a monk as a bird is a bird - Mahanambrata Brahmachari - a messenger from another world

Mahanambrata Brahmachari was a soft-spoken Hindu scholar who offered early and important intellectual encouragement to both Merton and Lax.

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.

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

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.

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.

am i supposed to wish for something?

Robert Lax, Photo by Hartmut Geerken

Lax never paid much attention to having his writings published.  During his earlier years he wondered what exactly he was supposed to do, working as a tutor, on the radio, and writing film scripts in Hollywood.  But eventually he settled into doing just what was in front of him.

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

we are wanderers

(Robert Lax hands) Photo by Hartmut Geerken

For we are all wanderers in the
earth, and pilgrims.  We have no
permanent habitat here.  The migration
of people for foraging & exploiting can
become, with grace, in (latter days)
a traveling circus.  Our tabernacle must
in its nature be a temporary tabernacle.

We are wanderers in the earth, but
only a few of us in each generation
have discovered the life of charity, the
living from day to day, receiving
our gifts gratefully through grace,
and rendering them, multiplied
through grace, to the giver.

-- Robert Lax, mogador's book 1992 68/70

The Annunciation

The Annuncation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898, oil on canvas

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and she saw that, in containing Him, she contained the world besides.

The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and the end of all things came before her in her deepest heart.

And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm Mary slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence.

And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence.

-- Thomas Merton
The Ascent to Truth (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1951, p 317)

HT to Jim Forest

homeless

Photo by Thomas Merton

From Gerry Straub's blog:

In 2000, I spent the first week of Advent alone in Thomas Merton’s hermitage on the grounds of Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. How I was given that chance is a long story, which I shall not burden you with. But here is a little something I wrote exactly ten years ago today.

Wednesday, December 6, 2000 – 10:40am, Merton’s Hermitage. After breakfast, I sat quietly in front of the fireplace. The house was really cold and I had not started the furnace, thinking I would wait until later this afternoon. After meditating for about 20 minutes, a picture flashed across my mind: the interior of an abandoned building in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, where squatters had set fire to the staircase to keep warm during a bitter cold night. I had been in the building – and many more like it – while making the documentary on the St. Francis Inn. One day, Fr. Francis Pompei, OFM found a young man in the abandoned building. He was bundled up against the cold night. His name was Efrem and he had been homeless for about a month. He said, “It’s rough.” A towering example of an understatement. Sitting alone in Merton’s hermitage – living in “rough” conditions – I’m reminded of the plight of the poor who live in far, far worse conditions because of injustice and not out of seeking a “spiritual” experience. We cannot walk toward God and turn our backs on our suffering brothers and sisters at the same time. If you are reading these words in the comfort of a home, put the book down and go show God’s mercy and love to someone who does not have a home. Get up. Do it now. To forget the poor is to forget God.

“It is the hour for prayer; if you hear the poor calling you, mortify yourself and leave God for God, although you must do everything you can not to omit your prayer, for that is what keeps you united to God; and as long as this union lasts you have nothing to fear.”
-St. Vincent de Paul

Uncommon Vision

Morgan Atkinson has produced a documentary on the remarkable life of John Howard Griffin.  Griffin figured significantly in Merton's life, and Merton in Griffin's.  This blog includes a collection of posts reflecting on Griffin's life, spirituality, and art (as if they could be viewed separately!). 

This is the description of the documentary from Atkinson's home page:

Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin is Morgan Atkinson's documentary on the remarkable life of a son of the American South, who became a citizen of the world and stirred the conscience of a nation.

John Howard Griffin is best known as the white man who in 1959 disguised himself as a black man and then traveled anonymously through the heart of Dixie. From his experiences he wrote “Black Like Me”, a groundbreaking best seller that today stands as a testament to Griffin’s moral commitment and a document of one of the more extraordinary events of the Civil Rights era.

“Uncommon Vision” focuses on Griffin’s social activism but will also examine how a spiritual commitment led him from a segregated childhood in Fort Worth to fighting with the French Underground, sustained him during ten years of blindness incurred by war injuries and inspired him during a prolific creative life as a writer/photographer.

It’s an inspiring, entertaining and edifying story. Studs Terkel, one of the great chroniclers of 20th century American culture and a frequent interviewer of Griffin, summed him up thusly.

“John Howard Griffin was one of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered …  He was just one of those guys that comes along once or twice in a century and lifts the hearts of the rest of us.”
Studs Terkel

Here is a video.  I remember being fascinated with the book, Black Like Me, when I was a child.  I look forward to seeing this documentary:





Click HERE to listen to an America Magazine podcast about the documentary.

an advent thought

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her womb.” -Henri Nouwen