Spiritual Masters

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

he German mystic Johannes Eckhart was a Dominican who taught a kind of mystic pantheism, which was to influence later religious mysticism and speculative philosophy. Two years before his death he was accused of heresy but died before the proceedings had been completed. After his death, his writings were condemned by Pope John XXII. As a result, many of his works were lost, although some sermons and treatises in Latin and MH German survived.

Hafiz the Poet (1325-1389)

The waves run high, night is clouded with fears,
And eddying whirlpools clash and roar;
How shall my drowning voice strike their ears
Whose light-freighted vessels have reached the shore?
I sought mine own; the unsparing years
Have brought me mine own, a dishonoured name.
What cloak shall cover my misery o'er
When each jesting mouth has rehearsed my shame!

Oh Hafiz, seeking an end to strife,
Hold fast in thy mind what the wise have writ:
"If at last thou attain the desire of thy life,
Cast the world aside, yea, abandon it!"

he Sufi poet Hafiz, or Shams ed-Din Muhammed, is regarded as the greatest of Persian mystical poets. He lived and died at Shiraz. The ghazals of Hafiz are sweet poems on sensuous subjects: wine, flowers, beautiful women, with esoteric meanings beneath what appear, on the surface, to be love poems. It seems that Wagner discovered this poet in 1852 while he was working on the poem of Das Rheingold.