OK ... here goes ...
The blog 'Transient and Permanent' offers a critique of Thomas Merton's "Zen and the Birds of Apetite"
"The first thing to be said about ZBA is that Thomas Merton’s understanding of Buddhism and Zen is far less than he seems to think it is. Statements ... demonstrate the sort of Orientalizing and projection characteristic of Western encounters with Buddhism in the fifties and sixties."
This is important, contextually. Zen in the 50s and 60s was still largely unknown. The fame of Zen in the west came later, after Merton, and commentators today have acknowledged that for all the good things he had to say, Merton's perception of Zen was framed within his own limited exposure to the tradition.
As the author notes, Buddhism is 'a far more systematic religion than Christianity'. The three jewels of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, can be paralleled with Christ, His teaching and the Church. The rules of the sangha were established by the Buddha in far more definitive terms than Christ's establishment of a Church. Western commentaries have tended to play down this aspect because they were riding the wave of post 60s anti-authoritarianism. Anything that smacked of 'institution' was definite no-no. In fact Buddhism, and especially Zen, was sold on the very idea of its anti-traditionalism. But this is all part of the western marketing-matrix.
Merton's introduction to Zen was founded on 'poorly translated textual sources centered on meditation techniques', and he took that to be 'the whole tapestry'. Again, not uncommon at the time of his writing.
Merton's approach to Zen was "the quest for direct and pure experience on a metaphysical level." This has been his road from his first epiphany at the age of 23, another a few years later which brought him into the monastic orders, and his petitioning his superiors to build a hermitage to which he could withdraw and escape 'the tyranny of the bell' that struck the hours of the contemplative religious life.
Merton's journey has been characterised by a (questionable) desire for mystical experience, On the one hand to attain Eckhartian depths of realisation, on the other to escape the trials and tribulations of his mortal life.
At this point it's worth mentioning that the then-contemporary Catholicism was hampered by a definite reluctance to treat Catholic faith as a dynamic spiritual practice. Faced with the 'heresies' of anti-mystical Protestantism and secular Modernism, the Church had dug in its heels, and the seminaries were places of dry, dusty scholasticism by the book; the monasteries followed the Liturgy of the Hours. The laity never even got a look in, and there was precious lettle to guide them beyond The Imitation of Christ or The Cloud of Unknowing.
Spirituality was Suspect, especially with spiritism and the various modes of spiritual expression that were emerging in the US.
Buddhism, on the other hand, seemed to offer a direct path, the practice of meditation, a physical system oriented towards spiritual realisation. For Merton, Zen was an escape from "developing Christian consciousness [that is] activistic, antimystical, antimetaphysical" (p29).
It's a pity then that he was unaware of movements in Europe, where from the 1930s on, writers who were snarkily referred to as exponents of 'la nouvelle theologie' by an institution who regarded everything 'new' as suspect, were promoting just that. It was the influence of such writers that inspired John XXIII to "Throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow" by announcing the Second Vatican Council.
(The immediate results Merton saw as negative. He was not a liberal Christian by any measure and disliked the relaxing of the rules.)
This is salient for me. Merton's deeply troubled psyche is no secret. In the years before he died, and while he was supposedly a Trappist hermit, he followed a writing career and toured the Far East. He engaged vigorously with the American socio-political scene and expressed his fury with the authorities, including his own, over right-wing politics.
A psychologist friend told him he secretly desired to sit in a tent in the middle of Times Square with a sign outside the tent saying: "Hermit". His first abbot curtailed his travels. His last was an ex-student who encouraged him to do just that, and it seems the temptations he had escaped by withdrawing to the cloister claimed him in the end. While all this was going on, he was having an affair with a 19-year-old woman (he was then 53) who's fiancé was serving in Viet Nam. When that ended – he continued to call and write, right up to the day she left on her honeymoon – it was to have a devastating effect on his life.
At one point Merton declares man's pressing need for: "liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation” (p31). Surely this was Merton talking to himself.
+++
Merton was indeed a troubled soul. Whether or not he was the spiritual giant that he is acclaimed to be, I do not know. I have many of his books, inc. The Seven Story Mountain. Personally, I'm inclined to think not.
He was a voice of the zeitgeist for sure, and he laid bare the agonies of the western psyche and soul in search of authentic fulfilment. But, and it pains me to say it, it seems he never had the makings of the true mystic, he never attained that which he aspired to, and his private life alone would ensure that.
As deep as he sought to bury himself in monasticism, the counter-current sought to find ways out. Certainly the institutional church did itself no favours in this. He simply could not accept the yoke of the path he had chosen. Had he a more insightful, dare one say spiritual, spiritual director, who knows ...
The blog 'Transient and Permanent' offers a critique of Thomas Merton's "Zen and the Birds of Apetite"
"The first thing to be said about ZBA is that Thomas Merton’s understanding of Buddhism and Zen is far less than he seems to think it is. Statements ... demonstrate the sort of Orientalizing and projection characteristic of Western encounters with Buddhism in the fifties and sixties."
This is important, contextually. Zen in the 50s and 60s was still largely unknown. The fame of Zen in the west came later, after Merton, and commentators today have acknowledged that for all the good things he had to say, Merton's perception of Zen was framed within his own limited exposure to the tradition.
As the author notes, Buddhism is 'a far more systematic religion than Christianity'. The three jewels of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, can be paralleled with Christ, His teaching and the Church. The rules of the sangha were established by the Buddha in far more definitive terms than Christ's establishment of a Church. Western commentaries have tended to play down this aspect because they were riding the wave of post 60s anti-authoritarianism. Anything that smacked of 'institution' was definite no-no. In fact Buddhism, and especially Zen, was sold on the very idea of its anti-traditionalism. But this is all part of the western marketing-matrix.
Merton's introduction to Zen was founded on 'poorly translated textual sources centered on meditation techniques', and he took that to be 'the whole tapestry'. Again, not uncommon at the time of his writing.
Merton's approach to Zen was "the quest for direct and pure experience on a metaphysical level." This has been his road from his first epiphany at the age of 23, another a few years later which brought him into the monastic orders, and his petitioning his superiors to build a hermitage to which he could withdraw and escape 'the tyranny of the bell' that struck the hours of the contemplative religious life.
Merton's journey has been characterised by a (questionable) desire for mystical experience, On the one hand to attain Eckhartian depths of realisation, on the other to escape the trials and tribulations of his mortal life.
At this point it's worth mentioning that the then-contemporary Catholicism was hampered by a definite reluctance to treat Catholic faith as a dynamic spiritual practice. Faced with the 'heresies' of anti-mystical Protestantism and secular Modernism, the Church had dug in its heels, and the seminaries were places of dry, dusty scholasticism by the book; the monasteries followed the Liturgy of the Hours. The laity never even got a look in, and there was precious lettle to guide them beyond The Imitation of Christ or The Cloud of Unknowing.
Spirituality was Suspect, especially with spiritism and the various modes of spiritual expression that were emerging in the US.
Buddhism, on the other hand, seemed to offer a direct path, the practice of meditation, a physical system oriented towards spiritual realisation. For Merton, Zen was an escape from "developing Christian consciousness [that is] activistic, antimystical, antimetaphysical" (p29).
It's a pity then that he was unaware of movements in Europe, where from the 1930s on, writers who were snarkily referred to as exponents of 'la nouvelle theologie' by an institution who regarded everything 'new' as suspect, were promoting just that. It was the influence of such writers that inspired John XXIII to "Throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow" by announcing the Second Vatican Council.
(The immediate results Merton saw as negative. He was not a liberal Christian by any measure and disliked the relaxing of the rules.)
This is salient for me. Merton's deeply troubled psyche is no secret. In the years before he died, and while he was supposedly a Trappist hermit, he followed a writing career and toured the Far East. He engaged vigorously with the American socio-political scene and expressed his fury with the authorities, including his own, over right-wing politics.
A psychologist friend told him he secretly desired to sit in a tent in the middle of Times Square with a sign outside the tent saying: "Hermit". His first abbot curtailed his travels. His last was an ex-student who encouraged him to do just that, and it seems the temptations he had escaped by withdrawing to the cloister claimed him in the end. While all this was going on, he was having an affair with a 19-year-old woman (he was then 53) who's fiancé was serving in Viet Nam. When that ended – he continued to call and write, right up to the day she left on her honeymoon – it was to have a devastating effect on his life.
At one point Merton declares man's pressing need for: "liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation” (p31). Surely this was Merton talking to himself.
+++
Merton was indeed a troubled soul. Whether or not he was the spiritual giant that he is acclaimed to be, I do not know. I have many of his books, inc. The Seven Story Mountain. Personally, I'm inclined to think not.
He was a voice of the zeitgeist for sure, and he laid bare the agonies of the western psyche and soul in search of authentic fulfilment. But, and it pains me to say it, it seems he never had the makings of the true mystic, he never attained that which he aspired to, and his private life alone would ensure that.
As deep as he sought to bury himself in monasticism, the counter-current sought to find ways out. Certainly the institutional church did itself no favours in this. He simply could not accept the yoke of the path he had chosen. Had he a more insightful, dare one say spiritual, spiritual director, who knows ...
] was very successful in the 70's exploiting this very issue.