The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)

Rating:
Summary: The Final Introduction to Merton
Review: At the end of The Seven Story Mountain, Merton records his understanding of what God was
telling him as he continued as a young monk. The final passage in the book reads, in part, "But
you shall taste the true solitude of My anguish and My poverty and I shall lead you into the high
places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you
for this end. . . That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the
burnt men." And that is how Merton died, a burnt man in a monastic habit on a bathroom floor in
Thailand, electrocuted by a faulty fan switch as he stepped out of the shower. Eerie how things
work out sometimes. The Asian Journals record the end--spiritual as well as temporal--of
Merton's journey, and I tend to think that he found what he was looking for. I like to think he did,
and when I visited Gethsemani myself, it was the Asian Journal, even more than Thoughts in
Solitude, that convinced me of this. Of course, Merton had all but left Gethsemani behind when
he took down the Journals; there is speculation that he was at some point going to ask his abbot
to approve him staying in Asia as a hermit of some sort, and the fruits of that adventure in
following God are lost to us, among so much else that was lost when we lost Fr. Louis, our
Thomas Merton.

The Asian Journal is many things. It is both a travelogue and a tribute to place, strangely
comparable to Matthiessen's Snow Leopard or Merwin's Lost Upland. It is a record left by one of
the greatest Christian spiritual mentors of the 20th century of visits with two of the most
important Buddhist spiritual mentors of the 20th century, the current Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat
Hanh. It is a sustained rhapsody on both Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism by a Christian
monastic most influenced in his "Eastern path" by Rinzai Zen and Confucianism. It is a fairly
good work of Buddhist art criticism, particularly if you are interested in comparative
iconography. But more than all this, it is just Merton, plain and simple. It is unvarnished, the man
knew he was no saint, though he also knew he was looked upon as such by an increasing number
of people. This from a man who wrote on the back of his ordination card the passage from
Genesis referring to Enoch, "He walked with God and was seen no more, for God took him"!
Merton wanted a deeper solitude. He found it, and eventually found it in death, in Asia. All this,
and more, is recorded in Merton's Asian Journal. His account of his final enlightenment
experience at Polonnaruwa, when he writes "I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely
looking for," is alone worth the price of the book. It is easily Merton's most personal work,
though much unlike the multi-volume set of journals published after the restrictions in Merton's
will ran out. Seven Story Mountain was also personal, but was written by a precociously brilliant
young writer still in the somewhat triumphalistic flush of his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
The Asian Journals are, quite literally, the last things Merton ever wrote, and in them he is at the
height of his powers, and he is deep into the divine mystery of God when he writes these
journals, even when he is joking about parrots or Indian food. Throw in all the photos taken by
Merton himself (the man experiences dai kensho and still has the presence of mind to take
pictures of the reclining Buddhas!?) and the documents relating to his death, and there is no
excuse for a lover of Merton's life and teachings not to own this book.

Rating:
Summary: merton lives!
Review: One simply never tires of reading Thomas Merton. The Asian Journal provides a remarkably poignant and tireless encampment with one of the remarkable men of letters of the 20th century. The text is colored throughout with Merton's search for a place of greater solitude (his dissatisfaction on many levels with the cheese factory his beloved Gethsemani abbey had become being well known for some time before his death) -the redwoods of California, possibly Alaska- and as the journal progresses one begins to feel in his words a kind of prescient kinship with his own accidental death, occurring, of course, in Bangkok before he had completed his Asian pilgrimage. The appendices are priceless - the characteristic sweetness of his informal talk on monasticism given at Calcutta, and the remarkable lecture on Marxism and Monastic Perspectives with its prophetic last sentence "So I will disappear". Free of polemics, so giving in its human searching, this is, once again, essential Merton.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating journal of Christian monk encountering the East
Review: This book is a must-read for fans of Merton, and for anyone interested in encounters between Western Christianity and Eastern religions (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism).

Merton achieved incredible realizations and great insight into Buddhism despite the fact that he lived most of his life as a monk and hermit isolated at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, USA. At the end of his life, invited to present a paper in Bangkok on the renewal of monasticism, Merton made what he called his 'Asian pilgrimage' and finally set out to see firsthand what he had studied in books. This journal took him all across Asia, to various holy sites, and to encounters with numerous religious communities. He met, along the way, such people as H.H. the Dalai Lama and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He records all of this, his encounters, and even more interestingly, his own reflection on Buddhism and Christianity, in this wonderful gem of a journal.

What would have happened had Merton lived a few more years? I often ask myself this. He was exploring not just the surface of Buddhism (even now, many decades later, the presentation of Buddhism in the West can be very superficial), but delving into its very heart -- mandalas, tantras, and so on, and probing into what their nature was and what this might mean for Christianity to encounter a spirituality that seemed at once totally foreign and alien, and yet at the same time the very essence of what Christianity means.

Merton was a brilliant individual. He does not succumb to easy platitudes such as "It's all the same thing" or anything like that. He respects difference. But he does also certainly see a deep and dazzling dynamic unity -- a truth -- that penetrates all of this -- and not just this, but every moment of our lives. That living power -- that is what is important, and he witnessed to this in his life and writings.