|
|
|
Thomas Merton: An Englishman who became a Communist, then a Catholic, later a Trappist monk, and
finally a Zen Buddhist, at which point, his life having been fulfilled, he died.
|
"It is illuminating to the point of astonishment to talk
to a Zen Buddhist from Japan and to find that you have much more in common with him than with those of your own
compatriots who are little concerned with religion, or interested only in its external practice." Mystics and Zen Masters, p. 209
|
| Thomas Merton, that at no time in his life did he ever become a true hermit. He had
friends all over the world - Vietnamese Buddhists, Hindu monks, Japanese Zen masters, Sufi Muslim mystics, professors
of religion and mysticism from Jerusalem's University, French philosophers, artists and poets from Europe, South
America and the United States, Arabic scholars, Mexican sociologists, etc. These wrote regularly and turned up
on his doorstep having traveled thousands of miles to see him. This is what you would expect and see with Christian
mystics, Zen Buddhists, Sufi Muslims, although of different experiences, that is, to be crossing over the boundaries
of decrees, climbing over the dogmas of theology, gaining the ability to see God in living, loving and being, perceiving
God in all life as we know it. |
|
