Merton (again)

 

I was looking up Merton's Asian Journal, the one he kept on his final pilgrimage, to Asia. He mused quite a bit.

On the "self" and its existence or non-existence......Some pretty heavy stuff.....

Buddhist dialectic and “alienation” might be a good theme for my Bangkok conference. Like Marxism, Buddhism considers that a fundamental egocentrism, “providing for the self” (with possible economic implications in a more modern context) leads to dogmatism about the self—either that it is eternal or that it does not exist at all. A truly critical attitude implies a certain freedom from predetermination by economic and sociological factors. The notion of “I” implies the notion of “mine.” I am “my property”—I am constituted by what separates me from “not I”—i.e., by what is mine “and not anybody’s else.” As long as “I” assert the “I” dogmatically there is lacking a critical awareness that experiences the “I” dynamically in a continuum of cause and effect—a chain of economic or other causations and coordinated interrelationships.

Well, as dear old Robbie Robertson wrote in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":- Just take what you need and leave the rest Just who or what (if anything....) is taking it is another question. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Merton was often dismissed as merely an intellectual, this often by ardent western zennists proud of their hours spent on the cushion. But it is pretty evident, from various notes in his Journals, that Merton would spend many hours in meditation in the woods around Gethsemane. In fact, he notes that certain monks in the main monastery grew suspicious of his activities in the Hermitage, where he lived alone. Some suspected, even asserted, various parties and carousing. Which appears fairly unlikely. The ardent "religious" mind often appears suspicious of any genuine freedom of heart and mind if not packaged according to their own taste.

Anyway, Merton spent much time in "zen meditation". But again, in one dialogue (correspondence by letter) with a Muslim Abdul Aziz he actually went into some detail of his own form of meditation, as it was then (1960) where he sought to speak/write in theistic terms:-

My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence.......It is not “thinking about” anything, but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible, which cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is Invisible.

I also like the way he describes his life to Mr Aziz:-

My life is in many ways simple, but it is also a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though I were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing, but can fully depend on the Love and Protection of Him Who guides me.

Anyway. Maybe enough.

May true Dharma continue.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.