seeking nothing at all

Robert Lax, Photo by Hartmut Geerken

sometimes i have conversations with an

imaginary guru, naturally one who lives

inside me.  he used to be a psychiatrist: at least

in the old days a lot of my conversations were

started with, & a lot of my problems heard

out or solved by, an imaginary Viennese who

listened carefully, often accusingly, & showed

me with a few apt technical phrases how far

i had erred in my thinking, or behaviour.

the Viennese fellow has disappeared; comes

back if ever for very short visits, but has been

replaced by chuang tzu (sometimes merton, or

sometimes chuang tzu in merton translation)

who tells me other wisdoms: usually the

wisdom of abstinence & avoidance; of retreat,

prayer & preparation, of non-attachment,

of “sitting quietly doing nothing”, of seeking

smallness, not greatness, of seeking nothing

at all.

Robert Lax, journal C p. 38

lax round poem

Robert Lax

collect

drawing by Thomas Merton

Beloved Spirit, You are all the prudence and the power

That change our dust and nothing into fields and fruits;

Enfold our lives forever in the compass

   of Your peaceful hills.

- Thomas Merton, Life and Holiness, p 68-69

patmos - “as though nothing were happening”

Robert Lax

Lax’s journal entries from Patmos in 1969 tell of the deep feelings of peace that he felt there:

and I felt all today as i did yesterday that

peace, deep feeling of peace is here, that here is

where i should stay at least for a while (& heal

the nerve-ends), that here things would grow,

things would speak (kal, summoned to mind,

seems a wild, wild merry-go-round from

here.) that here the days would go as though

nothing were happening, but something would

be happening, that i would do nothing all

day long, but toward evening of every day

I’d write (& slowly become) more articulate

almost every time i’ve been here the days have

gone that way: i’ve felt as though nothing

were happening: yet at the end of the year

i’ve found that the work i did at patmos was

(often) the work that stood.

- Robert Lax

above the level of thought

drawing by Thomas Merton

"The months have gone by, and You have given me peace, and I am beginning to see what it is all about.  I am beginning to understand.

"You have called me to Gethsemani not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of category.  You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are.  Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought.  If I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?

"I do not make a big drama of this business.  I do not say: “You have asked me for everything, and I have renounced all.”  I no longer desire to see anything that implies a distance between You and me.  If I stand back and consider myself and You, as if something had passed between us, from me to You, I will inevitably see the gap between us and remember the distance between us."

- Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain, p. 421

no more fuss about being a contemplative

drawing by Thomas Merton

"My God, I give up my attachment to peace, the delight and sweetness of contemplation, of Your love and Your presence.  I give myself to You to love Your will and Your honor alone.

"I know that, if You want me to renounce the manner of my desiring You, it is only in order that I may possess You surely and come to union with You.

"I will try from now on, with Your grace, to make no more fuss about “being a contemplative,” about acquiring that perfection in myself.  Instead I will seek only You, not contemplation and not perfection, but You alone.

"Then maybe I will be able to do the simple things that You would have me do, and do them well, with a perfect and pure intention in all peace and silence and obscurity, concealed even from my own self, and safe from my poisonous self-esteem."

-Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence, pp. 77-78

vocation to solitude

Drawing by Thomas Merton

"Vocation to Solitude – To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light.  To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars.  This is a true and special vocation.  There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence."

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 101