Thomas Merton, Fr. Louis, meets with a young Dalai Lama in the fall of 1968

From his posthumous Asian Journal, describing his experience upon seeing the great Buddha statues at Polonnaruwa, Ceylon (Sri Lanka):

“Looking at these figures I was suddenly,
almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-
tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as
if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident
and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining
figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with
arms folded (much more ‘imperative’ than Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa because completely simple and
straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is
no puzzle, no problem, and really no ‘mystery.’ All
problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply
because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all
life, is charged with dharmakaya . . . everything is
emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know
when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty
and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic
illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and
Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and
purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I
was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else
remains but I have now seen and have pierced through
the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the
disguise.”

From The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Bro. Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1973), pp. 233-236.

Last night I watched a beautiful and moving documentary: Merton: A Film Biography. To be honest, the film quality, editing and whatnot were all quite mediocre, it was the subject that made viewing so exquisite. Thomas Merton, a Trappist (Catholic) Monk, lived a life of fierce spirituality, struggling to the very heart of what it meant – and means – to live a life of both amazing spiritual depth and passionate social commitment.

My own love and amazement with Merton began when I was in England three years ago studying for my MA in Buddhism. His “Asian Journal” was sitting in an odd corner of the tiny departmental library where I often went to relax after class. It is an amazing read: effusive and joyful, contemplative and poetic… hopeful and yet grounded.

His biography is likewise inspiring, perhaps especially to me because I see so much of myself in his life. I see how he molded his intelligence and rambunctious youth into one of our century’s most prolific religious figures and I can only hope to live out some shred of that simple spiritual greatness. In any case, here are some bits from the movie (mostly excerpts from his writings) to ponder:

SOLITUDE

Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your own dwelling as by staying within. Solitude is a deepening of the present. And unless you look for it in the present, you will never find it.

ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of a shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, a world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The conception of separation from the world that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion, the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being. – from “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander“

ON WAR AND SOCIETY

While non-violence is regarded as somehow sinister, vicious, and evil, violence has manifold acceptable forms in which it is not only tolerated, but approved by American society.

NUCLEAR WAR

One would certainly wish that the Catholic position on Nuclear war was as strict as the Catholic position on birth control.

It seems a little strange that we are so wildly exercised about the murder of an unborn infant by abortion, or even the prevention of conception, which is hardly murder, and yet accept without a qualm the extermination of millions of helpless and and innocent adults.

(from an interview about Merton) …When a nuclear war comes, it will not be because of the insane, a psychotic getting to the button. It will be because sane persons have accepted sane commands, coming all down the chain. And [Merton] felt that we were really on a very perilous course because of the insanity of thinking that you could win a nuclear war… or that you could limit a nuclear war, that 20 million people were expendable. Merton saw all of that and cried out against it.

In the last weeks of his life, he traveled to India to meet with the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan monks and then on to Sri Lanka before finally attending a conference in Bangkok, Thailand. It was in Sri Lanka that, according to the movie, Merton had “the most moving religious experience of his life.”

There he visited the great statues at Polonnaruwa, some of the largest and most ancient depictions of the Buddha in existence today. Of his experience he wrote:

I am able to approach the Buddha barefoot and undisturbed. Then, the silence of the extraordinary faces, the great smiles, huge yet subtle, filled with every possibility. Questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing.Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean, out of the habitual half-tied vision of things. And an inner clearness – clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves became evident and obvious. Surely, with Polonnaruwa, my Asian Pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know, and have seen what I was obscurely looking for.

Days later he died in a tragic accident in Bangkok. It was December 10, 1968.

This is the quote I was trying to track down. I think it is from the Asian Journal, but the page number I copied (p.162) doesn’t match up – could be a different edition, could be another book… Let me know if you know where this is from:

“I think that we suffer (not least I myself) from the disease of absolutes. Every answer has to be the right answer an, not only that, the final one. All problems have to be solved as of now. All uncertainties are intolerable. But what is life but uncertainties and a few plausible possibilities?…. Perhaps our problem here is that we prefer the security that can be gained by screwing everything down tight and keeping it that way, to the risk of letting people really discover themselves.”

I’m reminded a bit of a recent post at WoodMore Village, where Nacho asks, “Are Buddhists the only ones seemingly content with radical uncertainty?”

REFLECTION FOR THE WEEK OF February 13, 2006

“The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary ‘unity’ against all others. The affirmation of the self as simply ‘not the other.’ But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with which to affirm it.

The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say ‘yes’ to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone. “

From Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, selected with an Introduction by Christine M. Bochen
(Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books 2000), Page 142.

Originally published in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
(New York: Doubleday, 1966) Pages 128-29.