c. 1996 Religion News Service
TRAPPIST, Ky. _ Twenty eight years ago, Thomas Merton set out from his monastery to explore the world of Asian spirituality. This week, part of that world came here to honor the late author for his pioneering work in religious reconciliation.”Thomas Merton is someone we can look up to,”said the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, at a memorial service Thursday (July 25) at the Abbey of Gethsemani.”He had the qualities of being learned, disciplined and having a good heart.” The Dalai Lama, who met Merton during the Trappist monk’s fateful 1968 trip to Asia, came here to attend the Gethsemani Encounter, a week-long conference on Buddhist and Catholic traditions of monastic prayer and meditation.
Merton, whose numerous books brought the experience of contemplative prayer to millions who have never set foot in a monastery, died suddenly at the age of 53. Hours after speaking at a historic interfaith conference in Bangkok, he died when he was electrocuted by a malfunctioning fan in his hotel room.
While Merton was a poet, monastic reformer and social activist, those who gathered here paid highest tribute to his eloquent writings on prayer and his role in interreligious dialogue.
As the first American Trappist to pursue contact with Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, Merton gradually”came to recognize that the East has something which we in the West tend to overlook or neglect,”said the Rev. James Connor, who lived with Merton at Gethsemani and is now abbot of Assumption Abbey in Ava, Mo.
Connor quoted Merton’s journal, written while in Asia:”I think that we have now reached a stage of (long overdue) religious maturity at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment and yet learn in depth from, say, a Buddhist or Hindu discipline or experience.” The Dalai Lama credited Merton with helping open his eyes to the notion that Tibetan Buddhism does not hold the world’s only truth.”As a result of meeting with him, my attitude toward Christianity (was) much changed,”he said.
Merton’s influence pervaded the entire Gethsemani conference. Speakers quoted him extensively; those who knew him told anecdotes; those who didn’t spoke of the profound influence of his books, more than 40 of which are still in print. They include his classic”New Seeds of Contemplation”(New Directions);”Mystics and Zen Masters”(Noonday) and”Passion for Peace”(Crossroad). “I have to credit him with getting me interested in monasticism,”said Brother Gregory Perron, 25, a Trappist from St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Ill.”Thomas Merton was part of my spiritual journey in college,”said Joseph Goldstein, a Buddhist and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass.
Dozens of conference participants trekked to the small concrete hermitage in the woods where Merton spent increasing amounts of time in his final years. The monks still use the building for personal retreats but have retained much of its look from Merton’s days: a simple wooden desk overlooking a valley, artwork given by everyone from a former novice to elderly Shaker friends living nearby in Kentucky.
In a letter read at the conference, Merton described a typical day at the hermitage built on a simple routine of prayer, chores, study and writing.
The reality was often far less romantic, said Brother Harold Thibodeau, a Gethsemani monk who trained as a novice under Merton in the early 1960s.
Merton’s spiritual autobiography,”The Seven Storey Mountain,”(Harcourt Brace) had been a bestseller, and even the hermit could not escape the trappings of celebrity.”The priests from Louisville were coming down the back hill and knocking on his door at 9 o’clock at night for problems they had with their bishops, or their own problems,”Thibodeau recalled.”So he said, `Well, maybe that’s what the Lord put me in this hermitage for.'” Merton’s intellectual pursuits, on top of his monastic duties, represent an astounding achievement, Thibodeau recalled, but were proof that he lived what he taught.”He was centered on Christ,”he said.”Most people could not stand that much diffusion.” The very term”centering prayer,”which describes a method oriented around twice-daily, 20-minute meditation sessions, can be traced to Merton. The Rev. Basil Pennington of Hong Kong, a Trappist author who has helped spread the teaching of this increasingly popular Christian prayer technique, said he quoted Merton often in early seminars, and the phrase grew out of Merton’s references to locating God in the center of one’s being.
But Pennington said his free-spirited friend would have rebelled against all the solemn memorializing amid such a dynamic interfaith gathering.”He would have said,”`Let’s go have a beer,'”Pennington said.”He would have been doing cartwheels down the corridor because of what’s happening here.”
MJP END SMITH
