The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think.
-- Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image) p 77
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| Photo of Catherine de Hueck Doherty by Merton, 1941 |
“The Baroness was born a Russian. She had been a young girl at the time of the October Revolution. She had seen half of her family shot, she had seen priests fall under the bullets of the Reds, and she had escaped from Russia the way it is done in the movies, but with all the misery and hardship which the movies do not show, and none of the glamour which is their specialty.
“The experiences she had gone through, instead of destroying her faith, intensified and deepened it until the Holy Ghost planted fortitude in the midst of her soul like an unshakable rock. I never saw anyone so calm, so certain, so peaceful in her absolute confidence in God.
“Catherine de Hueck is a person in every way big: and the bigness is not merely physical: it comes from the Holy Ghost dwelling constantly within her, and moving her in all that she does." - Seven Story Mountain, pp. 342-343
Robert Lax never tried to be like others. Did he have any models? He had the ability to learn from others. Open, unbiased, he appears to have always discovered in others whatever it was he needed in his search for self.During Brahmachari's years in the US he kept a diary, much of which has been lost. However here is an entry he made when he first met Merton (Mr. Tom Martin) and Lax. The rest of the diary entries can be found HERE.
Important for him was his meeting with Brahmachari, the young Hindu monk who set out on foot from Calcutta to the Ecumenical World Congress in the USA, and arrived two years late in 1938.
"A monk as a bird is a bird," Lax described him.
In complete disregard of the regulations of their hall of residence, Lax and his friend Thomas Merton put him up for several months in their rooms at Columbia University.
Brahmachari observed American society with the eyes of a stranger, and thus unwittingly altered the way the two students saw things. They began to question much that they had previously taken for granted. Brahmachari's remarks were free of any sarcasm or irony; he did not evaluate, but simply noted and burst out laughing - which was simply an expression of his utter astonishment at the way he saw people living their lives there. Dressed in a white robe, a pea-yellow shawl, a yellow turban embroidered in red with prayers, and his blue sneakers, he was a messenger from another world. The fact that Brahmachari hadn't a cent to his name and despite this didn't feel the slightest worry or care, but instead radiated a phenomenal calm, made a deep impression the the two friends Lax and Merton. He had such a deep inner repose and acted so confidently that it seemed he had a direct link with heaven and the world lay at his feet. His sincerity and warmth were like signs from the higher sphere. Brahmachari was not the slightest bit bothered about politics. Lax had the feeling, as he says, that Brahmachari was in touch with something like a timeless world in which we all exist and in which, if we were to do nothing but live a life of quietude, rectitude, and goodness, everything else would come of its own accord. For Brahmachari, the life of the spirit was the only possible choice. He lived in the moment, in the present moment. Love and devotion - Brahmachari exemplified his message. He was, as Robert Lax says, a wonderfully gentle person. There can be no doubt that Brahmachari had a lasting influence or Robert Lax's [and Merton's] human dealings.
- Sigrid Hauff, A Line in Three Circles - The Inner Life of Robert Lax, 2007
New York-Wednesday, May 25. Taxi to 135 madison Avenue-the factory of Seymour's father. Leave one passage of (Shree Murti). Take bus to Columbia. Meet Seymour's roommate, Mr. Robert Lx. To Philosophy library reading Karl Marx. Meet Mr. Tom Martin. Three of us go out for lunch after waiting an hour for Seymour hoping he would come. After lunch they take me to one of their girl student friend, Dunny Eilin-her home in Panama. happy visit with her. ...When he was in Asia, Merton made attempts to locate Brahmachari. Brahmachari died in 1999 in Calcutta at the age of 95. The NY Times obituary is here.
what do you most
wish for
in all this world?
am i supposed
to wish
for something?
- Lax, episodes Pendo/Verlag 1983, p. 69
whatever you have
to say
will get itself
said
don't worry
who worries?
that's all i'm
telling
you:
don't
-Lax, journal A, Pendo/Verlag, 1986 p. 36
