Thomas Merton | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1915-01-31)January 31, 1915 Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales, France |
| Died | December 10, 1968(1968-12-10) (aged 53) Mueang Samut Prakan, Thailand |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Occupations |
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| Religion | Christianity (Roman Catholic) |
| Church | Latin Church |
| Ordained | May 26, 1949(1949-05-26) (aged 34) |
| Writings | The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) |
Thomas MertonOCSO (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968),religious name M. Louis, was an AmericanTrappist monk, writer, theologian,mystic, poet,social activist and scholar ofcomparative religion. He was a monk in the TrappistAbbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, nearBardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years,[1] mostly onspirituality,social justice, andpacifism, as well as scores ofessays and reviews. Among Merton's most widely-read works is his bestselling autobiographyThe Seven Storey Mountain (1948).
Merton became a keen proponent ofinterfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through study and practice. He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures including theDalai Lama, Japanese writerD. T. Suzuki, Thai Buddhist monkBuddhadasa, and Vietnamese monkThich Nhat Hanh.
Thomas Merton was born inPrades, Pyrénées-Orientales, France, on January 31, 1915, to parents of Welsh origin:Owen Merton, a New Zealand painter active in Europe and the United States, and Ruth Jenkins Merton, an AmericanQuaker and artist. They had met at a painting school in Paris.[2] He wasbaptized in theChurch of England, in accordance with his father's wishes.[3] Merton's father was often absent during his son's childhood.
DuringWorld War I, in August 1915, the Merton family left France for the United States. They lived first with Ruth's parents inQueens, New York, and then settled near them inDouglaston. In 1917, the family moved into an old house inFlushing, Queens, where Merton's brother, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918.[4] The family was considering returning to France when Ruth was diagnosed withstomach cancer. She died from it on October 21, 1921, inBellevue Hospital. Merton was six years old and his brother not yet three.[5]
In 1926, when Merton was eleven, his father enrolled him in a boys'boarding school inMontauban, the Lycée Ingres. In the summer of 1928, he withdrew Merton from Lycée Ingres, saying the family was moving to England.[6]
In October 1933, Merton, age 18, enteredClare College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate to study French and Italian.[2] He was unhappy at Clare College, preferring loafing over studying, and fathered a child whom he never met,[3] although he later signed at least two official court documents stating that he had "no children".[7][8]
In January 1935, Merton enrolled as a sophomore atColumbia University in New York City. There he established close and long-lasting friendships with the painterAd Reinhardt,[9] poetRobert Lax,[10] commentatorRalph de Toledano,[11] and the law studentJohn Slate.[12] He also befriended the publisherRobert Giroux.[13] Merton attended an 18th-century English literature course during the spring semester taught byMark Van Doren, a professor with whom he maintained a lifetime friendship.[14]
In January 1938, Merton graduated from Columbia with aB.A. in English. In June, his friend Seymour Freedgood arranged a meeting withMahanambrata Brahmachari, aHindu monk visiting New York from theUniversity of Chicago. Merton was impressed by him. While Merton expected Brahmachari to recommend Hinduism, instead he advised Merton to reconnect with Christianity. He suggested Merton read theConfessions ofAugustine andThe Imitation of Christ. Merton read them both.[15] In August 1938, he attendedMass atCorpus Christi Church, located near the Columbia campus. He began to read more extensively in Catholicism.[16]
On November 16, 1938, Thomas Merton underwent the rite of confirmation at Corpus Christi Church and receivedHoly Communion.[17] On February 22, 1939, Merton received hisM.A. in English from Columbia University. Merton decided he would pursue hisPhD at Columbia and moved from Douglaston toGreenwich Village. He then discerned a call toreligious life.
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On December 10, 1941, Thomas Merton arrived at theAbbey of Gethsemani and spent three days at the monastery guest house, waiting for acceptance into the order. On December 13 he was accepted into the monastery as apostulant by Frederic Dunne, Gethsemani's abbot since 1935, and given thereligious nameMary Louis. Merton had a severe cold from his stay in the guest house, where he sat in front of an open window to prove his sincerity. During his initial weeks at Gethsemani, Merton studied the Trappistsign language and daily work and worship routine.
In March 1942, during the first Sunday ofLent, Merton was accepted as anovice. In June, he received a letter from his brother John Paul stating he was soon to leave for the war and would be coming to Gethsemani to visit before leaving. On July 17 John Paul arrived in Gethsemani. John Paul expressed his desire to become a Catholic, and by July 26 was baptized at a church in nearbyNew Haven, Kentucky, leaving the following day. This would be the last time the two saw each other. John Paul died on April 17, 1943, when his plane failed over theEnglish Channel. A poem by Merton to John Paul appears inThe Seven Storey Mountain.
Merton kept journals throughout his stay at Gethsemani. Initially, he felt writing to be at odds with his vocation, worried it would foster a tendency to individuality. But his superior, Dunne, tasked Merton beginning in 1943 to translate religious texts and write biographies of saints.
On March 19, 1944, Merton made his temporaryvows and was given the blackscapular and leather belt. In November 1944 a manuscript Merton had given to friendRobert Lax the previous year was published byJames Laughlin atNew Directions: a book ofpoetry titledThirty Poems.[18] In 1946 New Directions published another poetry collection by Merton,A Man in the Divided Sea, which, combined withThirty Poems, attracted some recognition for him. The same year Merton's manuscript forThe Seven Storey Mountain was accepted byHarcourt Brace & Company.The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton'sautobiography, was written during two-hour intervals in the monasteryscriptorium as a personal project.[19]
On March 19, 1947, he took his solemn vows, binding for life. He also began corresponding with aCarthusian atSt. Hugh's Charterhouse in England. Merton had harbored an appreciation for the Carthusian order since coming to Gethsemani in 1941, and would later come to consider leaving the Cistercians for that order.[20]
In 1948The Seven Storey Mountain was published to critical acclaim, with fan mail to Merton reaching new heights. Merton also published several works for the monastery that year, which were:Guide to Cistercian Life,Cistercian Contemplatives,Figures for an Apocalypse, andThe Spirit of Simplicity. That yearSaint Mary's College (Indiana) also published a booklet by Merton,What Is Contemplation? Merton published as well that year a biography,Exile Ends in Glory: The Life of a Trappistine, Mother M. Berchmans, O.C.S.O. Merton's abbot, Dunne, died on August 3, 1948, while riding on a train toGeorgia. Dunne's passing was painful for Merton, who had come to look on the abbot as a father figure and spiritual mentor. On August 15 the monastic community elected Dom James Fox, a formerUS Navy officer, as their new abbot. In October Merton discussed with him his ongoing attraction to the Carthusian andCamaldolese orders and theireremitical way of life, to which Fox responded by assuring Merton that he belonged at Gethsemani. Fox permitted Merton to continue his writing, Merton now having gained substantial recognition outside the monastery. On December 21 Merton was ordained as asubdeacon. From 1948 on, Merton identified himself as ananarchist.[21]
On January 5, 1949, Merton took a train toLouisville and applied for American citizenship. Published that year wereSeeds of Contemplation,The Tears of Blind Lions,The Waters of Siloe,[22] and the British edition ofThe Seven Storey Mountain under the titleElected Silence. On March 19, Merton became a deacon in the order, and on May 26 (Ascension Thursday) he was ordained a priest, saying his first Mass the following day. In June, the monastery celebrated itscentenary, for which Merton authored the bookGethsemani Magnificat in commemoration. In November, Merton started teachingmystical theology to novices at Gethsemani, a duty he greatly enjoyed. By this time Merton was a huge success outside the monastery,The Seven Storey Mountain having sold over 150,000 copies. It is onNational Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century.[23]
In this particularly prolific period of his life, Merton is believed to have been suffering fromloneliness andstress. One incident indicative of this is his drive with the monastery's jeep, acting in a possiblymanic state, during which he almost caused a head-on collision.[24]
In 1953 he published a journal of monastery life titledThe Sign of Jonas. Merton became well known for his dialogues with other faiths and his non-violent stand during therace riots andVietnam War of the 1960s. By this time, he had adopted a broadly human viewpoint, concerned about issues like peace, racial tolerance, and social equality. In a letter to Nicaraguan liberation theologianErnesto Cardenal (who had entered Gethsemani but left in 1959 to study theology in Mexico), Merton wrote: "The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with each other. It is a huge gang battle, using well-meaning lawyers and policemen and clergymen as their front, controlling papers, means of communication, and enrolling everybody in their armies."[25] He developed a personal radicalism which was political but not overtly sympathetic to Marxism, even though his Cistercian criticLouis Lekai identified Merton's "adherence to Marxian slogans."[26] Merton was above all devoted to non-violence. He regarded his viewpoint as based on "simplicity" and expressed it as a Christian sensibility. HisNew Seeds of Contemplation was published in 1961.
Merton finally achieved the solitude he had long desired while living in ahermitage on the monastery grounds in 1965. Over the years he had occasional battles with some of hisabbots about not being allowed out of the monastery despite his international reputation and voluminous correspondence with many well-known figures of the day.
At the end of 1968, the new abbot, Flavian Burns, allowed him to undertake a tour of Asia, during which he met theDalai Lama in India on three occasions, and also theTibetan BuddhistDzogchen masterChatral Rinpoche, followed by a solitary retreat nearDarjeeling, India. In Darjeeling, he befriendedTsewang Yishey Pemba, a prominent member of the Tibetan community.[27] Then, in what was to be his final letter, he noted, "In my contacts with these new friends, I also feel a consolation in my own faith in Christ and in his dwelling presence. I hope and believe he may be present in the hearts of all of us."[28]
Merton's role as a writer is explored in novelistMary Gordon'sOn Merton (2019).[29]
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According toThe Seven Storey Mountain, the youthful Merton lovedjazz, but by the time he began his first teaching job he had forsaken all but peaceful music. Later in life, whenever he was permitted to leave Gethsemani for medical or monastic reasons, he would catch what live jazz he could, mainly in Louisville or New York.
In April 1966, Merton underwent surgery to treat debilitating back pain. While recuperating in a Louisville hospital, he fell in love with Margie Smith,[30] a student nurse assigned to his care. (He referred to her in his diary as "M.") He wrote poems to her and reflected on the relationship in "A Midsummer Diary for M." Merton struggled to maintain his vows while being deeply in love. It is not known if he ever consummated the relationship.[note 1]
On December 10, 1968, Merton was at aRed Cross retreat facility namedSawang Khaniwat (Thai:สวางคนิวาส) inSamut Prakan, a province nearBangkok, Thailand, attending a monastic conference.[31][32][33] After giving a talk at the morning session, he was found dead later in the afternoon in the room of his cottage, lying on his back with a standing fan having fallen and lying across his body. A police test revealed that a "defective electric cord was installed inside its stand. ... The flow of electricity was strong enough to cause the death of a person if he touched the metal part."[34] His associate, Jean Leclercq, stated: "In all probability the death of Thomas Merton was due in part to heart failure, in part to an electric shock."[35] Since there was noautopsy, there was no suitable explanation for the wound in the back of Merton's head, "which had bled considerably."[36] Arriving from the cottage next to Merton's, the Primate of the Benedictine order and presiding officer of the conference,Rembert Weakland,anointed Merton.[37]
His body was flown back to the United States on board a US military aircraft returning from Vietnam. He was buried at Gethsemani Abbey.
The Spring 2024 issue ofThe Catholic Historical Review published "The Official Thai Reports on Thomas Merton's Death". The official cause of death was a natural cause, "sudden heart failure" and not "accidental electrocution." The police report states that Merton was dead before he came into contact with a faulty fan that was found lying across his body.[38]
Merton was first exposed to and became interested inEastern religions when he readAldous Huxley'sEnds and Means in 1937, the year before his conversion toCatholicism.[39] Throughout his life, he studiedBuddhism,Confucianism,Taoism,Hinduism,Sikhism,Jainism, andSufism in addition to his academic and monastic studies.[40]
While Merton was not interested in what these traditions had to offer as doctrines and institutions, he was interested in what each said of the depth of human experience. He believed that for the most part, Christianity had forsaken its mystical tradition in favor ofCartesian emphasis on "the reification of concepts, idolization of the reflexive consciousness, flight from being into verbalism, mathematics, and rationalization."[41]
Of all of the Eastern traditions, Merton wrote most aboutZen. Having studied theDesert Fathers and other Christian mystics, he found parallels between the language of Christian mystics and Zen philosophy.[42]
In 1959, Merton began a dialogue withD. T. Suzuki which was published nearly ten years later in Merton'sZen and the Birds of Appetite as "Wisdom in Emptiness". Merton wrote then that "any attempt to handle Zen in theological language is bound to miss the point," calling his final statements "an example of how not to approach Zen."[43] Merton struggled to reconcile the Western and Christian impulse to catalog and put into words with the ideas of Christianapophatic theology and the unspeakable nature of the Zen experience. Zhong Fushi mentions having met Merton, who allegedly said to him“Zen, is a way of perceiving the substantial reality of all things—their goodness, their beauty, and their oneness (ichinyo). Zhong interpreted this as Merton aligning Zen Buddhism with an enlightenment of the Aristotelean-Thomistic transcendentals common to everything that has or is or will exist.[44]
In keeping with his idea that non-Christian faiths had much to offer Christianity in experience and perspective and little or nothing in terms of doctrine, Merton distinguished between Zen Buddhism, an expression of history and culture, and Zen.[42] By Zen, Merton meant something not bound by culture, religion or belief. Merton was influenced by Aelred Graham's bookZen Catholicism of 1963.[45][note 2]
Merton also exploredAmerican Indian spirituality. He wrote a series of articles on American Indian history and spirituality forThe Catholic Worker,The Center Magazine,Theoria to Theory, andUnicorn Journal.[46] He explored themes such as American Indianfasting[47] andmissionary work.[48]
Merton's influence has grown since his death, and he is widely recognized as an important 20th-century Catholicmystic and thinker. Interest in his work contributed to a rise in spiritual exploration beginning in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. Merton's letters and diaries reveal the intensity with which their author focused on social justice issues, including the civil rights movement andproliferation of nuclear arms.[49] He had prohibited their publication for 25 years after his death. Publication raised new interest in Merton's life.[50]
TheAbbey of Gethsemani benefits from the royalties of Merton's writing.[51] In addition, his writings attracted much interest in Catholic practice and thought, and in theTrappist vocation.
In recognition of Merton's close association withBellarmine University, the university established an official repository for Merton's archives at theThomas Merton Center on the Bellarmine campus inLouisville, Kentucky.[52]
TheThomas Merton Award, a peace prize, has been awarded since 1972 by theThomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[53]
In tribute to the centennial of Merton's birth, The Festival of Faiths in Louisville in 2015 honored his life and work withSacred Journey’s the Legacy of Thomas Merton.[54]
An annual lecture in his name is given at his alma mater,Columbia University in which the Columbia chaplaincy invites a prominent Catholic to speak.[55]
The campus ministry building atSt. Bonaventure University, the school where Merton taught English briefly between graduating from Columbia University with his M.A. in English and entering the Trappist order, is named after him. St. Bonaventure University also holds an important repository of Merton materials worldwide.[56]
Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School in downtownToronto, Ontario, Canada, which was formerly named St. Joseph's Commercial and was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph, is named in part after him.[57]
Some of Merton's manuscripts that include correspondence with his superiors are located in the library of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit inConyers, Georgia.Antony Theodore has provided details of his encounters with Asian spiritual leaders and the influence ofConfucianism,Taoism,Zen Buddhism andHinduism on Merton's mysticism and philosophy of contemplation.[58]
Merton was one of four Americans mentioned byPope Francis in his speech to a joint meeting of theUnited States Congress on September 24, 2015. Francis said, "Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions."[59]
In 2023, Columbia University opened the Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life at theChurch of Notre Dame.[60][61]
In November 1974, the Thomas Merton Family Center inBridgeport, Connecticut, was founded as the Thomas Merton House of Hospitality, inspired by Merton's life, writings, and commitment to social justice. Established by a small prayer group led by Sacred Heart University's Fr. John Giuliani and student volunteers, the center opened in an abandoned fire station and offered sit-down meals to individuals experiencing poverty and homelessness. Over the decades the program expanded into a comprehensive service hub, now known as the Thomas Merton Family Center, providing a soup kitchen, food pantry, case management, shower facilities, and additional support services for vulnerable residents of Bridgeport.[62]
Merton's life was the subject ofThe Glory of the World, a play byCharles L. Mee.Roy Cockrum, a former monk who won the Powerball lottery in 2014, helped finance the production of the play in New York. Prior to New York the play was shown in Louisville, Kentucky.[63]
In the 2017 movieFirst Reformed, written and directed byPaul Schrader,Ethan Hawke's character (a middle-agedProtestant minister) is influenced by Merton's work.[64]
"Yet there is no question I love her deeply ... I keep remembering her body, her nakedness, the day at Wygal's, and it haunts me ... I could have been enslaved to the need for her body after all. It is a good thing I called it off [i.e., a proposed visit by Smith to Gethsemani to speak with Merton there following their break-up]." See p. 94.
Learning to Love reveals that Merton remained in contact with Marge after his July 12, 1966 entry (p.94) and after he recommitted himself to his vows (p. 110). He saw her again on July 16, 1966, and wrote:
Despite good intentions, he continued to contact her by phone when he left the monastery grounds. He wrote on January 18, 1967, that "last week" he and two friends "drank some beer under the loblollies at the lake—should not have gone to Bardstown and Willett's in the evening. Conscience stricken for this the next day. Called M. from filling station outside Bardstown. Both glad" (p. 186).She says she thinks of me all the time (as I do of her) and her only fear is that being apart and not having news of each other, we may gradually cease to believe that we are loved, that the other's love for us goes on and is real. As I kissed her she kept saying, 'I am happy, I am at peace now.' And so was I" (p. 97).
he had recourse to worn-out clichés (borrowed mostly from Marx), or quoted traditionally accepted views without attempting to look more deeply into the subject.
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