Merton’s Reflections on Inter-Monastic Communion
This article is reprinted from Asian Journal, Appendix IV, 1978.
Two months before his death Merton drew up some notes for a talk in Calcutta in which he shared precautions in preparation for East–West monastic dialogue:
- avoid interminable empty talk by reserving this contemplative dialogue for those who: have been seriously disciplined by years of silence and by a long habit of meditation; have entered into their own monastic tradition with full seriousness; are in authentic contact with the past of their own religious community; maintain openness to the tradition and heritage of experience belonging to other communities.
- avoid facile syncretism by being fully serious;
- have a scrupulous respect for important differences which are not debatable;
- concentrate attention on what is really essential to the monastic quest, in the area of true self-transcendence and enlightenment, transformation of consciousness in its ultimate ground, and in the highest and most authentic devotional love;
- secondary issues must be kept in secondary place, yet given the full respect due them.
Merton concluded by stressing the importance of serious communication and “communion” among contemplatives of different traditions, disciplines, and religions, believing that this can contribute much to the development of man at this crucial moment of his history. “It is the peculiar office of the monk in the modern world,” he said, “to keep alive the contemplative experience and to keep the way open for modern technological man to recover the integrity of his own inner depths.”
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Fr. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Trappist, Kentucky, and one of the principal architects of interreligious and intermonastic dialogue. His writings include such classics as The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Zen and the Birds of Appetite.