' Naught '...

"Thy way then lies
through desert very strange to see,
so deep, so wide,
no bound's descried.
This desert's bare
of Then or There
in modeless singularity.

This desert place

no foot did pace,

no creature mind

ingress can find.

It is, yet truly none knows what.
'Tis there, 'tis here,
'tis far, 'tis near,

'tis high, 'tis low,

yet all we know
 is:
This it's not and That it's not.

"It's clear, it's bright,

it's dark as night;

no name or sign

can it define,

beginningless, of ceasing free.
Immobile, bare,
'tis flowing there.

Where it may dwell,

whoso can tell,

should teach us what its form may be.

As a child become,

both blind and dumb.

Thy own self's aught

must turn to naught.

Both aught and naught
thou must reject, without a trace

of image, time, or space.
Go quite astray

the pathless way,

the desert thou mayst then detect.

"My soul within,

come out, God in!

Sink all my aught

in God's own naught,

sink down in bottomless abyss.
Should I flee thee,
thou wilt come to me;

when self is done,

then Thou art won,

thou transcendental highest bliss!"

Anonymous*
Granum sinpis ('The Grain of Mustard Seed')
quoted in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart
Translated by Maurice O'C. Walshe
NY: Crossroad, 1975, 1987, p. 15-16

* Scholars speculate that Eckhart composed this, or someone influenced by Eckhart.