Page One: The Thomas Merton Connection

Fall 2000 | NEAR THE END OF HIS LIFE, the American Christian monk, poet, social critic and mystic, Thomas Merton said that he wanted “to become as good a Buddhist as I can” (Steindl-Rast, 1969).

In the climate of the times, for a man born in France who was raised with no particular religious influence and used to a life of desires, for a passionate convert to Catholicism, for a monk of the cloistered Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), why did Merton say that? What did he mean?

The story leading to Merton’s comment is a model for and recapitulation of the emergent and still emerging Buddhist – Christian interreligious dialogue, perhaps one of the more obscure yet more significant events occurring today.

On October 15, 1968, with Merton aboard, a jetliner lifted off the ground in San Francisco bound for Tokyo and the Asia beyond:

Merton would return to home, to Our Lady of Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky, very differently than when he headed East that day to a monastic conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Very different. Paradox, freedom, compassion, contemplation, emptiness and mysticism would all play a role in Merton’s Asian homecoming.

THE SEEDS THAT WOULD grow and propel Merton into being an advocate for interreligious dialogue, especially between Buddhists and Christians, were planted before Merton’s conversion at the age of 23 to Roman Catholicism.

He had met a Hindu monk named Bramachari who advised Merton, to his surprise, not to read Hindu scriptures, but some of the Christian mystical literature, especially Augustine’s "Confessions" and the medieval devotional work by Thomas a Kempis, "The Imitation of Christ." Being told by a Hindu monk to look--or re-look--into the Christian spiritual tradition of his own culture made a profound impression upon Merton. It would begin his exposure to Christian mystical writings that would, in turn, be a main reason he was on that plane going to Asia, going to meet the religions of Asia, and particularly Buddhism, face to face.

The path swerved along the way. After his conversion and transformation into a monk, Merton was a triumphalistic Christian with little regard for other forms of Christianity besides Catholicism and little concern for other religions.

Other seeds needed to be planted before a memory was created deep enough to develop such roots. The pre-Christian Merton had come across Aldous Huxley’s book on mysticism, "Ends and Means," which sowed an attraction for not only mysticism in general, but for apophatic mysticism -- meaning a knowledge of God obtained by negation -- that would enable him to later relate to Buddhist teachings about the Void and Emptiness.

In time, the Christian mystical writings of people like Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross would echo with the Buddhist mysticism he discovered.

But for some years these seeds lay dormant as Merton became a Trappist monk, one of the strictest religious orders in Catholicism. He would be told by his abbot to write his autobiography and, against any expectations, it became a national bestseller, "The Seven Story Mountain," in the years right after World War II.

But in the 1950s Merton’s earlier fascination with mysticism and other religions resurfaced as he began a long-term study of Buddhism, focusing upon Zen. He came into contact with the Japanese scholar on Zen, Daisetz T. Suzuki (1870–1966), who was greatly responsible for introducing Zen Buddhism to the West. They would correspond and some of their writings would become the essay collection "Zen and the Birds of Appetite," a discussion of the similarities and differences between Zen Buddhism and Christianity.

Gandhi was also influential upon Merton in saying that one can find the deeper roots of one’s own religious tradition by becoming immersed in other religions--and then returning “home” to see one’s own heritage in a transformed way, with a transformed consciousness.

Merton’s Catholicism was becoming inexorably more and more catholic--with a small 'c'--in its scope of possibilities for experiencing spiritual wisdom.

PAGE 2: Contemplation and Crisis