Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reexamine the concept of suchness, as discussed in The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, in conversation with Meister Eckhart’s neologisms istic/isticheit. Previous comparative Buddhist-Eckhart studies have typically rendered these neologisms in a strict Aristotelian ontological sense, with English renderings being formulated as the “is-ness” or the “being-ness” of God. These earlier interpretations concerning Eckhart’s thought were prevalent in the mid-twentieth century and put forward by the influential Kyoto School. A 2003 article by Eckhart scholar Alessandra Beccarisi has altered the scholarship concerning these notoriously difficult neologisms.1 Eckhart’s...