Category: Merton, Thomas
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Thomas Merton on Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Substack latest. Excerpt: One of the worst features of some New Age types is their conceit that they are beyond duality when they are firmly enmired in it. Perhaps the truly enlightened are beyond moral dualism and can live free of moral injunctions and prohibitions. But what often happens in practice is that spiritual aspirants…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tom Merton, Baez, Dylan, and Ry Cooder
Thomas Merton, though 51 years old in 1966, was wide open to the '60s Zeitgeist – all of it. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Six, p. 93, entry of 10 July 1966: Borrowed a record player and played Joan Baez over again — and now really know "Silver Dagger" (before I had the melody confused with "East…
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A Contemplative Nun on Thomas Merton
This just over the transom from Karl White: Hope you're well. May be of interest. ‘I have never met a real contemplative who found Merton useful’: Letters reveal Sister Wendy’s ambivalence about Gethsemani’s famous monk | America Magazine July 30, 2018 Dearest Robert, I feel about [Henri Nouwen] as I do about Thomas Merton. There…
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And Then Along Came the ‘Sixties
I can easily seeHow Merton lost his wayBy exposing himselfTo events of the day.
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St. Valentine’s Day at the Oldies: Love and Murder
We'll start with murder. David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!): Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage,and then leads the pregnant girl to an already-dug…
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Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?
Beatific October, Kerouac month hereabouts, is at its sad redbrick end once again, but I can't let her slip away without one more substantial Kerouac entry. So raise your glass with me on this eve of All Saint's Day as I say a prayer for Jack's soul which, I fear, is still in need of…
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Jack Kerouac on Robert Lax
During his years of unsuccess, when he was actually at his purest and best, an "unpublished freak," as he describes himself in a late summer 1954 letter to Robert Giroux, living for his art alone, Kerouac contemplated entering a monastery: "I've become extremely religious and may go to a monastery before even before you do."…
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Visions of Tom: Jack Kerouac’s Monastic Elder Brother
Thomas Merton's "spontaneous prose" is to be found in the seven volumes of his journals. That's where you will find the real Merton in all his depth and complexity, his faith, his doubts, his inner (and outer) conflicts, and his endless self-examination. I never tire of re-reading them. This essay by Angus Stuart delineates…
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On the ‘Inconceivability’ of Death
Or is death just a natural event like any other? Merton the monk triggers a Maverick meditatio mori.
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A Monk and his Political Silence
Substack latest
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Somebody Else’s Faith
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. III, p. 251, from the entry of 25 January 1959: He entered the monastery on somebody else's faith and lived there on somebody else's faith and when finally he had to face the fact that what was required was his own faith he collapsed.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thomas Merton
An activist judge wants to play the legislator. An activist monk wants to play the worldling. Neither quite understands the nature of his 'job.'
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Thomas Merton and Walker Percy
I have long been fascinated by the conflicted man revealed in Thomas Merton's Journals, all seven volumes of which I have read and regularly re-read. He was a spiritual seeker uncomfortably perched between the contemptus mundi of old-time monasticism and 1960's social engagement and 'relevance,' to use one of the buzz words of the day. …
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Thomas Merton on Henry Thoreau
Journals, vol. 4, p. 235, 8 August 1962: Thoreau's idleness was an incomparable gift and its fruits were blessings that America has unfortunately never learned to appreciate. Yet he made his gift, though it was not asked for. And he went his way. If he had followed the advice of his neighbors in Concord, America…
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Spiritual Mountebanks
The world is full of hustlers and charlatans who prey upon spiritual seekers. One ought to be suspicious of anyone who claims enlightenment or special powers. The acid test, perhaps, is whether they demand money or sex for their services. If they do, run away while holding onto your wallet. 'Bhagwan Shree' Rajneesh is a good…