The time
will come when the pursuit of contemplation will be a
subversive activity.     Daniel
Berrigan,

America is Hard to Find 

1. Merton and the Contemplative Quest

Thomas Merton turned to the Roman Catholic Tradition, and to
the monastic and Cistercian way within such a Tradition, in search of an older
and forgotten contemplative path. The vita
activa had come to dominate the modern world, and the vita contemplativa had been banished or subordinated to the active
life. In short, Martha had trumped Mary, and there were serious consequences to
be faced in both soul and society as a result of this inversion of the ancient
and time tried way.

There is little doubt that at the core and centre of
Merton’s heart and soul a contemplative was longing to be born. Merton’s deeper
thirst and hunger went beyond the active way, and he sought to reverse
centuries of addiction to the vita activa.
The turn to the contemplative way begs a deeper question, though. What does it mean to be a contemplative, what are
counterfeits of the contemplative quest, and what is the nature of the mature
and integrated contemplative pilgrimage? These were questions Merton attempted
to answer again and again in his short journey through time. This essay will,
by walking in the well trod footsteps of Merton, attempt to ponder some of the
conclusions Merton came to as he sent out probe after probe on his faithful journey.

Thomas Merton was a Cistercian monk and priest, and this is
essential to remember when trying to make sense of his contemplative quest. Some
of Merton’s earliest books in the 1940s were about the contemplative way of the
Cistercian order, a history of Gethsemani and important Cistercian nuns such as
Mother Berchmans and Saint Lutgarde. The language of ‘contemplation’ occurred
often in the titles of his books in the mid-late 1940s. Seeds of Contemplation (1949) was, in time, to become New Seeds of Contemplation. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation
was very much at work in the womb of Merton’s soul in those early years. There
is no doubt, therefore, Merton was struggling in the 1940s to understand what
it meant to be a contemplative.

2.  Merton, Bernard
and the Cistercians

 Pope Pius XII published an encyclical in 1953 called Doctor Mellifluus. The purpose of the
encyclical was to honour and make more public the work of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Bernard was not the founder of the Cistercian order, but he was certainly the
inspiration and driving force behind the first generation of Cistercians.
Bernard died in 1153, so the Pope saw fit to hold high the memory of Bernard in
1953 (800 years after his death). The Cistercian order at Merton’s time, and
the Trappists of the Strict Observance (where Merton lived, moved and had his being), had withdrawn
into a sort of monastic solitude and isolation. This was not always the way
with the Cistercians. The first generation of Cistercians, although committed
to the contemplative way of Mary, were also active like Martha in the larger
social and political events of their time. Merton had, in many ways, entered
the order at a time when both the depth of the contemplative way had been
forgotten, and the public responsibility of the active way had dissipated like
a cloud. The encyclical by Pope Pius XII had an important impact on Merton. The
life, teachings and writings of Bernard (and other first generation
Cistercians) could certainly be used as a standard from which to measure the rather
thinned out Cistercian order of the time.  Bernard had no doubt about the
contemplative-active distinction. Mary was the queen, and Martha was always to
be her servant. This distinction and ordering of the inner-outer life appealed
to Merton. Merton could throw a rope across the centuries of time, and he drew
forward the insights of Bernard for his context.

Merton was asked to write a book on Bernard to fill out the
encyclical of Pope Pius XII. The Last of
the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical Letter, Doctor
Mellifluus (1954) was Merton’s attempt to engage the challenge of Bernard
in a variety of ways. The Last of the
Fathers is a must read for those interested in understanding Merton’s
contemplative quest. The book is not long, but there is much in it to ponder.
There is a ‘Preface’, a ‘Letter from the Cardinal Protector’, a ‘Letter from
the Abbot General’ (Gabriel Sortais who attempted to silence Merton in the
early 1960s), ‘The Man and the Saint’, ‘Saint Bernard’s Writings’, ‘Notes on
the Encyclical’ by Merton and the ‘Encyclical Letter’. Three important and not
to be missed points emerge in The Last of
the Fathers. Merton was to hold these learned lessons close to him for the
rest of his contemplative journey.

Bernard had taught him well, and much of Merton’s life was a
working out of these insights. First, the contemplative should not retreat from
the world into an enclosed and insulated piety. This was not the vision of
Bernard and the early Cistercians, and it was a distortion of the contemplative
vision. Second, the contemplative way had to be seen as the foundation, root
and source of the active way. Bernard was most clear about this. Activism was
the fruit and first born child of contemplation. Mary must be on the throne rather
than Martha. Third, the content of Bernard’s active life did raise some
concerns for Merton. The Last of the
Fathers borders on hagiography at times, but Merton veers from taking this
path when it comes to Bernard’s political activism and the crusades. Bernard
did pen ‘The Praises of the New Knighthood’ on the Knights Templar, and he did
preach vehemently for the second Crusade against the Muslims in 1145. Bernard
and Pope Eugene III were very much hawks and crusaders. In 1153, when Bernard
was nearing his end, he was quite to prepared to rise from his bed and preach
another war. It is one thing, therefore,
to insist that the contemplative way must wed the active way. It is quite
another thing to, in such a marriage, birth warlords and hawks. This is where
Merton would part company with Bernard and, in time, many in the Cistercian
order.

Bernard could write the most exquisite and evocative tracts
on the love of God, and God’s drawing love into nuptial union, but, when such
contemplative union was fleshed out into the social and political world of the
time, Bernard was very much the military hawk. The Last of the Fathers ponders these contemplative dilemmas from
within the Cistercian tradition.

The Cold War was very much at its most intense phase in the
1950s, and Merton had to make sense of all this. He had learned much from
Bernard in The Last of the Fathers. 

3. Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal 

If Bernard of Clairvaux and Merton agreed that Cistercians
must live in the tensions of the contemplative-active, and both agreed that the
contemplative must take priority over the active, then they did differ on the
content of the active life. There is no doubt that Bernard was more the hawk,
and Merton much more the dove.

Ernesto Cardenal was a novice at Gethsemani monastery from
1957-1959. Cardenal had come from Nicaragua, and like many Central
Americans, he knew what it meant to live under the oppressive nature of
American foreign policy in the area. The Nicaraguan comprador and colonial
class in Nicaragua served their masters in El Norte
well, and Cardenal, like many, questioned and opposed such capitulation.
Cardenal studied with Merton as a novice, and in their many discussions, Merton
made it plain that Cardenal should return to his people. Ernesto Cardenal left
the monastery in Kentucky in 1959, and he
studied in a seminary in Cuernavaca, Mexico for a
few years. It was while Cardenal was in Cuernavaca that his correspondence began with Merton.

Cardenal returned to Nicaragua and started the community
of Our Lady of Solentiname in 1965. The letters between Merton and Cardenal are
published in The Courage for Truth (110-163).
The correspondence between these two men highlights how the contemplative path
can be interpreted in a variety of directions once it is fleshed out in the
world of politics and activism.

Cardenal began as a contemplative monk as a novice under the
guidance of Merton. Merton encouraged Cardenal to return to his people and live
out his contemplative calling in alternate communities. Cardenal committed
himself to such a vision, and in the 1980s, he was involved with the
Sandinistas. The USA was not impressed with such a left wing state that opposed it, and they supported the Contras. The Sandinistas, for the most part,
attempted to be a non-violent revolutionary movement-state that worked for the
oppressed and marginalized. They embodied the meaning of liberation theology
within the Nicaraguan context.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal
were all committed to living the tension of the contemplative-active. All three
men were equally committed to priorizing the way of Mary rather
than the way of Martha. In short, the contemplative way was meant to be on the
throne. The active way was the attentive servant. The content and application,
though, of the contemplative-active was quite different. Bernard tended to be
much more militaristic and hawkish in his interpretation of the contemplative,
whereas Merton and Cardenal were more dovish.

I was on staff with Amnesty International in the late
1980s-early 1990s. Amnesty had released a report on the Sandinistas and the
Misquito Indians, and the clash between the two groups. I met with Ernesto
Cardenal in Vancouver (he was Minister of Culture for the Sandinistas at the time), and we discussed
the report. After the firm and frank discussion, I asked him about his time
with Merton. Cardenal’s eyes lit up, and his soul sang. He waxed unceasing praise for Merton, and Merton’s impact on
his contemplative and active life in a most lyrical Spanish. When we parted he
gave me, as a gift, a copy of his recent book of poetry, The Music of the Spheres. 

It is one thing to argue that the contemplative must take
priority over the active life. This reversal, in principle, of centuries of the
protestant work ethic is needful and necessary. It is an imperative of the
soul. It is quite another thing, though, to ponder the content of both the contemplative
and active. Bernard, Merton and Cardenal might all agree on the Mary-Martha
tension and priorizing at the level of principle, but would they agree at the
level of practice, application and interpretation?  This is the contemplative dilemma.

4. Merton,
the American Beats and Catholic Anarchists

There is little doubt that the American Beats such as
Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg were
in search of a deeper and more meaningful way of knowing than the frantic and
driven American work ethic. This is why all of them turned to the contemplative
East in search of a more nourishing way. I have tracked and traced the close
connection between Merton and the Beats in my missive, Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades (2006).

The Orient, particularly India and Japan,
became meccas and sites of inspiration and wisdom for the American Beats that
birthed the counter culture of the 1960s. The interest in the East was, in principle, a quest for a deeper way of
knowing the self and living a more contemplative, integrated, ecological and holistic life. Merton had many an elective affinity with
many of the American Beats and their subversive questioning of the American
establishment and mainstream way of thinking. Merton’s definition of a monk was
that of a person that was on the margins of power and privilege, and, in this
sense, many of the counter culture were monks. This more metaphorical read of
the monastic way placed Merton much more on the same trail as the Beats.

The turn by many of the Beats to various forms of Buddhism
meant that most had a keen interest in calling into question the Western and
American notions of self and identity. The contemplative and meditative
traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism called for an emptying of the ego and
false images of the self and a probing much deeper for that which is like a
diamond within. Such a contemplative bend on the trail meant that the activist
notion of success was more an illusion and opiate than anything else.

Many of the American Beats called into question both
American foreign policy and much American domestic policy when the
contemplative vision was translated into public action. The politics of the
Beats tended to be, for the most part, protest and advocacy politics. There was
little serious engagement with party politics. It was this anarchist tradition
that held high social criticism and activism that Merton had some affinity with
also. The retreat the country by many Beats had important points of convergence
with the monastic tradition.

The American Beats, like the Roman Catholic anarchist
tradition of Dorothy Day and Dan/Phil Berrigan, had three important things in
common that Merton shared. Both sought to return to the depths of the
contemplative way, both sought to engage the hard questions of American
injustice at a variety of levels, and both tended to resort to anarchist
politics as a way of being political and prophetic. This was the positive side
of Merton, the Beats and the Roman Catholic anarchist way, and the limitations
of such a tradition. Merton, the Beats and the American Roman Catholic
anarchists never seriously engaged the political process at a substantive and
sophisticated level. Ernesto Cardenal was much more involved at a formal
political level with the Sandinista government than was Merton, the Beats or
the Roman Catholic anarchists within the USA. Merton’s understanding of the
contemplative and active was much more aligned with the tradition of anarchist
activism than with the party politics of either the republican or democratic
types. It is important that questions are asked about this rather
reductionistic way of being political.

Merton’s attempt to think through and live forth the
tensions of the contemplative-active had less in common with those in his Cistercian order such as Bernard of Clairvaux, and his Abbot
General, Gabriel Sortais, than with the insights of the American Beats and
Roman Catholic anarchists. Merton was a reformer within the monastic tradition,
and this is what he shared with the other well known monk of the 20^th
century, Jean LeClercq. Survival or
Prophecy? The Letters of Thomas Merton and Jean LeClercq (2002) tells such
a tale well.

5. Merton, Suzuki and Gandhi   

If the contemplative journey is about nothing else, it is
certainly about the quest to see through the ego, to let go of false consciousness, to bid adieu to the
conditioned and socialized self, to wake from sleep and to leave the cave of
unknowing into the light if insight and wisdom. There is a dilemma in this transition that needs to be noted for the
simple reason that there are serious consequences for taking the wrong path. Most
contemplative traditions make it more than plain that something within
must be left behind so that something deeper within might be found. What must
be left behind? What must we die to? What do we find on the other side of
the ego and death to it?

Martin Heidegger was, probably, one of the most important
philosophers of the 20^th century. Heidegger challenged the dominant
western tradition of philosophical rationalism and empiricism and pointed the
way to a more mystical and contemplative way of knowing and being. Heidegger
argued that we must let go (gelassenheit)
of conditioned ways of being and knowing so that our true being (dasein) will emerge in all its clarity
and fullness. Heidegger dipped his well deeply in the pre-socratic tradition
and the leads of Nietzsche. Some of Heidegger’s classic books and articles such
as What is Thinking? and ‘Memorial Address’ make it abundantly
clear that serious rethinking must be done about the meaning of thinking and
thought. A more meditative, contemplative, mystical and receptive way must
replace the more dominant technical, calculative and aggressive way of knowing
that had come to drive the western way of doing and knowing. It was in an
openness to being that the real Self could and would emerge. The problem was
this, though. It is one thing to let go of the ego and false consciousness, to clean and clear the house of dated furniture and much
dirt and dust. But, what will the home of the soul be decorated with after the
purge takes place? It is, in short, one
thing to state what we are to be free from. It is another thing to state what
we are to be free for. Heidegger’s lack of a deeper sense of Being, and a more
substantive understanding of Being, meant that the content of Being was most
malleable and plastic. Heidegger bent the language of letting go and openness
to Being to serve the interests of the Nazis in the 1930s-1940s. The
contemplative, if not properly grounded, can be used to serve some rather questionable
means and ends.  This dilemma is
seriously pondered in two books by Richard Wolin: The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (1990)
and The Heidegger Controversy (1991).
Thomas Merton had seen this dilemma played out in Bernard of Clairvaux.

Merton’s interest in Zen began with some keenness in 1956.
D.T. Suzuki had become one of the most important teachers of Japanese Zen in
the West both before and after WW II. Merton began a correspondence with Suzuki
in 1959, and they met for two visits in New York in 1964. Merton had hoped that Suzuki would
write a foreward to a book he was writing on the Christian Desert tradition, but in the pre-Vatican II days, this was frowned on, although a
dialogue did appear in the New Directions
Annual (1961). The fullest and finest exchange between Suzuki and Merton
emerged in Zen and the Birds of Appetite
(1968). 

D.T. Suzuki, like Martin Heidegger, made it more than clear
that much must be let go of for real insight to occur. It is in emptiness (sunyata) that the Isness and Suchness of
reality will be experienced. It is, in Christian terms, in the dying and
emptying (kenosis) that life will be
fully lived. Most in the West know and admire Suzuki for his gentleness and
fine work on Buddhism and Zen. Many in the counter-culture in the 1950s-1960s
thought that D.T. Suzuki was the Zen man that brought the much needed medicine
from Japan to an ill, faltering and failing western ethos and culture.

Who were D.T. Suzuki and his teacher (Shaku Soen) before
they became important East-West bridge thinkers? These connections do need to
be made. Both men were deeply committed to the Zen way, and such a path makes
it more than clear that emptiness, no thinking, no mind and no self are at the
core of Zen. Until this basic truth is realized, illusion and a sleep like
existence dominate the day. But, what lies on the far side of emptiness? Few
are aware that both D.T. Suzuki, Shaku Soen and many other Zen Masters in Japan were trainers of the Japanese military and staunch Japanese nationalists. This
often hidden and forgotten fact is well articulated and documented in Brian
Victoria’s Zen At War (1997).

Thomas Merton was probably not aware of both D.T. Suzuki’s
pre-war tendencies and the teachings of his master, Shaku Soen. This is not the
point, though. The much more problematic issue is this. It is one thing to
argue that the ego and false face must be exposed and die. If there is not
substantive content with which to replace that which must go, then anything can
enter the home of the soul.  There is no
doubt a cleaning out and emptying must occur. This truth can be found in all
the mystical and contemplative traditions in the world. The real differences
begin to emerge and become more obvious when the issue of the new being or self
on the far side of the ego is brought onto front stage Thomas Merton’s book on Gandhi, Gandhi on Non-Violence, holds high a way of being and knowing. D.T.
Suzuki had his problems with Gandhi’s non-violent way. Merton was not a particularly
systematic thinker, but if
dialogue had ever happened between Gandhi and Suzuki, some
serious differences would have become clear in their understanding
of the active and contemplative ways. Gandhi, like Merton and Suzuki, agreed
that much had to be let go of before truth, wisdom and insight could occur.
Gandhi’s notion of satyagraha (holding
Being) is quite different than both Heidegger’s notion of Being and Suzuki’s.
Merton, it seems to me, is much closer to Gandhi than he was to either
Heidegger or Suzuki. In fact, in some ways, Bernard of Clairvaux has affinities
with Suzuki and Heidegger. Merton is closer to Cardenal and Gandhi.

 6.  Merton and Signs of Peace

The publication of Signs
of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton (2006) make it obvious where Merton tipped his
cap when it came to the application and interpretation of the contemplative-activist way. The Interfaith letters in this missive between
Merton and Abdul Aziz, Amiya Chakravarty, John Wu, Abraham Heschel, D.T.
Suzuki, Glenn Hinson, Thich Nhat Hanh, June Yungblut and Dona Luisa
Coomeraswamy speak a way of peace rather than war. The dove is welcomed rather
than the hawk.                   

Merton’s turn to the contemplative as a way of knowing and
being was a way of building more solid and sure foundation stones for the soul
and society. The edifice of activism had to be raised on the firm base of
contemplation.  The larger question, of
course, is this: whose interpretation of the contemplative and the active
should be heeded and why? Bernard, Heidegger and Suzuki had their own
interpretation of how to renovate and do a spring cleaning of the soul and
society. The rebuilt house could be more problematic than the older dwelling. A
worrisome form of nationalist crusading dominated the day in their thinking and
activism. Ernesto Cardenal and Gandhi offer a way of interpreting Being that is
much more rooted in a dovish quest for justice. These two men, also, go beyond
Merton in their understanding of justice and peace. Merton deserves high marks
as a social critic, but he deserves much lower marks as a social activist and,
more importantly, as a political theorist and activist. Merton, as mentioned
above, stands much more in the anarchist line and lineage of the American Beats
and Roman Catholic anarchists than he does with Cardenal and Gandhi. Cardenal
and Gandhi were at the centre and core of serious party politics and political
activism in a way that Thomas Merton, the monk, could never be.

Hannah Arendt in her classic book, The Human Condition, highlighted how ‘the Reversal of Contemplation
and Action’ (41) took place. Merton attempted to reverse the reversal. He
attempted to walk Mary to the throne again and dethrone Martha. There are
larger questions that follow such a setting aright of the Mary-Martha tension.
Much hinges on how the contemplative and active is interpreted and applied. Bernard,
Heidegger and the younger Suzuki take us down one path on the contemplative
journey.

Merton, the American Beats and the Roman Catholic anarchists
take us down yet another part of the trail. Cardenal and Gandhi walk us to a
fuller clearing as the tension is unpacked. This is, very much, the
contemplative dilemma, and Merton tried, in his way, to make sense of this perennial
dilemma in his all too short journey through time. 

RSD