mine directed outwardly, and that of the I directed inwardly, cease" (cf. ver. 346). And in the "Manual of Buddhism" by Spence Hardy, p. 258, Buddha says: "My disciples reject the thoughts I am this, or this is mine." In general, if we look away from the forms which are introduced by external circumstances and go to the bottom of the matter, we will find that Sakya Muni and Meister Eckhard teach the same; only that the former dared to express his thoughts directly, while the latter is obliged to clothe them in the garments of the Christian myth and adapt his expressions to this. He carries this, however, so far that with him the Christian myth has become little more than a symbolical language, just as the Hellenic myth became for the Neo-Platonists: he takes it throughout allegorically. In the same respect it is worth noticing that the transition of St. Francis from prosperity to the mendicant life is similar to the still greater step of Buddha Sakya Muni from prince to beggar, and that, corresponding to this, the life of St. Francis, and also the order he founded, was just a kind of Sannyasiism. Indeed it deserves to be mentioned that his relationship with the Indian spirit appears also in his great love for the brutes and frequent intercourse with them, when he always calls them his sisters and brothers; and his beautiful Cantico also bears witness to his inborn Indian spirit by the praise of the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, the water, the fire, and the earth.[1]
Even the Christian quietists must often have had little or no knowledge of each other; for example, Molinos and Madame de Guion of Tauler and the "Deutsche Theologie," or Gichtel of the former. In any case, the great difference of their culture, in that some of them, like Molinos, were learned, others, like Gichtel and many more, were the reverse, has no essential influence upon their teaching.
- ↑ S. Bonaventuræ vita S. Francisci, ch. 8. K. Hase, "Franz von Assisi," ch. 10. "I cantici di S. Francesco," editi da Schlosser e Steinle., Francoforto, s.M., 1842.
