“I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness”1—Goethe and Buddhism
This article is a translation from the German draft of public
lecture given by the IOP European Centre on 29 May 2005.

Manfred OstenT

HANK you for the kind introduction. It reminds me of the Russian
proverb: “Too much incense blackens even the prettiest saint.” Also,
I apologize for speaking without a manuscript today. You most probably
remember the sad story of the British Lord who read off his manuscript
before the House of Lords and—by accident—also read off the small
print noted down by his ghostwriter. There was stated: “This speech is alittle bit thin but good enough for the House of Lords.”
I want to especially thank you for letting me speak to you about
Goethe here in Bingen; Goethe visited Bingen in 1814 and donated analtarpiece to the St. Rochus’ Chapel in 1816. In his significant essay on
the St. Rochus’ Festivities in Bingen, we find the following sentence on
the meaning of the classical: “The classical is that which is plentiful andmasterly. All other eras are either plentiful but not masterly or masterly
but not plentiful.” So it is up to you to choose where we find ourselves at
the moment. In any case, the great dramatist Friedrich Hebbel focusedon the abundance of the plenty when he put Goethe into the formulawith the words: “At first it was a dot, which in silence widened into a
circle/to finally embrace the world.”
I especially mention this, since one might assume that Goethe, whileembracing the world, might also have embraced the Buddha. This iseven more possible since Goethe’s life fell into an era in which Friedrich
Schlegel and a whole string of other scientists founded Indology as ascience. In fact, Goethe participated actively in the findings of theresearch about India. In 1787 in Rome, he even thought about travelingto India. Many people might not be aware of this fact. I would like tomention two significant poems which resulted in his intensive preoccupation with the Indian research: first, the Paria-Trilogy in which a lower
entity connects with a higher being and therefore an enormous widening
and enlightenment of both merged persons is possible—thus a mysticBuddhist notion; and second the poem “The God and the Bayadere” in
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which God embraces a sinful person. The conclusion of this poem—
which in my opinion is written in revolutionary words—is “temptation
comes from above,” that is, not from below as we all believe.
Also, Goethe dealt with the topic of Baghavadgita, the great work ofIndian poetry, which he learned of through Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt.
He especially dealt with the Sakuntala by Kalidasa, one of the great
Indian poets of the 5th century. This work left major traces, among others, in “Prelude in the theatre” in Faust.
In 1829, three years before his death Goethe, talking to Eckermann,
finally compared the individual steps in life with one another and called
the last, the highest step “quietism;” this means taming the will. During
this, he explicitly referred to Indian philosophy. This means he apparently knew of concepts in Buddhism, the great ten steps of life and wisdom. We do not know to what degree he talked about this in front ofothers—there are no explicit statements from Goethe referring to Buddhism. This is why I would like to restrict myself to reflection on theworks of Goethe and his biography, which in my opinion converge
greatly with the principles in Buddhism, especially with the principlesof the Buddhism in the Lotus-Sutra-tradition. I want to deal with theseparticularly at the end of this lecture.
I will do this in three steps. First, I would like to show the alternative
world to the Buddhist one—using the tragedy of Faust. Then I would
like to deal with three literary figures, which can be found in the works
of Goethe. Here significant approaches, parallels and convergences with
Buddhist thought are recognizable. Finally, I will deal with Goethe’sown considerations in his prose writings and also with the “Maxims andReflections”—with his fundamental attitudes toward the world, which
can communicate truly significant insights, which are connected to Buddhism.
I will begin first in an inverted manner with the opposing world, theFaust tragedy. You may recall that the ten great steps of wisdom begin
with the animalistic and go up to the state of the Bodhisattva, i.e. fromhell to heaven so to speak. Here we have a tragedy in which the exact
opposite path is shown, namely “From Heaven through the world anddown to hell.”2 This is the great sentence right at the beginning of thetragedy. The question is: “What are the principles of this tragedy that
this opposite path is taken? What, considering the reasoning and actingof the Western world, does this tragedy show?” What has definitely
entered this tragedy is basically a metaphoric mirror of our Western reasoning.
Above all things the question is: “How is it possible that Faust should

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be the prototype of the one who does not realize the sorrowful state theworld is in—in the sense of Buddhist reasoning?” Meant is the inability
to recognize what holds the world together from the inside, even though
he has striven for this. Why is Faust the prototype of the person who
through his actions increases sorrow in the world and, therefore, basically is the countermovement of that which Buddhist teaching actually
demands? The crucial formulation for this aberration, this deviationfrom the Buddhist virtues, can basically be seen through emphasis on
rational oriented thinking and its inherent impatience. Faust is the prototype of he who thinks hasty and is exclusively rationally-oriented, a reasoning which cannot consider the entire connection in the sense of themind—the mind is a totally different dimension, which does not appear
in him here—but he is the one who anticipates our modern culture ofmobilization, of science and of acceleration with its most modern curse(“And cursed be patience most of all”3). He is the one who above alluses his ratio in the sense in which Mephistopheles explains it before
God. He (as a reproach) says to God:His life would be less difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.4

These are the variations that you can find in this work—the use of theanimalistic rationale triumphs many times. Here he celebrates his greatorgies of the modern age, since he already speaks of countless devices
of modern acceleration, which Mephistopheles makes available to Faust:“the fast coat, the fast sword, fast money, fast love.” During the Easterstroll, Faust is introduced as a person who already—in a Buddhist conception—appears from the background of bad karma. Basically, you see,he was a mass murderer. During the Easter stroll, he tells his famulus
Wagner his early experiences with his father, who was an alchemist.
We made these hills and valleys our resort,
And ravaged there more deadly than the pest.
These hands have ministered the deadly bane
To thousands who have perished; I remain
To hear cool murderers extolled and bless’d.5

This means that Faust is here revered by the crowd, which does not realize that he has fed their ancestors, their parents, with the poison theymiserably died of. It is basically Faust who demonstrates this trail of the

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animalism—the lowest region from which Buddhism ascends—byindeed practicing an abundance of crimes with these devices—I remind
you of Margaret’s fate, the mother’s fate, the murdering of the brother.
In the second part of the tragedy, he continues by not learning fromthese deeds but washes them off in the dew of Lethe in the sense of celebrating modern orgies of forgetting. Then in the fifth act, he sets out inthe triumph of a blinded life and an increase of suffering on earth;meaning the great deeds of blindness by Faust, who is dazzled or rather
goes blind due to worries. This means he lives in a world of consciousness that is solely oriented to the future. In an act of violence, he has
Philemon and Baucis and the father of the gods, Zeus, who is present in
the form of a wanderer, killed. He is deluded in a tremendous error of“Standing on freedom’s soil, a people free.”6 They are actually forcedlaborers of the modern age, of this century.
Weimar and Buchenwald are united synoptically since it says about
the forced laborers:
Nightly rose a wailing sorrow,
Sacrifice of human blood;
Trim canal was seen the morrow,
Where had ebbed the fiery flood.7

And in the end, the enormous bias of error in which Faust mistakes agigantic drainage ditch within the scope of a huge modern project withhis own grave. I have mention this briefly since I believe that it is important to realize the tremendous tableau of non-realization, non-enlightenment and an increase of the sorrowful constitution of the world placed
here in a gigantic way. I believe that just this interpretation of Faust
against the Buddhist background could bring forth an abundance of
insights if one was to concern oneself with the matter deeply.
Counter-realms seen by Goethe that go in the direction of Buddhism
can interestingly enough also be found in Faust. Goethe lived by theprinciple that we must build a contradiction to every aphorism if wewant to face the truth even slightly. He said: “I love to go where contradictions buzz; how funny, no one grants the other the right to be mistaken.”8 This contradictive thinking to the fatal path of the Faust-tragedy,“From Heaven through the world and down to hell”9 is represented by
Mephistopheles from whom I have also taken the quote “I’d rather have
Eternal Emptiness.”
In a mysterious way, Goethe arrives at a point of view, which one
would not associate with the character Mephistopheles. Yet it stands toGOETHE AND BUDDHISM

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reason since Mephistopheles is the one who sees through the world in
lucidness, knows Faust truly and controls him exactly because he knowsof the mechanisms of failing enlightenment and of failing to lessen suffering. At the end he looks at his victim, i.e. Faust, the old man who
here lies in the sand and says:
A foolish word, bygone.
How so then, gone? [...]
Yet circle back, existence to possess:I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness.10

If you think about the fact that Buddha himself basically was a heretic
to Brahmanism since he was the one who would not accept the two
principles being Brahma and Atman and instead discovered the notionof Nirvana, then you realize that the phrase “I’d rather have Eternal
Emptiness” comes close to this condition in a peculiar way. Here in anenormous lucidness Goethe put into the words of Mephistopheles thesenseless deeds of Faust who now shows whereto this “scattering,” thatis connected to Nirvana, actually leads—that actually here the conditionis achieved—metaphorically at least as he puts it—which he expresses
with his final words.
To set things clear one might add that the Upanishads saw the chanceto achieve salvation through recognizing the identity of Brahma andAtman, i.e. Brahma as being the fundamental principle of all being andAtman as the individuation, the individual soul. That means, when wecome to realize that these two principles belong together, in fact are
identical, then according to Brahmanism and Upanishad teachings, weare redeemed. Buddha, on the other hand, deliberately leaves aside thisnotion of salvation and instead introduces the “idea of deliverance” ofNirvana.
This exactly is the point to which Mephistopheles points to at the endof this enormous tragedy. Interestingly, he explained this at the startsince at the beginning of the tragedy he takes the freedom of introducing
himself in front of the background of Nirvana by saying:
The spirit I, that endlessly denies.
And rightly, too; for all that comes to birth
Is fit for overthrow, as nothing worth;
Wherefore the world were better sterilized;
Thus all that’s here as Evil recognized
Is gain to me, and downfall, ruin, sin
The very element I prosper in.11

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Here again you see this phrase which is reflected in “Faust” through thesentence “I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness”12—“Wherefore the world
were better sterilized.”13
Here are peculiar convergences which are expressed through analleged negative-character of this Faust-tragedy and which have notbeen reflected upon under this aspect.
I will now talk about a character, which can be interpreted in a different, positive way as being convergent with Buddhist principles. It is he
who is sworn to the tower; it is Lynceus. Lynceus appears in the 5th actof the second part of the Faust-tragedy. Goethe sealed this second part
because he was convinced that nobody in a blind world in his time could
understand this work. Explaining this to Wilhelm von Humboldt he said:“The world is ruled to-day by bewildering wrong counsel, urging bewildered wrong action.”14 This means he has recognized the blindness ofFaust and his acts of violence—this hasty action and hasty thought—these being the principles that his own age, the 19th century, lived by.
He was convinced that nobody could understand this work since themirror set up there is a mirror that we in the 21st century can actually
recognize now.
The character of Lynceus belongs to this mirror in a positive sense.
He is the only one here who has attained something like a state ofenlightenment. Lynceus does not take part in increasing sorrow in theworld, does not take part in Faust’s actions but is the enlightened one
who observes the world and sees it in the way that Goethe once put it:“Only he who observes has conscience; the acting are always unconscionable.”15 Here we find both antipodes that are described with thisverdict, i.e. Faust who acts unconscionably, and here the observer who,
through his calm contemplating, so to speak Buddhist enlightened state,
gains insight in the great connections of Buddhism, this being the connection of what I have mentioned before: the Upanishads see this as theconnection of Brahma and Atman but also as the identity of the world
with the individual, the connection of nature with himself—he is the one
who observes the world from his tower above and who says:
In all things perceiving
The charms that endure.16

In this short phrase, you can already see the Lynceus’ insight into thegreat connection of being when he adds:
And, joy thus achieving,
My own joy is sure.17

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Here we find a position, a vita contemplativa, set up in the tragedy itself,
which is opposite to the whole culture of mobilization of the modernage, the hypertrophy of the vita activa as is represented by Faust.
Yet we find another character in Faust, that of Homunculus. Goethe
had the audacity to create a character who wants nothing to do with thecondition of the Western mobilization-culture, the culture of ratio andthe logo centric culture. This is Homunculus.
This might amaze you since we know Homunculus to be an artificial
creature which, in fact, in the spirit of the ratio obedient culture, wascreated in a phial by famulus Wagner who has now advanced to become
a molecular biologist and genetic designer. Homunculus, therefore, is an
artificial creature who carries the flaw of the over-hasty culture just like
Dolly, the cloned sheep, which is not capable of surviving. These are
our great utopias and science-fiction-images we connect to today’s
progress—that today we are able to completely destroy or change thephenotype of man by interfering with the genotype.
Goethe anticipated this figure with the failure of the project and now
the great turning point comes that the creature chooses a completely different path. Homunculus leaves Faust’s world of science and, since hehas come into this world imperfect, defective, wants to become a “complete” entity, connected to the entire cosmos. He seeks advice—not in
Buddhism but asks ancient philosophers (who are claimed to have been
influenced enormously by Indian culture), the pre-Socratic philosophers.
Above all, it is Thales and the mythological figure Proteus who give him
advice to move away from this erroneous sorrow-increasing conscienceof his half-nature and to move towards a totally different condition.
Their advice reads:
Submit to a request so winning,
And start to be at the beginning.18
Toils on earth, what’er they be,
Amount to plaguey drudgery.
The waves give life more growth and ease:
Come now to the eternal seas
With Dolphin-Proteus.19

And they advise him that when he has gone through this enormous
deceleration process from the beginning of creation, meaning a deathdefying leap back 3.5 billion years, then he should begin to ascend again
but under the condition, for God’s sake, not to make his way to the state

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of the consciousness of antiquated people, the state of the non-enlightened people. Their advice reads:
But be not lured by higher striving,
For at the state of man arriving
Finished and damned is your career.20

Here precautions are taken which aim toward a completely different
world and which show convergences with an all-embracing love as far
as the actual procedure in which Homunculus returns to the beginningof creation is directly connected to the great fest of Eros of the Galatiansin the gulf of the Aegean Sea. According to the advice of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Homunculus throws himself into the sea, which experiences a great marine phosphorescence, and smashes his phial on Eros’wagon of the Galatians. He is, therefore, in a state of loving all, reverted
to the beginning of creation. These are very peculiar thoughts of Goethethat are worth being reflected upon in front of a Buddhist background.
Now I wish to talk about a figure that is not connected to Faust but
emerged at the same time as the creation of the second part of “Faust,”
this being the “Elective Affinities.” Also, here we find a character having
much to do with convergences and parallelisms of Buddhist principles;
it is Ottilie. A figure who has received too little attention and who—
similar to Lynceus—is in a state of contemplation. She is the only figure
who is not obedient to the ratio, who does not take part in the enormous
impatience and make-work that is characteristic for all the other figuresin the novel but rather whom she refuses. In the moment in which, however, she is dragged into the inscrutable whirl of increased suffering, theculture of error when a child falls out of her embrace and drowns, she
refuses herself ultimately by devoting herself to total asceticism. She
refuses herself to existence altogether and enters a state which seems theGoethenian paraphrase of Nirvana. Actually, it is something like ananticipation of the Kafkanian professional-faster and finally dies throughrenunciation—renunciation as one of the great possibilities which
Goethe saw for himself and which he also makes a subject of discussion
in “Wilhelm Meister,” to refuse oneself and to not participate by increasing suffering in the world. The path this character chooses shows in a
cryptic way how much Goethe repeatedly tried to include just thesecounter realms in opposition to the Faustic culture of acceleration into
his work—with small success. No other figure was more misunderstoodthan Ottilie, as with other characters I have mentioned, having neverbeen interpreted in this way. I believe we should keep the character
Ottilie in mind.

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I will now discuss the questions connected to Goethe himself: what
Goethe displayed in his lifestyle and which at least appear to have parallels or convergences with Buddhism. Very early in the relationship to
Mrs. von Stein Goethe said: “Thou, alas, wast in some former state/Or
my sister or my loving wife!”21 This means Goethe took into his contemplation the notion of reincarnation, a notion which Buddha took overfrom the Upanishads, from Brahmanism. So he saw the possibility of
the causality of retribution for our behavior in the previous life. At a ripe
old age, he reflected on his own thoughts in connection with reincarnation and metempsychosis and mentioned to Eckermann that the thoughtof his continuation after his passing rises from the idea of his doings: “Ifonly I stay indefatigable until the end, nature must grant me anotherexistence.”22 Here we see astounding convergences dealing withmetempsychosis and reincarnation. Goethe did not itemize these ideas
in many places but he did touch them. They might have been very familiar to him, especially through Engelbert Kaempfer’s description ofJapan. In the 17th century, Kaempfer managed to get into Japan unauthorized via Lemgo. There he, among other things, described Japanese
Buddhism in his great travel diary. Goethe also got acquainted with the
gingko tree and the gingko leaf which originates from the Japanese language—“ginkyo” meaning “silver apricot”—and which shape he perceived in a very Buddhist way, namely as a “two but not two.” In thisleaf, he sees the superficial separation we usually assume between subject and object; but at the same time perceive that subject and object,body and mind, are ultimately parts that are identical, that belong
together, that are in connection of a great entirety. This leaf is ultimately
something that—in the “West-Eastern Divan” in which this poem
“Gingo biloba” is included—led Goethe to the idea that we should giveup the culture of ratio altogether and should go entirely different ways,
which have to do with the nature of “two but not two.”
We should try to replace the ratio with a completely different meansof realization, i.e. the human mind that Goethe, in the “West-Eastern
Divan”—defines as the “higher leading.” This, therefore, is the realization of the identity of subject and object, of nature and man in the great
connection of the cosmos in which, as Goethe believes, we all exist.
Goethe described it with the following words: “Since love is life andlife’s spirit.”23 This means a somewhat Buddhist ascent towards a realization, an entirely different, elevated insight into the total connection
with the cosmos.
These thoughts, by the way, are relatively well prepared through his
study of Spinoza’s writings. Through Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, he was

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encouraged to do so, and saw these thoughts of so-called Pantheism,
meaning the oneness of God and nature and also humankind, as part ofnature molded in Spinoza’s work. Take for example the character ofWerther. In countless places in his letters, you have this feeling of completeness, this connection, the sense of oneness with the cosmos andwith nature. Werther is basically a Pantheist—one could say also a Buddhist—because he senses this comprehensive harmony and here, in acompletely different sense than the haughty ratio, humbly acts in thisconnection.
And this is the other great idea that Goethe connects closely to the
Buddhist thought: that he regarded the principle of gratitude as the highest that we can achieve in existence. Goethe defined this connectedness
with the cosmos and nature with the following words: “Life can only bevalued to the extent that it is committed to gratitude.”24 This might soundsomewhat old-Franconian but basically means that life only makes sensewhen we live it with a grateful mind. These are notions which are connected closely to Buddhist principles. Goethe himself, incidentally,
repeatedly thought about the reduction of suffering in the world. This isa fact I would like to point out at the end. Goethe himself said: “We all
suffer from life.” That means he did indeed recognize the condition of
suffering in the world and, for his part, tried to decrease this suffering.
Regarding a spider in the “West-Eastern Divan” Goethe says:
Once when I a spider had kill’d,Then methought: wast right or wrong?
That we both to these times should belong,This had God in His goodness willed.25

Goethe especially recognized the reduction of suffering in the fact thathumankind is erroneous. He regarded our state of shortcomings as achance to elevate ourselves from this point toward love and sympathy.
He said:If you cannot free yourself from errors
You will freely forgive others.
If you do make mistakes
Don’t let it sadden you.
Your shortcomings will teach you to love.26

Thank you very much for your attention.

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Notes
Goethe, Faust, translated by Philip Wayne (Penguin Books: England), Part Two,
Act V, p. 270.
2
Ibid., Part One, Prelude in the Theatre, p. 37.
3
Ibid., Faust’s Study (iii), p. 84.
4Ibid., Prologue in Heaven, p. 40.
5Ibid., Outside the City Gate, p. 65.
6Ibid., Part Two, Act V, p. 269.
7
Ibid., p. 254.
8
Zahme Xenien [Gentle Ironies], Book 1.
9Goethe, Faust: Part One, Prelude in the Theatre, p. 37.
10Ibid., Part Two, Act V, p. 270.
11
Ibid., Part One, Faust’s Study (ii), p. 75.
12Ibid., Part Two, Act V, p. 270.
13
Ibid., Part One, Faust’s Study (ii), p. 75.
14
Selected Letters, To Wilhelm von Humboldt, 17th March 1832: J.W. von Goethe,translated by Dr. M. Herzfeld and C. Melvil Sym (Everyman’s Library: London),p. 1180.
15
Maximen und Reflecionen [Maxims and Reflections].
16
Goethe, Faust: Part Two, Act V, p. 260.
17
Ibid., p. 260.
18
Ibid., Act II, p. 150.
19
Ibid., p. 150.
20
Ibid., pp. 150–151.
21
Vermischte Gedichte [Miscellaneous Poems], The Life of Goethe, vol. 1, Albert
Bielschowsky, translated by William A. Cooper (AMS Press: New York), p. 300.
22
Goethes Gespräche mit Eckermann [Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann], 4th
February 1829.
23
West-Östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan), VIII. Suleika Nameh (Book of Suleika).
24
Letter to Karl August.
25
West-Östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan), VI. Hikmet Nameh (Book ofProverbs), translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring. http://www.worldwideschool.org/
library/books/lit/poetry/ThePoemsofGoethe/chap41.html (accessed 14 August 2006).
26
Zahme Xenien (Gentle Ironies), Book 3.
1