is that the artist does not put the image into the wood, but he cuts away at the chips that had concealed the image. Beautiful idea. He says, the artist gives nothing to the wood,

[14:32]

but takes from it, cutting away the overlay and removing the drops. And then, that which was hidden under it shines forth. And Eckhart presents the third simile. The sun is always shining, but if there is a cloud or fog, we do not perceive its radiance. So we need to remove the cloud and the fog. Coming to these three examples, there is a common factor, very important, that the reality sought after, the fountain, the image, the sun, are already present in the human being, but concealed. The process of removing the obstacles can be better understood by Eckhart's reference to Augustine. Augustine teaches

[15:36]

that when the soul is turned to downwards, when the soul is turned outwards or downwards, God's image receives a touching and is veiled. But when the soul is turned upward into eternity, into God alone, then the veil is removed and God's image shines forth and glows. So the removal of the veil depends on the soul turning away from the creature, to God, from what is temporal to what is eternal. Eckhart's main interest in the noble man is the emergence or manifestation of the divine image hidden in the crown of the soul. Eckhart is more concerned with the person becoming his image, rather than his seeing or knowing the image. For him, knowledge is already implied by and subordinated to

[16:38]

being. The noble man is accomplished when the divine image shines forth and becomes visible in a person. As Eckhart understands the divine image impressed in the humans to be the word of the Son of God, the emergence or manifestation of God's image is also explained by him as the birth of the Son in the soul. Now, let me conclude with the comparison. I could say something more about the manifestation of God's image of the birth of the Son of God in the soul, but I prefer to come to the third point, comparing Zhangzi and Eckhart. And I can more or less just read one paragraph

[17:39]

and you can give the response and so on. Comparing Zhangzi and Eckhart, there are three aspects we can point out. True person, noble man, the result of their detachment, and whether they have a negative or positive view. In spite of the great distances, geographical, temporal, and philosophical between Zhangzi and Eckhart, one finds a profound resonance in their wisdom teachings. The first parallel is between Zhangzi's true person and Eckhart's noble man. Though a true person in Zhangzi is a concrete person, and a noble man stands for the inner self. However, they both stress the same quality of perfect detachment or inner freedom. The second parallel can be seen in the way they perceive the positive

[18:41]

aspect of self-emptying or detachment. For Zhangzi, it leads to a true vision or enlightenment in which one sits down as present in all things. For Eckhart, detachment frees a person and allows the deeply engraved divine image to shine forth in humans, or the birth of the sun to take place in the soul. Moreover, for both of them, the result of enlightenment is not a total negation or rejection of people and things of the world. That can be a big problem. Are detachment leading to total negation and rejection? No. For Zhangzi, enlightenment leads to the vision of the unity and equality of all things. Heaven and earth and I exist together. That's the

[19:42]

enlightenment. One with thou, one with the universe. This vision of oneness helps to foster communion, unity, while overcoming discrimination and selfish craving. For Eckhart, detachment brings about the realization of the divine image present in human persons and certainly upholds human dignity. What about other creative things? A detached mind, according to Eckhart, also sees the unity and equality of all things. Because, according to Eckhart, all things were spoken by God in the one eternal world and rooted, all things are rooted in God as the ground of their existence. So there is this utterly real unity of all things being spoken

[20:43]

by God, one world from eternity, and having their existence on the ground of God. This view at once affirms and relativizes all things in the world. It only remains to find out a major difference between the two views. The chief emphasis of Johnson is the vision of an empty, detached mind, which sees Thou present in the myriad things and enjoys the experience of oneness with Thou and the universe, a kind of horizontal vision. Eckhart, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with the emergence of the noble man through the manifestation of the divine image hidden in humans. It is more a vertical vision, a vertical approach. For Eckhart, vision is already implied by and based on

[21:45]

the emergent feeling as its self-luminosity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Father Joseph. That was extremely clear, I felt. A wonderful presentation. I'm not sure whoever helped here has already been introduced, so I'll just aim for twelve minutes of response. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, thank you to Father Joseph for bringing these two great thinkers, philosophers, and

[22:45]

seekers of liberation together so that we look at them with both eyes within an hour. I found that personally very rewarding and very unexpected by that. I would like to first of all teach everybody how to say Zhuangzi because if we're going to be talking about him it's helpful to be able to say his name. Say the word gentile. Gentile. Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi. Say the word Jews. Jews. Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi. Gentiles love Jews. Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi. If you think of gentiles love Jews, we'll have Zhuangzi. A little bit of

[23:48]

pneumatic pneumonic device. Zhuangzi lived in Meng maybe, which is perhaps Hunan province, south of the Yellow River. He was a contemporary of Mencius, which may not be helpful to those of you who don't know where Mencius lived. That was the 4th century B.C.E., 370-319 roughly, or subtracted from the 4th century. Before the common era. Those of you who may have heard of Zhuangzi once in your life probably heard it in terms of the butterfly parable. This is from chapter 6 called The Equality of Things. Once I Zhuang Zhou, Zhou was his given name, dreamed that I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious, I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Zhou, Zhuangzi. Suddenly I awoke and there I was, visibly Zhuang Zhou. I did not know whether

[24:49]

it was Zhuang Zhou dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction. This is called the transformation of things. So we get a flavor for Zhuangzi. He wrote mostly a fable. A hundred thousand words. He is a mystical philosopher. He is a brilliant and original mind. He wrote from a chaotic, troubled, and absurd world of great cruelty and social chaos. The period that he wrote in was a period that one would want to remove oneself from, to be liberated from, and I think that's important in understanding the goal of Zhuangzi, perhaps, as he, as Father Joseph, is so eloquently brought out and compared. He is most important for the first seven chapters of the book that bears his name. There's a lot of scholastic debate

[25:50]

about the rest of the dozen or so chapters, whether or not he wrote them, whether or not his disciples wrote them. Probably we can borrow the comment made by Mark Twain that the works of Zhuangzi were written by Zhuangzi or by somebody else of the same name. Zhuangzi is a difficult book. He has always been hard to know what to do with Zhuangzi except enjoy him. And people have enjoyed him forever. He uses humor as a deadly weapon. Against all that is pompous, staid, and holy, he takes unerring aim of conventional values, glory, fame, laws, and their structures, and he levels them with his humor. He teaches largely through pointer or paradoxical anecdotes, using non sequiturs, koan-like, nonsensical words

[26:51]

meant to jog you into an awareness of the truth beyond convention or logic. And he does it with this brilliance in the Chinese that he uses as superb. He writes pseudo-logical discussions, this is borrowing Arthur Weyle's description, or debates that start out sounding completely rational and sober and end up reducing language itself to gibbering inanity over and over again. Arthur Weyle said that perhaps Zhuangzi made the most fierce and dazzling assault ever made, not only on humanity's conventional systems and values, but also upon conventional concepts of time, space, reality, and even causation. He most vehemently condemns drawing forced and artificial distinctions. Now, I had never met Meister Eckhart before, so imagine my pleasure for those of you who know Eckhart, and again I thank Father Joseph for giving me this opportunity. I have to say I stand amazed

[27:51]

at Meister Eckhart in the two essays that I wrote. I find the three similes, the fountain, the artist, and the sun, immediately available in teachings and meditation. That is the process whereby you uncover the clouds over the sun, and the sun is shining there as ever, as the Buddha nature shines. You grow in the Tao by subtraction likewise, so I think the comparison is very apt. Also, the idea of the great reversal, turning around, returning the senses, the data that they cognize, and the consciousness of them, turning those around and rediscovering the Buddha nature, uncovering the Buddha nature. Now, just quickly to the comparison, I found that what the two great teachers tell us to avoid is very similar. The process seems to be not different. They teach us what not to do in the spiritual quest.

[28:53]

It may be the via negativa, but I find that in the process, their motivations seem to be different. Which is to say, I found in Meister Eckhart a sense of love leading one towards the love of God. Juan Luzardo very much seems to be telling us it's a negative motivation, it's more the stick than the carrot. We want to see through the falseness. We do not want to identify with hypocrisy. So that comparison has its limits for sure, but I think that's one difference. I wanted to see, I think Father Joseph very much has his eyes on the prize. That is to say we want to go for the goal and be clear about this, the true man and how to recognize him in us, and also through detachment, getting back to the Godhead. That's superb. And I think the comparison

[29:54]

stands. I think it's valid, as you've made it. I was unhappy that we didn't have time for you to give your last piece of the essay. Let me read it for you. Before concluding, there's an important question which we should tackle. With their ruthless emphasis on forgetfulness of and detachment from things in the world, one might wonder what exactly are the attitudes of Dromsula and Eckhart regarding people and things of the world. When I read them both in juxtaposed, I found a wonderful description of samadhi, particularly samadhi of cessation of thought, which is what's called nirvana with residue, nirvana with remainder. It's the state of the Arhat, or perhaps the Prashekhar Buddha, the one who sits on mountain peaks, observing the links of the twelve conditioned links of co-production, endlessly

[30:56]

cycling through, and is content with his or her stillness and purity. As I was contemplating what I was going to say, I raised my eyes and I saw that. And if this is not the First Noble Truth, what is the crucifix? It's an awareness that in a world where we seek that stillness and purity, that liberation from birth and death and the suffering of samsara, suppose we get there. Raise your eyes and what about that? How do you deal with that? Well, I would say that we have a quote here, Meister Eckhart says, two minutes, oops, he says,

[31:57]

when a man is deformed and transformed by God's eternity and has attained total forgetfulness of transitory temporal life and is drawn and translated into a child of God, beyond this there is no higher state. Then there is eternal rest and bliss for the final end of the inner man and the new man is eternal life. I would say that there is another stage, which is the bodhisattva path. The bodhisattva path says, and this is not to detract from anything that was said, I would say challenging what could be the next step. Challenge each one of us as we envision the states described by the two sages. If we take this seriously, then we say in accordance with the truth of suffering, living beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. In accordance with the truth of affliction, afflictions are endless, I vow to cut them all off. In accordance with the truth of cessation, Dharma doors

[32:58]

are limitless, methods of practice are limitless, I vow to learn them all. In accordance with the truth of the path, the Buddha's way, the sage's way, is supreme, and I vow to attain it. And I think that opens up the discussion a bit, where we might get a little bit of light as Zhuangzi and Maestro Eckhart cast shadows from the light of the suffering here. Was Jesus, was he not a bodhisattva? That's another question entirely. But it casts a shadow, whereby we see them in clearer relief. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Applause [...] No, no, can I just thank you? Laughter I will use my freedom so I don't make any further comment. That's just one word of thank you. Thank you for accepting to respond to paper because Eckhart,

[33:59]

as you told me earlier, it's not your field, it's something new and you accepted the invitation and you were so kind to supplement the three minutes. Thank you. Laughter Just briefly in response to the wonderful point about compassion in this, that maybe we can see just the works of Zhuangzi and Maestro Eckhart as their bodhisattva bodies responding to something. Transformation bodies. And they're still here, speaking to us. I wanted to thank Father Joseph because I understand in a fresh way how John and Zen and that is connected to Taoism through what you've said. And I wanted to apply what you were talking about from Zhuangzi about the not knowing. Back to issues we've talked about, about contemplation and meditation specifically. And the issue of techniques.

[35:01]

So, many of us from the Eastern traditions here have mentioned meditation and contemplation techniques and yet in the we emphasize just sitting, going beyond technique. And in a sense I felt that in what you were saying about Zhuangzi is not knowing this facing, this hidden reality. And a word that didn't come up in your presentation for which I feel is essential in this is faith. That essential part of just facing this hidden reality using techniques which are helpful but not getting caught in techniques is just a kind of direction or faith I would say towards meeting this hidden reality. So, my question, and faith I also mean commitment, dedication, vow. So, my question to you then is what is faith for Master Eckhart?

[36:02]

Practically speaking. I think it's very much there. Because in his treatise on the noble man, he kept emphasizing on the fact that the reality is already there. That's the major emphasis throughout that small treatise on the noble man. Excuse me, when Eckhart was not using inclusive language yet. I'm just quoting here. So, he kept insisting on that the reality is already there. He used two basic images, divine seed and divine image, firmly planted in the field of the human self. And the image engraved there. It can be colored but never destroyed. And then the three similes, also the fountain, the artist

[37:05]

carving an image on the wood, or the sun shining behind the cloud. It's there. It's waiting for the obstacles to be removed, and then it will emerge and appear and shine. Another thing is about faith. He also talks about grace. All these processes, our detachment, our removing of the obstacles so that this image can appear, or the sun, the birth of the sun in the soul, all depends on grace. Our goodwill, but God's grace. So I think faith is very much there. Although the term itself probably is not explicitly present, but all the reasoning, all the thinking behind is very much based on faith. Thank you. I want to remind everybody that with limited time

[38:07]

I'll try to be as brief as we can be. Brother David had a double signal, so I'm going to go to him next. Then there was Paul and Emily and Father Lawrence, and then we'll see where we get from there. Just very briefly, linguistically, the faith that Master Eckert has helped, faith for him is this trust, this courageous trust in what already is. And in German, I'm not absolutely sure if you use that. The word is sich verlassen, which means both, to trust, ultimately trust in, and literally means to leave oneself, to go away from oneself. Sich verlassen. The connection between detachment and faith. Also, just to add to that, very good question, Tiger, because for him, for example, letting be,

[39:07]

another word for detachment is gelassenheit, gelassen, letting be. Letting be has two aspects. First is letting go the attachment and things and so on. Now, eventually, the other side is letting God work. That's faith. Letting gelassen, letting things go, and then letting God be free to work inside and within us. For him, detachment is these two double-faced... And the third meaning is leisure. Gelassenheit. Mostly means leisure. So just... So, Paul, the secret... The secret one of our identities. I just want to say, the 12-step program, what you just said reminds me of that old adage, let go and let God. Beautiful, beautiful. Let go and let God. Thank you, Paul.

[40:09]

Oh, good, I didn't have three hands. I just wanted to note that the place of Confucius in the drawings is kind of ambiguous. Sometimes he's ignorant, sometimes he's a saint. And it's often easy for people to see Daoism as somehow over and against Confucianism, as a deep criticism of Confucianism. But sometimes we forget that. Like, for example, I got rid of ren, I got rid of yi, I got rid... you know, the virtues are all gone. And that's something great to be achieved according to that passage in the Zhuangzi. But when you look at the Lin Yu, there's also Confucius who said at the end of his life that he was finally able to embody all the virtues without thinking about all those virtues. They just spontaneously fall from the order of heaven. They're internalized. So, which means, to me, that Zhuangzi is not necessarily negating those virtues which connect us with

[41:11]

the rest of humanity. So the Zhuangzi who did reject official positions, as I'm sure said probably for some safety as much as anything else, wasn't necessarily a reckless detachment from humanity, but actually may well have internalized all of those virtues that are necessary to be part of the civilization. It's interesting that our Christological councils tried hard to explain the nature of Jesus as both divine and human, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father, and homoousias, which was actually an attempt to describe something that really is indescribable, especially in this Greek language, and I think really was detrimental throughout all of history because we really focused on the divine and we didn't really take a look very much at the human aspect of Jesus. So I think it's interesting that they had a glimpse of this

[42:13]

with the person of Jesus, but I think weren't successful in describing this nature that is true unity and existent for all of time. Thank you. Father Lawrence was next. Thank you. Thank you first of all for that wonderful, lucid and very refreshing investigation. I think when dialogue deals with the comparison of texts and teachers in that way, it seems to me, and I felt this in listening to you, it raises two kinds of insights, which are two types of recognition. The first type is when we recognize the experiential existential similarity between them. For example, the sitting in forgetfulness, or the experience of the clouds, of parting, of enlightenment,

[43:16]

say, periodic enlightenment. So Buddhists, Christians, Taoists can recognize that through various symbols and descriptions. The second kind of recognition has already been raised, actually, is at the more doctrinal level. Not so much the humans of experiential, but the doctrinal level, if you make that distinction. For example, when you speak about the realm of neither life nor death, I think that makes me begin to think of resurrection. Resurrection, which is not another rebirth, but an escape, or transcendental evolution beyond death and rebirth. So neither life nor death. Or, for example, when you speak about tranquility even in disturbance, that calls to mind, for me, the cross, especially the image of Jesus in that

[44:17]

extraordinary tranquility on the cross. Now, I wonder whether you have comments, thoughts, about the nature of those two kinds of insights or recognitions. The first kind, experiential, is fairly obvious and enjoyable. The second raises more questions and problems. How do you comment on that? You mean the similarities and differences on the doctrinal level? Yes. I think at the experiential level, one could say it's probably very much the same thing. At the doctrinal level, it's not so easy to say this is the same thing. Right. At the doctrinal level, comparing Eckert with Johnson, probably would be what do they understand

[45:17]

by the ultimate? Johnson, the ultimate is now, and Eckert is God. Now, Johnson's idea can come quite close with Eckert's idea, and probably not Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu's Tao is more the kind of ultimate reality, but most scholars, majority scholars would think that Lao Tzu's Tao is impersonal. Now, with Johnson, one can more comfortably argue that his ultimate reality, Tao, is personal being. He used terms like the creator. It's not just once or twice, but quite often in his writings. And this kind of not only the term creator, but also this expression of the kind of personal encounter, personal relationship with this ultimate reality. So that

[46:19]

puts Johnson in a closer relationship with the Christian concept of this ultimate reality. Now, the difference would be what I left out. The third part actually has five or six pages, the third part, but I have a summary of half a page. So what I read is the summary of half a page. Now, the difference, I think, is Johnson's vision tends to be, I call it, horizontal. The person merges into Tao and the universe, a kind of merging, oneness with Tao and the universe, a kind of horizontal vision. And Enka is more, I think, more personal, vertical. It is the divine reality in me waiting to be realized, to emerge, and I become one with that divine reality. Finally, with the

[47:21]

emergence of the image, the birth of the sun in the soul, and here's another further step, the breakthrough into the divine ground, which I have now discussed in my paper. After the birth of the sun, there's a further step, breakthrough into the divine ground. That's the final step for Enka. There one realizes, experiences, my ground is finally one with the divine ground. Now, this is doesn't exclude the universe, but also doesn't emphasize the universe. This is more a vertical approach, going deeper and deeper into the divine ground, into the divine abyss. This might be a major difference between the two approaches. Thank you. Very clear. I see a lot of... Yes, I can... If there's time, we may not want to do this. I would try to turn

[48:22]

the notch a little bit more specifically into the person of Jesus, into the resurrection. When one hears about his realm of neither life nor death, one thinks of the resurrection. Is that a valid comparison, for example? A valid association, or is it just an either one? I think so. I think the Daoists can accept the idea of immortality. For them, immortality is the divine spirit and body. It's the whole person, immortality. So the idea of resurrection, I think, can be acceptable to Daoist thought, especially to Johnson. Then, when it comes to the idea of Jesus Christ, then I think it's missing. The historical event of incarnation, the historical event of a savior, Jesus Christ, that's missing. That I must admit.

[49:22]

I think I would like to hear Professor Liu about the idea of resurrection. I mean, the immortality of the whole person. Is it part of the Daoist or any strong... I can mention that later in my talk. Okay. You know, since about 10.30, Fr. Nicholas has a point to make on this. There was a number of hands. Professor was first and Michael was second. I would like to limit it to those comments because we're going to run over. So let's have those three voices and let's see what's next. So Fr. I think this is to ask the same question that Fr. Lawrence did. By using comparison, is this a methodology for you or is this a way to make a philosophical or theological statement? And if you're making a philosophical or theological statement through the comparison, what is it? You mean, what is the purpose of my

[50:24]

comparison? Is it simply a methodological exercise or is it a way to make a theological or philosophical statement? I think my purpose is twofold in making this comparison. As far as possible, giving a serious examination of the non-Christian tradition and then expanding the Christian tradition and see the similarities and difference. So my purpose is twofold. First is just to see the similarities and differences. That would give possibility for someone to go another step. Maybe that better integration or something like that. But first to see the similarities and differences. My personal interest would be a contextualization

[51:25]

of Christian message for the Chinese people. That's my hope. Because I think that's just necessary to contextualize. That's what the Greek father did. The great missionary 400 years ago, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, he already started, already gained acceptance in the imperial court. Just unfortunately, historically something happened. If not, we might have the whole China, the majority of Chinese people as Christians, if that continues. Because once you reach the imperial court, you have everything. But that's for retention. Please do re-read. Maybe I should just concentrate on the question of difference. Because you said

[52:27]

vertical and horizontal. Zhuangzi can be also vertical. And Eckhart can be horizontal. But of course, you see Zhuangzi's use of creator Zhao Wuzhu, maybe indicating God. Put it to me, it's actually a metaphor. But I see perhaps more the other side that there's a mystic, a contemplative mystic. Eckhart may be more closer to Dao. So there's both ways. Now the question that I'd like to ask is, what is the divine image? What is this divine image? This may raise all the questions. When you become detached, when you come deep into your heart, what is that divine image? Because you can call image. But what is that divine image that you have in mind?

[53:28]

What's that image supposed to be? I'd like you to answer that. Thank you. Very good question. He explains the divine image with also divine nature. God's nature, God's word, the Son of God. So the image, and of course, divine image is a biblical term. It comes from the Bible and comes from the early fathers. They have a long development of the theology of the divine image in humans. And Eckhart is a continuation. And he explains as God's nature. So it means in biblical terms, what God is explained in the Bible. Is that right? Yeah, in the Bible. Now, he, Eckhart's explanation. The Bible used the term, this metaphor of image. Eckhart explains the image as God's nature in us. So it's close to the Buddha nature.

[54:28]

Buddha nature. Okay, let's hear from Michael, and then I think we're finished for this morning. Yeah. Father Joseph, I believe you said that Eckhart said that detachment was the surest way to God. As I remember, Dick Cassad said that self-abandonment to divine providence is the surest way to God. You say detachment. To me, the flip side of detachment is non-rejection of what is in our present moment. And you alluded to that when you said that Eckhart said, let God act. So I'm just asking, does he expound any more on, if you would say, providence, divine providence, how to just accept what comes our way? Because to me, detachment is something like letting go. And in my own

[55:29]

world, if I don't consciously think of accepting what's there, I sort of, it leaves a big, you know, but I can say I'm not detached. Or I am detached. But I don't want this, and I don't want that. So for him, detachment is not only letting go what you possess, but just be, maintain your equanimity, serenity in face of anything. Success or failure, good health or sickness, fame, honor or disgrace. In face of this, maintain your tranquility and interior calm and serenity. For him, that's the most important aspect of detachment. Is that okay? We can stop here? Thanks very much. Applause.

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