Thomas Merton: Union and Division

"We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord."

If you read these posts, and think perhaps, that the blog is misnamed, think carefully, look deeply, because the raft is not the shore. The way to enlightenment may be fast as Suzuki, or it may be slow; the simple mind sees in possibility. Revelation is ongoing in Buddhist commentary, as indeed it is in the oral Torah of Judaism, or in the Christ revealed. Thomas Merton, an important 20th century theologian, a member of the Catholic Christian sect, or order, the Cistercians, whose roots date back nearly a thousand years.

Thomas Merton was French, born in Prades, France. His parents, artists, Ruth and Owen Merton died when he was young. His early years were spent in the south of France; later, he went to private school in England and then to Cambridge University. By the time Merton was a young teen, he moved to his grandparents' home in the United States to finish his education at Columbia University in New York City.

Merton's active social and political conscience was also informed by his conversion to Catholic Christianity in his early twenties. In December 1941, he resigned his teaching post at Bonaventure College, Olean, NY, and journeyed to the Trappist (Cistercian) monastery, Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky.
There, Merton undertook the life of a scholar and man of letters, in addition to his formation as a Cistercian monk.

The thoroughly secular man was about to undertake a lifelong spiritual journey into faith and monasticism, and the pursuit of his own spirituality. His importance as a writer in the American literary tradition is becoming clear. His influence as a religious thinker and social critic is taking its place. His explorations of the religions of the east initiated Merton's entrance into inter-religious dialogue, placing him in worldwide ecumenical movements, in the spirit of Saint Peter (I Peter 3:15), "to give an explanation for the reason of our hope [that we may be as one]."
Excerpt from the website, Thomas Merton Society of Canada:

Union and Division

"In order to become myself, [my original face] I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself, I must go out of myself, and in order to live, I have to die [to myself].
The reason for this is that I am born in selfishness and therefore my natural efforts to make myself more real and more myself, make me less real and less myself, because they revolve around a lie."--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Merton writes in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, that "people who know nothing of God, and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating... and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all... they conceive of only one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off... and building a barrier of contrast and distinction... they do not know that reality is to be sought not in division, but in unity, for we are members of one another.'

"The man who lives in division is not a person but only an individual. I have what you have not; I am what you are not... thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me... The man who lives in division, lives in death.
He cannot find himself because he is lost; he ceases to be a reality...
Once he has started on this path, there is no limit to the evil his self satisfaction may drive him to..."

Finally Merton notes, the start of the Way for this man begins in emptiness; "I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God, but in other men. I will not ever be able to find myself if I isolate myself." Co-union in support, in Sangha, is the beginning of the Way.

A Theology of Evil

"The Devil has a whole system of theology and philosophy...which explains that created things are evil...in fact the whole universe is full of misery..." Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

According to the Evil One, the creator rejoices in the sufferings of men; the universe is filled with misery because the creator himself plans it and wills it. In myriad ways, the implication of a move toward what is good within a spiritual tradition, by definition, acknowledges its opposite, what is evil. This is an idea which has not been directly explored here before.

Evil is indeed the counterpoint to many if not most spiritual systems and modes of practice. Yet in a modern, pluralistic society such as the United States, its presence may be easily obscured by many factors, and it may be enveloped and packaged into a number of other ideas. Without clear, careful awareness of the implications of a thought or action, an individual or a mass movement, evil easily arises into our midst.

Thomas Merton writes-- indeed, says within this system, the Creator took real pleasure in the crucifixion of souls; the Christ came to earth so as to be punished. Punishment is in fact his chief goal for himself and for all others. The pair, the Christ and his creator, want nothing more than to punish and persecute; that mankind inevitably is in error, he is wrong, so much so that there is great opportunity to manifest the justice of the wicked.

In the cosmos of the Evil One, the first order of creation is Hell; it comes first, before all else. The proper devotions of the faithful are about evil so as to be cloaked with evil. It is so that man cannot escape his punishments, the justice that this One metes out.There is no escape for individuals, nor for society in this way; there is no mercy, for it has no place in these systems of justice by punishments. The suffering, the Christ and his cross have now been transformed into a new symbol, a symbol for the victory of Justice and Law.

The Evil One declares that it is Law and Justice, not Love that fulfills the teaching. "Law must devour everything,' writes Merton, 'such is this theology of punishment, hatred and revenge."
Those who live by this dogma, live for just punishments, and yet desire to successfully evade the very same for themselves. He or she will take care to see to it that others do not avoid suffering. This concern powers the believer. The chief mark of hell is that there is everything but mercy. God absents himself from hell.

His mercy is elsewhere. Those in agreement with the Evil One are perfect; they no longer have need of any mercy. It is perhaps because "they derive a deep, subconscious comfort from the thought that many other people will fall into hell which they themselves are going to escape."

By this feeling, this conviction they are saved. The Evil One makes many disciples; he furthers his conquest through announcements against sin, the evil of sin which is guilt. So don't feel guilty, lest you fall into sin! In syllogistic logic, the principle of pleasure is explored:
 pleasure is sin; all sin is pleasure.
Next comes the notion that since pleasure is practically unavoidable, indeed planted here by the creator, we have a natural tendency towards evil, our nature is evil; therefore practically no one can escape sins because pleasure is inescapable. And so in the philosophy of the Evil One, what is left except to live for pleasure, to live in the now--with no thought of anyone or anything else beyond the self?

Ironic how those lives are often miserably unhappy ones, isn't it? Yet it's all in the plan of Justice and Punishments devised by this creator who works without mercy or grace, explains Thomas Merton in his essay, "The Moral Theology of the Devil."

Reality is in Union, Thomas Merton

This article appeared here previously on March 14, 2009

 "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord"

If you read these posts, and perhaps, think that the blog is misnamed, think carefully, look deeply, because the raft is not the shore. The way to enlightenment may be fast as Suzuki, or it may be slow; the simple mind sees in possibility. Revelation is ongoing in Buddhist commentary, as indeed it is in the oral Torah of Judaism, or in the Christ revealed.
Thomas Merton, an important 20th century theologian, is a member of the Catholic Christian sect, or order, of the Cistercians, whose roots date back nearly a thousand years.

"Thomas Merton was French, born in Prades, France. His parents, artists, Ruth and Owen Merton died when he was young. His early years were spent in the south of France; later, he went to private school in England and then to Cambridge University. By the time Merton was a young teen, moved to his grandparents' home in the United States to finish his education at Columbia University in New York City.

But Merton's active social and political conscience was also informed by his conversion to Catholic Christianity in his early twenties. In December 1941, he resigned his teaching post at Bonaventure College, Olean, NY, and journeyed to the Trappist (Cistercian) monastery, Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky.
There, Merton undertook the life of a scholar and man of letters, in addition to his formation as a Cistercian monk. The thoroughly secular man was about to undertake a lifelong spiritual journey into faith and monasticism, and the pursuit of his own spirituality. His importance as a writer in the American literary tradition is becoming clear. His influence as a religious thinker and social critic is taking its place. His explorations of the religions of the east initiated Merton's entrance into inter-religious dialogue, placing him in worldwide ecumenical movements, in the spirit of Saint Peter (I Peter 3:15), "to give an explanation for the reason of our hope [that we may be as one]."

--Excerpt from the website, Thomas Merton Society of Canada: http://www.merton.ca

Union and Division
"In order to become myself, [my original face] I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be, and in order to find myself, I must go out of myself, and in order to live, I have to die [to myself].
The reason for this is that I am born in selfishness and therefore my natural efforts to make myself more real and more myself, make me less real and less myself, because they revolve around a lie."

--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Merton writes in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, that "people who know nothing of God, and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating... and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all... they conceive of only one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off... and building a barrier of contrast and distinction... they do not know that reality is to be sought not in division, but in unity, for we are members of one another.

'The man who lives in division is not a person but only an individual. I have what you have not; I am what you are not... thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me... The man who lives in division, lives in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he ceases to be a reality...
Once he has started on this path, there is no limit to the evil his self satisfaction may drive him to..."
Finally Merton notes, the start of the Way for this man begins in emptiness; "I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God, but in other men. I will not ever be able to find myself if I isolate myself." Co-union in support, in Sangha is the beginning of the Way.

Seeds and Meditations

"Despair is the absolute self extreme of self-love, reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help, so as to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost."--New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Merton writes in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, on various topics meant for self-reflection and meditation. He says we are to read at our individual pace, not to feel compelled to take the author's pace or the author's conclusion. For in each of us there are seeds of contemplation which grow fruits different and unique as we are in Creation. Regarding humility he says that self-love and its result, despair are the opposite of humility. "But if a man is truly humble he cannot despair... because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity... the man lives no longer for himself alone." Looking outward to others he lives in an "other focused" existence partaking in the joys of everyday life.Thus in complete humility selfishness is replaced by self-forgetfulness. Merton writes, "If there were no humility in the world, everybody would long ago have committed suicide."

Self confidence Merton writes is "a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deeper if we are to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self confidence is gone, when our self respect is gone. Correspondingly a humble man is "not disturbed by praise." Since he is no longer concerned merely with himself, and since he knows the good (karma, if you like) that in him is for all benefit, he does not refuse praise because it is for the greater good, the greater joy.

About obedience and acceptance, Merton explores the values of both. "We must be convinced that it is very profitable for us to exercise ourselves in obedience, even to commands that are not perfectly rational or prudent. In doing this, we are not blinding ourselves or telling ourselves lies about the case. We simply accept the situation as it is, with all its defects, and obey for the love of God [the Creator]. In order to do so, we  have to make a fully rational and free decision, which in some cases may be quite difficult."

As for beginning in meditation, Merton writes:  "After they have acquired the discipline of mind that enables one to concentrate on a spiritual subject and get below the surface... acquire the agility and freedom of mind that will help find the light, warmth, ideas and love for God that are everywhere, in where they go and what they do...'

"Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn to contemplate works of art." Pray while in the streets of the city, or in the countryside. Meditate not only with book in hand. When meditation gets "beyond the level of your understanding and your imagination, it is really doing its work... then you must reach out into the fog and darkness with blind faith, filled with hope and love."

Merton and the Reality of the Body

"And what God has joined, no man can separate without danger to his sanity"

" If I never become what I am meant to be, but always remain what I am not, I shall spend eternity contradicting myself by being at once something and nothing... --Thomas Merton



While Gnosis is chiefly concerned with the mind, the idea of the body as a perceived reality is discussed by the Catholic Christian monk, Thomas Merton.

In his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, a compilation of his short musings on a variety of subjects he writes, "Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between things and God, as if God were another thing and his creatures were his rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God; rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see...This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see..."

There is no evil in the created world, nor can anything created become an obstacle to oneness.

However the obstacle often becomes our self, "that is to say our tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistical will... It is then that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God..."

We use all things "for the worship of this idol, which is our imaginary self; in doing so we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachments..." To take for an idol is the worst kind of self deception. "It turns a man into a fanatic, no longer capable of genuine love...'

"Whereby a "saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good... while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy [not unified], or else they don't bother about the question one way or the other, because they are only interested in themselves."

In the eyes of the Oneness, the unified, the holy, the saints, all beauty is holy and glorious; it is without judgement because he knows that his mission on this earth as saint is to bring mercy to all men.

Merton continues. He says, "The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who Dwells and sings with in the essence of every creature, and in the core of our souls.
In his love we possess all things... Until we love God perfectly [without fear], everything in this world will be able to hurt us. And the greatest misfortune is to be dead to the pain, and not realize what it is... The anguish that we [feel] belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality than is there... "

"But to worship our false self is to worship nothing... The false self must not be identified with the body. The body is neither evil nor unreal. It has a reality that is given it by God, and this reality is therefore holy. Hence we say rightly, though symbolically, that the body is the Temple of God, meaning that his truth, his perfect reality, is enshrined there in the mystery of our own being.'
'Let no one therefore despise or hate the body... Let no one dare to mis-use this body. Let him not desecrate his own natural unity by dividing himself, soul against body, as if soul were good and body evil. Soul and body together subsist in the reality of the hidden inner person. If they are separated, there is no longer a person... And what God has joined, no man can separate without danger to his sanity."

It is equally false to treat the soul as if it were a "whole" and the body as if it were a "whole."
Those who make this mis-perception fall firstly into the practice of "angel-ism," the study and love of angels, or spirit beings; those who fall for the second mistake, fall into the trap of life lived as below the level given by God to his human creation.
It would not be an acceptable cliche, however, to say that "such men live like beasts; there are many respectable and conventionally moral people for whom there is no other reality in life than their body and its relationship with things.'

'They have reduced themselves to a life lived within the limits of their five senses. Their self is consequently an illusion based on sense experience and nothing else. For these, the body becomes a source of falsity and deception. But it is not the body's fault. It is the fault of the person himself, who consents to the illusion, who finds security in self-deception and will not answer the secret voice of God calling him to take a risk and venture by faith outside the reassuring and protective limits of his five senses."

"You are the secret of God's heart." --unknown

The Basis of Oneness

"feel your lightness and let it merge with others..."
--Tao Te Ching
"Many poets are not poets... they never succeed in being themselves."
--Thomas Merton
"I am the will, the heart, the soul, the spirit, the self, the I..."
--Peter Kreeft


Ways of seeing, vispayana, are many and yet they are few: some spiritual traditions are unique, and yet they are universal:

"If you know what it is, don't talk it away:
If you don't then you don't understand.

Hush, keep it in, and your doorway shut--
Steer clear of sharpness and untangle the knots.

Feel your lightness and let it merge with others,
This we say is our basis of oneness.

The sage who does this doesn't have to worry
about people called 'friends' or 'enemies,'
with profit or loss, honor or disgrace--

He is a Master of Life, instead."
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 56, translated by Man-Ho Kwok

"I have three priceless treasures:
The first is compassion
the second, thrift
And the third is that I never want to be ahead of you.

If I have compassion, you will die for me. I know that.
If I waste nothing, I can give myself to you all--
And if I don't seem perfect, then you'll trust me to lead you.

These days people scorn compassion. They try to be tough.
They spend all they have, and yet want to be generous
They despise humility, and want to be the best.

I tell you that way is Death's.

If you have loved your people, you will know it
they will fight tooth and nail for you in attack or defense.

This is the protection of Heaven, and your harvest.
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 67, translated by Man-Ho Kwok


Thomas Merton, Integrity

"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or particular saint they are intended to be by [gifts of] God... They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody elses' experiences, or write somebody else's poems, or possess somebody else's spirituality... There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular-- and too lazy to think of anything better... Hurry ruins saints as well as artists... In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. The two turn out to be practically the same thing. The saint is unlike everybody else precisely because he is humble... since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself, you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe... Individuality is something deep in the soul... humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and common sense, without which there is no sane morality...How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

--Thomas Merton, Trappist monk from his book, The New Seeds of Contemplation

Peter Kreeft, The Most Important Thing

"Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." Matthew 15:11

"This is true not only of the mouth or the body, but also the soul. What comes into my soul is not necessarily what I will, but what comes out of my soul is precisely what I will. The Greek philosophers did not clearly recognize this personal center. They were intellectualists; they thought the deepest thing in us was the mind. Thus Plato taught that whenever we really know the good, we do it... Aristotle defined man as a rational animal." When asked about his teachings, Jesus replied, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If any man's will is to do this [the Father's] will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God." John 7, verses 16,17

"The will leads us to wisdom... Know thyself, was the first and greatest command for the Greeks. It was inscribed upon every Temple of Apollo... To answer that fundamental question: What is the self? What am I? What is the human person? The key of love unlocks the deepest answer...

--Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
simplemindzen.blogspot.com