Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, was an influential author, social activist, and proponent of interfaith religious dialogue. He joined the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky in 1941. He was encouraged by the abbot to write in the monastery and his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, which was published in 1948, was a bestseller. His prolific writings included the contemplative life, prayer, Christian religious biographies, social criticism, peace, and ecumenism. He also wrote poetry, kept personal journals, and was a prolific writer of letters. In the years before his death, he took particular interest in Eastern religions. As part of a sojourn to the East, he attended a meeting on East-West dialogue for religious leaders in Bangkok, Thailand in 1968, where it was reported that he died of accidental electrocution. Many of his works have been published posthumously. http://www.monks.org/thomasmerton.html<ref> <ref>http://www.mertoncenter.org/chrono.htm http://www.merton.ca/biography.html

A collection of quotes from Thomas Merton are included on this site which are listed under different categories. Also listed are some of the more well-known books that he wrote. There is a featured video below that has a dialogue he wrote regarding what contemplation has to offer.

• Doing vs. Being
• '"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have-for their usefulness.'"
• Love
• “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
• '"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another."
• Peace
• “We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God”
• Happiness
• “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
• Faith and Enlightenment
• “Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.”
• We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
• Contemplation
• “It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.”
• “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.”

• What is Contemplation?
• Seeds of Comtemplation
• New Seeds of Comtemplation
• The Seven Story Mountain
• Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968)
• Mystics and Zen Masters
• No Man Is An Island - A book that has many meditations that deeply consider the need for silent contemplation in our noisy, illusory world.
• Praying the Psalms
• The Way of Chuang Tzu - The book Merton enjoyed writing the most, perhaps because he was able to communicate aspects of the contemplative life using an economy of words. http://slowreads.com/ReviewMertonChuangTzu.htm
• The Wisdom of the Dessert

According to D.T. Suzuki, Thomas Merton was one of the few men who deeply understood the meaning of Zen Buddhism. After some previous correspondence, they had their first meeting in 1964 in New York, when the 94-year-old Suzuki was in the United States. During this meeting, Merton was impressed by the both Suzuki's presence, and the acute ordinariness of the moment. Merton wrote several books that addressed Zen to different degrees, including Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Mystics and Zen Masters, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and, his final work, the Asian Journal. http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1989/v46-3-article1.htm