Jesus Lama

 

Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, 1968.
Courtesy of John Howard Griffin.

In the last couple of days I've come across some things that have given me a slightly different feel for Merton. A little more insight into who Merton was, how he was, as a person living in the world. When I dream of Merton, he always has aspects of a very friendly and somewhat rambunctious dog. And though Merton is not easy to pin down, I think I'm on the right track ...

The first article is in Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine. "The Jesus Lama: Thomas Merton in the Himalayas".  It is an interview with Harold Thomas. Thomas, at the time, was a skinny 27 year old, a Catholic convert, and in India studying Buddhism with the Dalai Lama. 

Talbot had met Merton at Gethsemane in 1958, 10 years before and just after his conversion, when Merton told him: "And I have only one thing to say to you: the Church is a very big place. Always remember to go your own way in it.”  Talbot remembered that and recounted it to Merton upon meeting him again in Asia. To which Merton replied: “Did I say that? That’s pretty good. And look at where we both are.” 

Dom Aelred Graham, the Dalai Lama, and Talbott, 1967.

It turns out that Harold Talbot was in Asia serving as a secretary to Dam Aelred Graham, author of Zen Catholicism. I have long been fascinated with the notion of Zen Catholicism. It is the way that I understand my own Catholicism. 

“What is really meant … is continual openness to God, attentiveness, listening, disposability, etc. In the terms of Zen, it is not awareness of but simple awareness.” (Day of a Stranger, p.41, written in 1965)

In some notes that Merton prepared for an exhibition of his calligraphic drawings, he writes:

“Neither rustic nor urbane, Eastern nor Western, perhaps can be called expressions of Zen Catholicism”. (from a notebook in the TMC collection)

 

Talbot is able, in this interview, to explain to me how Merton understood Zen within the context of his Christian tradition and how he "got" the consciousness of dzogchen -- what exactly happened to him at Pollonaruwa. If you're interested in this sort of thing, read the full interview. This is the very best interpretation of Merton's Pollonaruwa experience -- which I never quite understood -- that I have ever read. 

At first Merton had no interest in meeting with the Dalai Lama whom he presumed to be the big banana of an organized religion. Talbot persisted. This is how the meeting is recounted in the interview:

Talbott: The Dalai Lama’s robe and Thomas Merton’s white Cistercian habit with the black scapular looked Giottoesque. It was an image of two figures encountering each other who deserved to wear those robes, who were part and parcel of the world represented by those very robes. So that one really had a surfeit of visual inspiration. Both men were very solid. Unornamental, compact, strong, hard beings. Now the Dalai Lama has an external joviality and graciousness which is appropriate to a sovereign. To put you at your ease, to make it possible for beings to be in relation to him, he plays down the radiance, the dignity, the charisma, the persona that the West has developed a romantic myth about, but who in himself has his own distinct presence and radiance. There is no presumption about him. He’s a person who draws a heart-breaking reverence from the people who are devoted to him, and to see him in this room with a man to whom we don’t need to apply adjectives, but if we were, it would be things like mensch, authentic…

Tricycle: Merton?

Talbott: Yes. Mensch—manly, authentic. No gestures. No artifice. No manner. No program, no come-on—just, “Here I am folks”—and folks happened to be the Dalai Lama. And they encountered each other and, appropriately enough, there was utter silence. And then the Dalai Lama challenged him or greeted him by saying, “What do you want?” and he said, “I want to study dzogchen.” I was about to clobber Merton. I couldn’t take it. But I was very glad to be aboard. It was the generosity of Merton that made it possible for me to attend those meetings. He said, “You’re here studying with the Dalai Lama. I want you present.” Whereas it might have been delightful to be alone with just the Dalai Lama and the interpreter. It’s my good karma that I was there. There was so much good humor and so much laughter and so much camaraderie and so much confidence of understanding and so much no need for explanation and build-up and equipping themselves on their parts, you see. They had done their homework.

Tricycle: What did the Dalai Lama ask Merton about Christianity?

Talbott: If I’m not mistaken, it was about how you live the contemplative life in the West and what you do to make it possible in this modern world to live the life of a monk in the West. How do you stave off spiritual annihilation? These conversations were very much Merton equipping himself with the transmission of Buddhism from the Dalai Lama and very much the Dalai Lama equipping himself with the low-down from a reliable guide. This was not a papal legate. This was not someone setting up a conference for the Pope. This was not a front man. This was an embodiment of something which another embodiment—a tulku—who needs to function in the world, was drawing upon as a resource.

Tricycle: Did Merton have a daily meditation practice?

Talbott: I have no idea, but I asked him once, like a very fresh kid, “What is your meditation practice? And what do you think of this stuff?” He said, “My meditation practice is largely walking in the woods in a state of meditative absorption.” 

Tricycle: It sounds like the Dalai Lama was providing a transmission to be carried forth to all of Christendom. 

Talbott: The Dalai Lama is saying to him, “I want with my own eyes and ears and speech to assure myself that you have the faith firmly grounded” and—let’s be daring—let’s think that there are certain beings who do not have to come every day and attend Zen or vipassana retreat. This could be a romantic projection but I have to say what I think: Merton had thirty years behind him and when he walked into a room or the cell of a meditator, monk or lama, he was greeted with a recognition. I’ve never seen a Western person received by a lama the way that he was received. 

Tricycle: Did the Dalai Lama feel personally responsible that Merton get it right? 

Talbott: That’s how I see it. Dzogchen is the primordial state of mind, it’s the enlightened mind, that has never been anything but enlightened. We are living in a world, it is said, which is a product of our own unenlightened experience, our ma rigpa, our ignorance of the true nature of reality, absolute and relative.Dzogchen is the practice of the primordial enlightenment but it is also a view or standpoint towards reality. Its meditation is to sustain and deepen this. That’s a contradiction because dzogchen is the presence of fulfillment, not a process. We already are in primordial—or original—enlightenment in dzogchen. That’s the starting place. 

It's all just extraordinary.

Finally, 

He [Merton] had reached a point—unrecognizable to me and perhaps to you—where the Judeo-Christian theistic tradition of the Mother Church of Christendom and dzogchen of Nyingmapa Tibetan Buddhism were not in contradiction. Furthermore he had grown up in a Catholic village in France that had so deeply affected him that it had planted a seed which had caused him to enter the Church. He was a man who had spent thirty years in a Cistercian abbey. His training came from the Church. He was a generous man and he was a just man and he acknowledged what he owed to the Church. It was his formation. It was not his cocoon. It was not his prison. It was himself and it was a very good self and he needed to uphold it. 

...

Because Merton stood for the contemplative life the way—to make a vulgar and irrelevant analogy—Picasso stands for art. For contemplatives there are illuminated beings, there are hidden yogis, but as far as how ordinary people come into touch with the great spiritual heritage of the West—including the apophatic tradition, the Via Negativa—it’s through the mystical teachings from St. Paul and St. John, St. John’s gospel, Dionysius the Areopagite, the great medieval mystics Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila—and that’s just about it, folks—that’s it for the big league contributions to spirituality at the contemplative level in the West. And every now and then you get somebody who says “Wait a minute, I know the chips are down and the circumstances are against us, but let’s get in there once more and try to stay alive spiritually.” And that’s Merton for twentieth-century Westerners. Despite all of his manliness, Merton was a man of the old moment before the Second World War, a man of enormous personal and cultural refinement. He belonged in a French salon as well as in a forest in Kentucky. There is no question about it. He had the qualities we’re losing. Gaining, gaining other wonderful ones but losing, losing something. Merton had this consummate worldly culture as well as this jewel of spirituality. He was a gift to humanity, with the naivete and the nerve to take the writings of mystics seriously. 

...

Merton saw himself as a man who had to purify himself of something that was a very heavy load to carry. But by the time he came to India, whether or not finding dzogchen was central—that’s my organization of significance in his life—it turns out that he had lived his life and this was the Mozart finale and he was in a state of utmost exuberance, engaged, and absorbing, and eating with delectation every moment of every experience and every person that passed. He tipped Sikh taxi drivers like a Proustian millionaire. He was on a roll, on a toot, on a holiday from school. He was a grand seigneur, a great lord of the spiritual life. He radiated a sense of “This is an adventure, here I am folks,” and he woke people up and illuminated them and enchanted them and gave them a tremendous happiness and a good laugh. But also there was always a communication from him that he was a representative of the religious life whether he was wearing a windbreaker or a habit. The Indian people greeted him as a pilgrim, a seeker, and that was the basis on which he was met by everybody and congratulated valiantly whether they recognized his public identity or not. People knew his spiritual quality. People in planes knew it. There was no question about it. Merton was not an object of scrutiny, he was an event.

Just extraordinary.

How glad I am that I discovered Merton's writings early in my life and that he has been my guide all the way through. This is a terrific interview, Harold Talbot. Thank you for your invaluable insights.

Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen: Western Explorers of the Christian East

Keynote Jim Forest, Yale Divinity School, November 4, 2017

thinking

from the Eckhart Tolle website.

The Honesty of Thomas Merton

I like this article over on The Internet Monk a lot.  Just goes to show how honesty cuts through all sorts of things that we think divide us.

The Monk Who Wouldn't Go Away by Michael Spencer 

One of the joys of having a hero is sharing him/her with someone else. If you know me very long, you'll hear about my hero, Thomas Merton: monk, writer, poet, activist, Christian, enigma, good looking bald man. Merton (1915-1968) is one of the most significant religious writers of the twentieth century and a lasting influence on untold numbers of Christians (and non-Christians) from every tradition and culture. For those of us in the Bluegrass state, he also holds the distinction of being perhaps the most significant religious figure to reside in Kentucky, being a monk at Our Lady of Gesthemeni monastery near Bardstown for twenty-seven years. He is buried there today.  

Merton is a strange kind of hero for me. I am a conservative Reformed Protestant. He was a liberal Roman Catholic who could easily have become a Buddhist. Merton was a former communist sympathizer turned Democrat who found Gene McCarthy too tame. I am a libertarian-Republican who wishes Pat Buchanan's brain could be surgically altered and put in George W's body. Merton befriended and praised the sixtie's liberal pantheon; wrote poems about them, wrote letters for them. I think those people- Baez, Berrigan, etc- were alternately amusing and frightening. Merton hated systematic theology and loved modern literature. I hate modern literature and love systematic theology. Merton choose monasticism over marriage. I think that was a crying shame. Merton thought a good time was walking barefoot in a cornfield reading Muslim mystics. I'd prefer a Dave Mathews show. He loved jazz. I love bluegrass and rock. Merton died by touching a faulty electrical fan after taking a shower, thus becoming the patron saint of all clumsy people. I haven't yet decided how I'm going to go, but it could possible involve all the White Castles I can eat. 

Read the rest HERE.

Ten Commandments for the Long Haul

Dan Berrigan, Photo by Jim Forest on October 28, 2011

- from Ten Commandments for the Long Haul by Daniel Berrigan

1. Call on Jesus when all else fails. Call on Him when all else succeeds (except that never happens).
2. Don't be afraid to be afraid or appalled to be appalled. How do you think the trees feel these days, or the whales, or, for that matter, most humans?
3. Keep your soul to yourself. Soul is a possession worth paying for, they're growing rarer. Learn from monks, they have secrets worth knowing.
4. About practically everything in the world, there's nothing you can do. This is Socratic wisdom. However, about of few things you can do something. Do it, with a good heart.
5. On a long drive, there's bound to be a dull stretch or two. Don't go anywhere with someone who expects you to be interesting all the time. And don't be hard on your fellow travelers. Try to smile after a coffee stop.
6. Practically no one has the stomach to love you, if you don't love yourself. They just endure. So do you.
7. About healing: The gospels tell us that this was Jesus' specialty and he was heard to say: "Take up your couch and walk!"
8. When traveling on an airplane, watch the movie, but don't use the earphones. Then you'll be able to see what's going on, but not understand what's happening, and so you'll feel right at home, little different then you do on the ground.
9. Know that sometimes the only writing material you have is your own blood.
10. Start with the impossible. Proceed calmly towards the improbable. No worry, there are at least five exits.

HT: Jim Forest

remembering merton (part 2) - "I'm Thomas Merton!"

This post is going to be categorized under “humor” because it captures that whimsical nature of Merton that is so delightful.

Tommie Callaghan was a Louisville woman who had gone to school both in Bardstown and at Manhattanville Sacred Heart in New York where Dan Walsh was her philosophy professor. She and Dan stayed in touch, especially after he moved to Kentucky, and he introduced her to Merton. Tommie helped Merton get around to his various appointments in Louisville, and being the mother of 6 children, she says she was good at this. Merton became good friends with Tommie and her family. Before his death, Merton asked Tommie to be on the Board of Trustees, which oversaw his literary collection at Bellarmine College.

Tommie Callaghan relayed the following incident at the round table discussion of Merton’s friends held in the late 1990’s.

"You know, Donald, when you say that he didn't want anybody to know who he was - the man from Nelson County story - I had an occasion. I had taken my sister . . . I was very careful about going out and taking people to meet Merton or even discuss him. I felt that our friendship was not something built on his literary works, it was simply a friendship and that was that. But my sister was in town and he had said bring her out to the hermitage and I did. When we got there he said, "Listen. There's this jazz band playing down on Washington Street and I'd like to go". And I said "Tonight ?" And he said "Yes." Well, my husband, Frank, who seems to disappear out of the country when anything big is going on, was in South America, I guess, so Megan and I drove Tom in (I had seven children at that point) and I fed them dinner. Tom helped Kathy with her homework and I gathered some mutual friends, Ron and Sally Seitz, Pat and Ben Cunnington, Megan, myself, my brother and his wife, and we all went down to Washington Street to this jazz band.

There was a bass fiddler there who Tom just thought was great and he insisted we bring him over and buy him drinks, and guess who's buying the drinks? And Tom is just taken with this guy who's from Boston and he's saying to him, "I'm a monk." "I'm a Trappist monk." and [the bass player] he's saying, "Well, I'm a brother too." And Tom said " I live out at the monastery." and he said, "Oh, we have a church up in Boston". And it goes on like, "Can you top this ?" and so Tom says, "I am a priest," and this guy says, "Brother, I'm a preacher." They're hitting it right off and the man is, in the black vernacular, a great jazz musician, just great. And then Tom says, "I'm Thomas Merton." And this guy says, "Well, I'm Joe Jones !" And I mean Tom could get absolutely nowhere and I loved it, I just loved it. I called my brother to take him back that night because I really did have to get home to the seven children and get them up for school the next day. As I'm getting ready to leave, Tom stops me and says "Wait a minute. Waitress, give her the bill !" "

~Tommie Callaghan

father stephen

[Transcribed from an oral presentation:]

There was an old Father at Gethsemani-one of those people you get in every large community, who was regarded as sort of a funny fellow. Really he was a saint. He died a beautiful death and, after he died, everyone realized how much they loved him and admired him, even though he had consistently done all the wrong things throughout his life. He was absolutely obsessed with gardening, but he had an abbot for a long time who insisted he should do anything but gardening, on principle; it was self-will to do what you liked to do. Father Stephen, however, could not keep from gardening. He was forbidden to garden, but you would see him surreptitiously planting things. Finally, when the old abbot died and the new abbot came in, it was tacitly understood that Father Stephen was never going to do anything except gardening, and so they put him on the list of appointments as gardener, and he just gardened from morning to night. He never came to Office, never came to anything, he just dug in his garden. He put his whole life into this and everybody sort of laughed at it. But he would do very good things-for instance, your parents might come down to see you, and you would hear a rustle in the bushes as though a moose were coming down, and Father Stephen would come rushing up with a big bouquet of flowers.

On the feast of St. Francis three years ago, he was coming in from his garden about dinner time and he went into another little garden and lay down on the ground under a tree, near a statue of Our Lady, and someone walked by and thought, "Whatever is he doing now?" and Father Stephen looked up at him and waved and lay down and died. The next day was his funeral and the birds were singing and the sun was bright and it was as though the whole of nature was right in there with Father Stephen. He didn't have to be unusual in that way: that was the way it panned out. This was a development that was frustrated, diverted into a funny little channel, but the real meaning of our life is to develop people who really love God and who radiate love, not in a sense that they feel a great deal of love, but that they simply are people full of love who keep the fire of love burning in the world. For that they have to be fully unified and fully themselves-real people.

Thomas Merton. "The Life that Unifies" in Thomas Merton in Alaska. New York: New Directions Publishing Corp., 1988:148-149.

a certainty of tread - happy birthday father louie!

[Yeah, I know I posted this last year on my other blog, but I like it so much, I'm putting it here again this year.]

This is a very fine commentary on Thomas Merton by someone who knew him well. From Bob Lax’s journal dated July 24/69 (less than a year after Merton’s death). Jan 31 is Merton's birthday.

it must be one thing to imagine what a guru is like, another to see one. seeing merton was little enough like seeing an imaginary guru.

yet he had one quality, particularly in the last years, but even (to a large degree) from always, from even before he (formally) became a catholic: a certainty of tread.

that might sound as though he plonk plonk plonked like a german soldier as he walked down the street. actually, he didn’t: he danced (danced almost like fred astaire: bang bang bang; or bojangles robinson, tappety bam bam bam) but he knew where he was dancing.

he did walk with joy. he walked explosively: bang bang bang. as though fireworks, small & they too, joyful, went off every time his heel hit the ground.

this was true when he was still in college. it was true when he was just out of college, and it was true the last time I saw him bang bang banging down a long hallway at the monastery. he walked wth joy; knew where he was going.

first time I noted how he walked was on fifth avenue, near the park, in spring (late afternoon, I guess) as he came from somewhere uptown to meet me. bang bang bang. & that time I thought about fred astaire.

did merton & I make any resolutions as young men? one (& it wasn’t tacit) was to talk simply. merton certainly succeeded in that, & got a lot said in simple (not simplistic) language.

after merton became a catholic, was living & teaching at st. bonaventure’s, and was being fed good soups by the nice german nuns there, he was more determined to write simply, and about simple things: things they could understand & that would help them in their lives.

blessed art thou a monk swimming

One of my commenters has requested a “Merton Humor” thread. The following is part of a reflection of Dom James Fox, Fr. Louie’s abbot for 20 years. Those who have read the journals know that this relationship was blessed with challenges for Merton. Merton was Dom James’ confessor for the last 15 of those years.

I think this is pretty funny.

One quality that endeared Fr. Louis to all the brethren was his terrific “sense of humor.” His sharp and penetrating intellect enabled him to perceive the amusing and the comic, seconds before almost anyone else. I noticed this, in Chapter talks. “Chapter” is the time, whether in the evening before Compline or Sunday morning after Lauds, when the entire monastic family gathers in a large room outside the Church proper. Usually at that time, the Abbot gives some spiritual conference, and makes any announcements pertinent to the family – such as, for example, new appointments or changes in schedule, etc.

The monks all had seats around the wall, usually in rank of seniority. The monk who sat on one side of Fr. Louis was Fr. Paphnutius. He and Fr. Louis often had jousts of chivalrous, humorous wit – each trying to “outsmart” the other.

One Sunday, Fr. Paphnutius changed his name – who could blame him? It was my duty to announce the change to the Community, so I said: “Our Fr. Paphnutius has received permission to change his name.”

I looked down the line of monks on my right to Fr. Paphnutius. Of course I also saw Fr. Louis. The minute I mentioned Fr. Paphnutius, Fr. Louis was all alert, perhaps wondering to himself, “What’s my sparring partner up to now?”

So I continued, in as serious a judicial voice as I could muster, “Henceforth, he will be known in history as … “ I could see out of the corner of my eye that Fr. Louis was on the edge of his seat. Then I stopped for a few seconds – for effect – and, trying to sound like an astronaut concluding a message to Houston control, barked out: "ROGER!”

With that, Fr. Louis burst into laughter, clapped his hands on his knees, and almost rolled off onto the floor. Fr. Louis’ laughter was ebullient – bubbling over. He looked at his neighbor, the erstwhile Paphnutius. Paphnutius, smiling wryly, looked back at Fr. Louis as if to say: “I put one over on you that time.”
(from “Thomas Merton, Monk – a monastic tribute”, edited by Brother Patrick Hart, pp. 143-144)

(Note: Abbott Dom James and Fr. Louis are buried side by side in the cemetery at Gethsemani.)