"Man must do his part and detach himself from created things"
About this Quote
Tauler’s line is a spiritual gauntlet thrown at the busiest part of the human ego: the urge to clutch, possess, and confuse the temporary with the ultimate. “Man must do his part” sounds almost practical, even workmanlike, but the “part” in question isn’t moral hustle or self-improvement. It’s consent to being unseated. Tauler, a 14th-century Rhineland mystic preaching amid plague, political fracture, and ecclesial anxiety, is arguing that the soul’s liberation requires an inner divestment no institution can outsource and no ritual can automate.
“Detach himself from created things” isn’t anti-material in a simplistic, hair-shirt way; it’s anti-idolatry with psychological bite. Created things include not just money and comfort, but status, certainty, reputations, even religious feelings - the emotional “proof” that we’re doing spirituality correctly. The subtext is that attachment is a kind of spiritual bribery: we give devotion, productivity, even piety, hoping reality will pay us back with security. Tauler refuses the transaction. Detachment is the refusal to make the world responsible for stabilizing your identity.
The sentence works because it holds a paradox in plain language: effort is required to let go of effort’s usual rewards. You “do” something by loosening your grip. In a culture that treats desire as destiny and consumption as personality, Tauler reads like a critique of the self as a shopping cart - and a reminder that freedom, for mystics, begins where you stop demanding that created life serve as your God.
“Detach himself from created things” isn’t anti-material in a simplistic, hair-shirt way; it’s anti-idolatry with psychological bite. Created things include not just money and comfort, but status, certainty, reputations, even religious feelings - the emotional “proof” that we’re doing spirituality correctly. The subtext is that attachment is a kind of spiritual bribery: we give devotion, productivity, even piety, hoping reality will pay us back with security. Tauler refuses the transaction. Detachment is the refusal to make the world responsible for stabilizing your identity.
The sentence works because it holds a paradox in plain language: effort is required to let go of effort’s usual rewards. You “do” something by loosening your grip. In a culture that treats desire as destiny and consumption as personality, Tauler reads like a critique of the self as a shopping cart - and a reminder that freedom, for mystics, begins where you stop demanding that created life serve as your God.
Quote Details
| Topic | Letting Go |
|---|
More Quotes by Johannes
Add to List
