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.

Inspirations and Sources

"The book is the Supreme Doctrine by Hubert Benoit...it's the best explanation for the human problem that I've ever found... a French psychiatrist who was in a severe accident that left him almost completely helpless for years..." Nothing Special Living Zen   --by C. Joko Beck

While we all from time to time have inspirations, mysterious invitations to new possibilities and ways of seeing or doing, not often do we consider the source of inspiration. The ancients attributed them to the muses, the gods and goddesses about in their midst. Modern rational man looks elsewhere, or nowhere at all. In the creative mind, there may be many attributes or, surprisingly none well defined, just the result itself.
 For some like Charlotte Joko Beck, she writes in her book, Nothing Special, Living Zen, that "I studied it at one time for 10 or 15 years. I have a copy that looks like its been in the washing machine." The book she writes of is authored by French psychiatrist, Hubert Benoit, titled La Doctrine Supreme, first published in France in 1951; later published in England in 1955; the one which is quoted here was copyrighted in England in 1998.

Dr. Benoit was severely injured in an accident that left him paralyzed and immobile. He had a great mind and a great deal of time on his hands in the aftermath of his accident. In his immobilized condition, he set out in deep thought.
The results of his pensees, or thoughts were the genesis of that book, titled in English  The Supreme Doctrine. He had a good knowledge of spiritual matters which deepened with his enforced confinement. Benoit was quite knowledgeable about the works of Zen master Suzuki, especially the book, The Doctrine of No Mind. Paying heed, especially to the thoughts of Suzuki, Benoit reminds the reader that like Suzuki, No Mind is an anti-intellectual mind, a mind that "detests every kind of intellectuality, wrote Suzuki.'

And continues Suzuki,"there is nothing complicated that man needs to do; it is enough that he see directly into his own  nature." Thus Benoit starts by saying, "Man has always reflected upon his condition, has thought that he is not as he would like to be... after having demonstrated what does not go right in the case of the natural man, and why that does not necessarily go right, come to the question: How are we to remedy this state of affairs?"
Benoit remarks that the remedies most often proposed fail to address the root cause, the germ that inspires or fails to do so; perchance  misery is often inspired because of unending want for something.
 Yoga, he writes, "is often prescribed, as if the perfection of the body would cure the root ill of the human condition."

"All that," Benoit concludes in his opening chapter, "is just animal-training and leads to one kind of servitude or another... it is perfectly analogous to the story,  Achilles and the Hare." Yet the penetrating manner of Zen cuts through illusion; it does not pause to consider peculiarities. "It knows that nothing is wrong with us, and that we suffer because we do not understand that everything works perfectly."
And so this volume by Benoit which has inspired many begins. But do not be perturbed that good and great minds have read Benoit's words before you; so many have, and many puzzle over them. You will too, and perhaps they will inspire you.