A reader writes:
Hi,
I liked your article and wondered if you were in AV. So I looked you up. I would like to give your article to a friend who practices yoga (she’s a yogi) and Catholicism. But I am also practicing humility by NOT trying to always convince people they are wrong. I pray for an opportunity to share your story with her. I would like to know and was seeking to find out in a search when I found your article, what was problematic about Merton? I do not remember. Why do people love 10 story Mountain ?(Is that the book they love?) Did Merton fall away at end of life? He certainly had a traumatic death! Blessings!
My response:
Hi ___,
Thanks for writing. I think this is the article you were referencing. The editors changed the original title, which was "No Gods Before Me: The Dangers of Religious Syncretism and My Re-Conversion To Christ Alone," either because it was too wordy or because they wanted more of the focus to be on the ancilary issues I raised in the article concerning Thomas Merton.
I don't want to give the wrong impression--I have more sympathy than scorn for Merton as a man, a monk, and as a Catholic. The 1960's was a confusing, trying time, especially for religious. And part of the where my sympathies lie is that I consider him a kind of spiritual kin, for better or worse, when it comes to personality and spiritual temperament. When I see Merton, I feel like I'm looking in a mirror. Carol Zaleski, author of The Life of the World to Come, described Merton as a "champion of eremitism...torn by desires of solitude and sociability, silence and self-expression, monastic obedience and beatnik spontaneity." I idenitfy with that catch-22 one-hundred percent.
I also feel like I'm being revealed the plot line of the movie, how it ends. So in that article, I tried to raise the issues I saw in the rearview of Merton's quasi Catholic-Buddhist syncretism in order to re-write my story, my own spiritual trajectory. I think there was a degree of tragic confusion when it came to Merton living out his vocation that was ended prematurely by electrocution in a hotel shower in Bangkok--truly an unfortunate fate, from a number of angles--and one I don't want to emulate. So, take it more as warning than admonishment.
As a kind of renassiance man, a man from a worldy background who maybe struggled to put to death that life when entering the gates of Gesthemani. There was something very human about Merton, and I think he was aware of his battle with the ego as well, which is maybe what drew him to Buddhism as a supplement to his Catholic monasticism (not that Catholic monasticism needed additional resources in dying to self from non-Christian sources). There is this ever-present paradox with Merton as described in the previous paragraph, sometimes apparent, so much that Catholic psychoanalyst Gregory Zilbourg famously accused Merton of wanting to be a hermit just so long as his was in Times Square with a neon sign above announcing "Hermit lives here!"
I didn't read The Seven Storey Mountain until a year or so after I started a ten year discernment to religious life. I found it, as auto-biography, a compelling read. Merton is a good writer, and he glamourizes (in his early spiritual naivety) the spiritual life and the monastic vocation in a way that makes it compelling as well. It does not surprise me that he drew many men searching for meaning and purpose to the gates of Gesthemani.
Something I also identified with was that Merton also was prepared to give up his writing upon taking the habit, but as his biographer William Shannon notes,
“Had Merton been forced to stop writing he would have shriveled up as a monk, perhaps even left the monastery. God does not give gifts for us to throw them away. Moreover, if Merton had persisted in believing (if he ever really believed it) that were he to use his gift as a writer he could not be a contemplative, his most important message for the contemporary world would have been muted. For if one cannot be both a contemplative and a writer, it would follow that one could not be both a contemplative and a housewife, a contemplative and a truck driver, a contemplative and a teacher, a contemplative and a worker on the assembly line.” (from "Thomas Merton: An Introduction")
Getting back to the topic you wrote about--your friend the yogi--and to tie it into the Merton "issue." Your friend probably has an earnestness, just as Merton did, to seek truth. If I can comment from the limited information I have, I doubt my article would do your friend any good.
For one thing, it probably won't be taken in good faith because it would come across in the way you yourself recognize: that you are right, your friend is in error, and they need to change as a result of your prompting. In my limited interactions with Buddhists, most seemed to have a sense of intellectual superiority. Because they devote themselves to uncovering the true nature of reality and existence by way of the dharma, there is a sense not that they have it figured out, but that reality is itself not a subject to be 'figured out'...at least in the rational, doctrinal Western application of Thomistic thought and proof-texting our essence as human beings. I know your friend is not Buddhist, per se, but the religions and philosophies of the East have a similar world-view, so I imagine there may be similar strains of thought there.
I don't think there's any harm in sharing it, as long as it's with a 'no-strings attached' approach. Just send it in charity if you feel compelled, maybe with a comment like, "Thought you might find this food-for-thought," or whatever.
What would be more beneficial is perhaps to start a novena for the person from the sidelines, maybe one asking for the intercession of Bl. Bartolo Longo for her conversion. Don't forget fasting and mortification for the same purpose, done in charity. And it's ok (ie, not a sin) to listen to people, invite them to tell their stories, share what they believe, without judging them. So maybe start there, invite her to coffee and just practice the discipline of listening rather than speaking (Eastern practicioners will respect your practice of dispassionate non-judgment/loving-kindness, ha!) The degree to which you love them in charity and sacrifice for them in secret, petitioning our Lord, our Lady, and all the saints to reveal to her the truth of Christ's death and Resurrection, is the degree to which you will see change (not because of any article or clever apologetics)
As for the final section of your question, of Merton "falling away," I can't judge that of course. I do think he was caught up and re-baptized in the "spirit of the age" and his affair with his unnamed nurse was a evidence of that widespread crisis of vocation and a questioning of what it means to keep vows that was sweeping through many religious communities during that time period. Only God can judge.
For myself, I eventually came to realize that there was no need to supplement my Christianity with questionably-efficacious practices outside of our tradition when we will never have enough hours in our lifetime to bask in the wisdom of the saints and doctors of the Church who have written extensively on the Christian spiritual life. When you don't have a compass or a map, it becomes a rather dire issue to make one's way in a spiritual wasteland. Remember, Peter began to sink when he took his eyes off Christ in the storm. We must keep our eyes firmly fixed on Christ to stay true to him til the end. And we must always pray for the grace of final perseverance!
I think it's good to note on the topic of Merton's writing that St. Thomas Aquinas at the end of his life had a vision and his life's work (the Summa) remained unfinished. "To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”
So, by all means carry out your vocation and exercise the gifts God has entrusted you with, but with the recongition that our accomplishments in this life should ultimately seem to us like straw for the dung heap, for as St. James says, "friendship with the world is enmity with God." (Ja 4:4). Christ alone is our beginning and our end.
God bless you, please pray for me and I for you.
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