Thomas Merton: Eastern Musings

The Lion

 

From alien heavens

Where there are no fabled beasts

No friendly histories

And passion has no heraldry.

I have nothing left to translate

Into the figures of night

Or the pale geometry

Of the fire-birds.

If I once had a wagon of lights to ride in

The axle is broken

The horses are shot.

-- Thomas Merton --

The iconoclasitic Benedictine Monk, Thomas Merton, was above all a poet, a poet who shook his worldview loose from old forms, as The Lion, above, amply demonstrates. The spare, stark images of the wagon of lights, the broken axle, and horses that have been shot suggest the growing influence that Zen and Taoism had on his worldview, an influence that can be seen in the following selections about Nothingness and the Void taken from his later work, "Cables to the Ace."

"For (Merton) solitude was his desert where he had to face death and Nothingness. As he explored the Asian religious traditions in the 1960s, he sought to integrate this Nothingness into his Christian theology. Buddhism and Taoism had long found in Nothingness or the Void a creative, even joyful, reality that was in harmony with Being. But Western thought only recently began to face the challenge of Non-being." -- Alan Altany --

(For more of Alan Altany's informative and delightful summary of Merton's poetry, see "Thomas Merton's Poetry: Emblems of a Sacred Season," on the thomasmerton.org website.)

Thomas Merton: 'The Birth of Man'

"Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is no such a way, how do you go about finding it? What should you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you refuse to accept? What should you love? What should you hate?"

-- Thomas Merton --
("Thoughts On the East," p. 16)

  
"The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.
     Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
     The difficult and the easy complement each other;
     The long and the short offset each other;
     The high and the low incline towards each other;
     Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.
     The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;
     It gives them life yet claims no possessions;
     It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
     It accomplishes its task yet claims to no merit.
It is because it lays claim to no merit
     That its merit never deserts it."

-- Lao Tzu --
( "Tao Te Ching," Verse II)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Taoism emphasizes balance. The feminine balances the masculine; rigidity balances suppleness; the yin balances the yang, and because of this everything returns to a certain equanimity, to the ease of being that lies in the center.

When there is an imbalance the world does not recognize the beautiful as beautiful, the good as good, or the bad as bad. Yet this is bound to be temporary, for everything is bound to return to the balance of equanimity that is the nature of the Tao. 

We are, it would appear, in a world that is out of balance; thus, as so many wisdom traditions note, we are in the process of returning - in this instance, returning to a center where there must be harmony between yin and yang, between man and nature, between the manifest and the unmanifest.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to."

"What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death."

"What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labor, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to. If people find that they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair. They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy."

"The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use. In so doing, they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were slaves of others."

"The ambitious run day and night in pursuit of honors, constantly in anguish about the success of their plans, dreading the miscalculations that may wreck everything. Thus they are alienated from themselves, exhausting their real life in service of the shadow created by their insatiable hope."

"The birth of man is the birth of his sorrow."

-- Thomas Merton --
("Thoughts On the East," pp. 16-17.)

Thomas Merton: On the 'Tao'

"The Tao, in the broadest sense, is the way the universe functions, characterized by spontaneous creativity or by regular alterations of phenomena (such as day followed by night) that proceed without effort."

"Effortless action can be seen in the conduct of water, which unresistingly accepts the lowest level yet wears away the hardest substance. Human beings following the Tao, must abjure all struggle  and learn the value of wu-wei (non-striving) through which one approaches a stage of creative possibility sometimes symbolized as a child or infant in Taoist writings."

"In a rough sense, what sin is to the Christian, cosmic disorder (or, at the local level, personal anxiety) is to the Taoist. The ideal state of being, fully attainable only by mystical contemplation, is simplicity and freedom from desire, comparable to that of "an uncarved block.""

[Thomas Merton ,"Thoughts On The East," p. 10.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Know the masculine,
Keep to the feminine,
And be the Brook of the World.
To be the Brook of the World is
To move constantly in the path of Virtue
Without swerving from it,
And to return again to infancy.

Know the white,
Keep to the black,
And be the Pattern of the World.
To be the Pattern of the World is
to move constantly in the path of Virtue
Without erring in a single step,
And to return again to the Infinite.

Know the glorious,
Keep to the lowly,
And be the Fountain of the World.
To be the Fountain of the World is
To live the abundant life of Virtue,
And to return again to Primal Simplicity.

When Primal Simplicity diversifies,
It becomes useful vessels.
Hence the greatest cutting
Does not sever.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The highest form of goodness is like water.
Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them.
It stays in places loathed by all men.
Therefore, it comes from the Tao.

In choosing your dwelling, know how to keep to the ground.
In cultivating your mind, know how to dive in the hidden depths.
In dealing with others, know how to be gentle and kind.
In speaking, know how to keep your words.
In governing, know how to maintain order.
In transacting business, know how to be efficient.
In making a move, know how to choose the right moment.

If you do not strive with others,
You will be free from blame.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

[Lao Tzu, "Tao Teh Ching," Nos. XXVIII and VIII.]

Thomas Merton: Zen and Direct Realization

"Zen has always assumed, as one of its basic principles, that the enlightenment of the proficient monk demands a certain freedom with respect to the authority of any canonical text," notes Thomas Merton, the revered Trappist monk. "What the Zen man seeks to realize in himself is a "self-sustaining independence," and here the entire question of religious authority is raised. The aim of Zen is, according to Zenists, simply the aim of Buddhism itself, "the ultimate emancipation from duality.""

"Living by the "basic authority which is the True Self," or metaphysically, in direct contact with the ground reality by "freedom from forms," the Zen man does not resolve all beings into a pure Void," Merton notes, "but rather (he) sees the Void itself as an inexhaustible source of creative dynamism at work in the phenomena that are seen before us and constitute the world around us."

"This world," Merton points out, "is only illusory insofar as it is misinterpreted to fit our prejudices about our limited ego-selves. This simple direct approach to reality, this unabashed apprehension of the One in the Many, of the Void in everyday life and in the ordinary world around us, is the foundation for Zen humanism in the world of today."

[Thomas Merton, "Mystics and Zen Masters," pp. 283-284]

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Thomas Merton, Ecumenism and the Fruit of Contemplation

Thomas Merton
(1915-1968)

The word "contemplate," meaning "to view with attention" is derived from the Latin 'con + templum' signifying "an open space for observation." Thus, the modern contemplative - like the near-enlightened Trappist monk, Thomas Merton - might be seen as the person whose mind provides him or her the open space for the observation of the realities of consciousness and being that exist beneath the external 'realities' of our common lives.

In his book, "Mystics and Zen Masters" (as well as in the attached video),  Merton examines the depth and commonality of this open, contemplative experience, and discusses what the "ecumenism" of religions revealed by a common contemplative life has to offer as an aspiration for the non-contemplative.

"(G)enuine ecumenism," writes Merton, "requires the communication and sharing, not only of information about doctrines which are totally and irrevocably divergent, but also of religious intuitions and truths which may turn out to have something in common, beneath surface differences."

"Ecumenism," he observes, "seeks the inner and ultimate spiritual "ground" which underlies all articulated differences. A genuinely fruitful dialogue cannot be content with a polite diplomatic interest in other religions and their beliefs. It seeks a deeper level, on which religious traditions have always claimed to bear witness to a higher and more personal knowledge of God that that which is contained simply in exterior worship and formulated doctrines."

"In all religions," he notes, "we encoutner not only the claim to (divine) revelation in some form or other, but also the record of special experiences in which the absolute and final vailidity of that revelation is in some way attested."

"Furthermore," he points out, "in all religions it is more or less generally recognized that this profound "sapiential" experience, call it gnosis, contemplation, "mysticism," "prophecy," or what you will, represents the deepest and the most authentic fruit of the religion itself. All religions, then, seek a "summit" of holiness, of experience, of inner transformation to which their believers - or an elite of believers - aspire because they hope, so to speak, to incarnate in their own lives the highest values in which they believe.

In the following video, a letter which Merton addressed to one of his many correspondents is used to highlight the fruit of the gnostic consciousness that is experienced by the true contemplative - a higher consciousness which is available to us all, regardless of religious tradition.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Nature of the Ego

The ego (or small "self") is wholly narcissistic and driven by fear, or its counterpart, desire. When one first becomes aware of the spiritual nature of one's being there arises a real risk that the ego will say: "Spiritual? You want to be spiritual and become enlightened? Just watch how spiritual I can become!"

Thomas Merton
(1915-1968)

The renowned Trappist monk and prolific author, Thomas Merton, addresses this process of spiritual self-sabotage in his book, "Mystics and Zen Masters." In recounting the story of how Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen (Ch'an) Buddhism was chosen, Merton illustrates how the self-seeking ego can embrace spirituality and the concept of enlightenment itself and, thus, fool even the most ardent spiritual seeker.

The Fifth Patriarch, when choosing his successor, asked each of the monastery's monks to write a verse illustrating their Zen insight. The much accomplished monk who was presumed to be the heir-apparent wrote:

"The body is the Bodhi tree,
The mind is like a clear mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
Allow no grain of dust to cling to it."

Profoundly dissatisfied with this explanation, Hui Neng, the monastery's unordained cook, wrote:

"The Bodhi is not like a tree,
The clear mirror is nowhere standing.
Fundamentally not one thing exists:
Where then is a grain of dust to cling?"

The "clear mirror" is - or, so it seems -  really the ego which the heir-apparent was constantly trying to wipe clean. The problem, however, seems to be that it was the "ego"or "self" that was trying to wipe itself clean. Illustrating the principle that "self" cannot rid itself of "self" or "ego-nature," Hui Neng -  the unordained cook - was appointed as the Sixth Patriarch.

In rejecting the "mirror wiping" concept of meditation, Merton observed that Hui Neng "was not rejecting meditation itself, but what he believed to be a totally wrong attitude to meditation." Merton explains that a "wrong attitude" or error may occur when the ego, in a last-ditch effort to retain its hold on the spiritual seeker, embraces spirituality itself. He explains:

"1.  This wrong attitude assumes and gives primacy to a central ego-consciousness, an awareness of an empirical self, an "I" which, with all the good intentions in the world, sets out to "achieve liberation" or "enlightenment." This is the familiar empirical ego which is aware of itself, observes itself, remembers itself, and seeks ways to preserve and perpetuate its self-awareness. This "I" seeks to affirm itself not only in its actions, and its thoughts, but also in contemplation. In stripping off the exterior and sensible trappings of superficial experience, the ego seeks to realize its own spiritual nature more perfectly. This implies a rejection of one's sensible and active self in order to attain to an inner "silent" self, which is still, however, our "ego."

2.  The empirical and self-conscious self then views its own thought as a kind of object or possession, and in so doing accounts for this thought by situating it in a separate, isolated, "part of itself," a mind, which it compares to a "mirror." This is also considered a "possession." "I have a mind." Thus the mind is regarded not as something I am, but something I own. It then becomes necessary for me to sit quietly and calmly, recollecting my faculties and reaching down to experience my "mind."

3.  The empirical self then resolves to purify the mirror of the mind by removing thoughts from it. When the mirror of the mind is clear of all thought (so it imagines), the ego will be "liberated." It will affirm itself freely without thoughts. Why does it aim at this bizarre attainment? Because it has read in the sutras that "enlightenment" is a state of "emptiness," of "suchness." It is an awareness of an inner and transcendental mind. Presumably if all thoughts of material and contingent things are kept out of the mirror, then the mirror will be filled with the pure spiritual light of the Buddha mind, which is a kind of "emptiness.""

"So," Merton observes, "the ego-consciousness is able, it believes, to eat its cake and have it. It renounces its empirical autonomy in order to sink into spiritual, pre-biological nature. But since this nature is regarded as one's possession, the "spiritualized" ego thus is able to affirm itself all the more perfectly, and to enjoy its own narcissism under the guise of "emptiness" and "contemplation.""

In this manner, the ego, it turns out, becomes the ultimate ego-trap. The old axiom, "Know thyself!" is thus, still valid, albeit with the corollary: "But beware of thyself, and all its ways!"

(Excerpts from Thomas Merton, "Mystics and Zen Masters," pp. 19-23.)