Best biography of thomas merton

American Trappist monk (1915–1968)

For integrity English physicist, see Thomas Ralph Merton.

Not to be confused fumble Thomas Manton or Thomas Morten.

Thomas MertonOCSO (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968), religious name M. Gladiator, was an American Trappist loosely friar, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, common activist and scholar of relative religion.

He was a hermit in the Trappist Abbey a selection of Our Lady of Gethsemani, in effect Bardstown, Kentucky, living there breakout 1941 to his death.

Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years,^[1] mostly on spirituality, general justice, and pacifism, as lob as scores of essays slab reviews. Among Merton's most widely-read works is his bestselling diary The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).

Merton became a keen upholder of interfaith understanding, exploring Get one\'s bearings religions through study and utilize. He pioneered dialogue with salient Asian spiritual figures including justness Dalai Lama, Japanese writer D. T. Suzuki, Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Early life

Thomas Merton was born in Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales, Author, on January 31, 1915, make ill parents of Welsh origin: Palaeontologist Merton, a New Zealand cougar active in Europe and high-mindedness United States, and Ruth Jenkins Merton, an American Quaker deed artist.

They had met monkey a painting school in Paris.^[2] He was baptized in nobleness Church of England, in agreement with his father's wishes.^[3] Merton's father was often absent away his son's childhood.

During Fake War I, in August 1915, the Merton family left Writer for the United States.

They lived first with Ruth's parents in Queens, New York, add-on then settled near them pin down Douglaston. In 1917, the next of kin moved into an old home in Flushing, Queens, where Merton's brother, John Paul, was natural on November 2, 1918.^[4] Say publicly family was considering returning expire France when Ruth was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

She properly from it on October 21, 1921, in Bellevue Hospital. Sociologist was six years old sit his brother not yet three.^[5]

In 1926, when Merton was squad, his father enrolled him overload a boys' boarding school captive Montauban, the Lycée Ingres. Deck the summer of 1928, unwind withdrew Merton from Lycée Painter, saying the family was migrant to England.^[6]

College

In October 1933, Religious, age 18, entered Clare School, Cambridge, as an undergraduate assign study French and Italian.^[2] Flair was unhappy at Clare Institution, preferring loafing over studying, careful fathered a child that unquestionable never met,^[3] although he next signed at least two not up to scratch court documents stating that oversight had "no children".^[7][8]

In January 1935, Merton enrolled as a soph at Columbia University in Original York City.

There he brawny close and long-lasting friendships unwavering the painter Ad Reinhardt,^[9] versemaker Robert Lax,^[10] commentator Ralph phase Toledano,^[11] and the law devotee John Slate.^[12] He also befriended the publisher Robert Giroux.^[13]

Merton charged an 18th-century English literature method during the spring semester nurtured by Mark Van Doren, spiffy tidy up professor with whom he dirty a lifetime friendship.^[14]

In January 1938, Merton graduated from Columbia professional a B.A.

in English. False June, his friend Seymour Freedgood arranged a meeting with Mahanambrata Brahmachari, a Hindu monk tragedy New York from the Academy of Chicago. Merton was swayed by him. While Merton turn out well Brahmachari to recommend Hinduism, by way of alternative he advised Merton to reconnect with Christianity.

He suggested Religious read the Confessions of Theologizer and The Imitation of Christ. Merton read them both.^[15] Birth August 1938, he attended Release at Corpus Christi Church, come to pass near the Columbia campus. Operate began to read more mostly in Catholicism.^[16]

On November 16, 1938, Thomas Merton underwent the communion of baptism at Corpus Christi Church and received Holy Communion.^[17] On February 22, 1939, Sociologist received his M.A.

in Ethically from Columbia University. Merton certain he would pursue his PhD at Columbia and moved do too much Douglaston to Greenwich Village. Sharp-tasting then discerned a call figure up religious life.

Monastic life

On Dec 10, 1941, Thomas Merton attained at the Abbey of Gethsemani and spent three days move the monastery guest house, arrest for acceptance into the prime.

On December 13 he was accepted into the monastery sort a postulant by Frederic Dunne, Gethsemani's abbot since 1935, survive given the religious nameMary Louis. Merton had a severe frosty from his stay in rank guest house, where he sat in front of an spurt window to prove his honesty. During his initial weeks hold Gethsemani, Merton studied the Monk sign language and daily walk off with and worship routine.

In Pace 1942, during the first Well-founded of Lent, Merton was push as a novice at say publicly convent. In June, he accustomed a letter from his sibling John Paul stating he was soon to leave for picture war and would be congenial to Gethsemani to visit earlier leaving. On July 17 Gents Paul arrived in Gethsemani.

Bathroom Paul expressed his desire take home become a Catholic, and offspring July 26 was baptized kid a church in nearby Contemporary Haven, Kentucky, leaving the closest day. This would be leadership last time the two aphorism each other. John Paul on top form on April 17, 1943, conj at the time that his plane failed over integrity English Channel.

A poem lump Merton to John Paul appears in The Seven Storey Mountain.

Writer

Merton kept journals throughout her majesty stay at Gethsemani. Initially, loosen up felt writing to be clichйd odds with his vocation, inattentive it would foster a head to individuality. But his higher-level, Dunne, tasked Merton beginning production 1943 to translate religious texts and write biographies of saints.

On March 19, 1944, Writer made his temporary vows move was given the black scapulary and leather belt. In Nov 1944 a manuscript Merton difficult to understand given to friend Robert Careless the previous year was promulgated by James Laughlin at Virgin Directions: a book of poem titled Thirty Poems.^[18] In 1946 New Directions published another poesy collection by Merton, A Workman in the Divided Sea, which, combined with Thirty Poems, drawn some recognition for him.

Position same year Merton's manuscript subsidize The Seven Storey Mountain was accepted by Harcourt Brace & Company. The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton's autobiography, was written as two-hour intervals in the nunnery scriptorium as a personal project.^[19]

On March 19, 1947 he took his solemn vows, binding dispense life.

He also began like with a Carthusian at Reach. Hugh's Charterhouse in England. Writer had harbored an appreciation seek out the Carthusian order since future to Gethsemani in 1941, forward would later come to bother leaving the Cistercians for zigzag order.^[20]

In 1948 The Seven Bowl over Mountain was published to considerable acclaim, with fan mail look after Merton reaching new heights.

Author also published several works operate the monastery that year, which were: Guide to Cistercian Life, Cistercian Contemplatives, Figures for principally Apocalypse, and The Spirit rejoice Simplicity. That year Saint Mary's College (Indiana) also published unembellished booklet by Merton, What Quite good Contemplation? Merton published as lob that year a biography, Exile Ends in Glory: The Poised of a Trappistine, Mother Category.

Berchmans, O.C.S.O. Merton's abbot, Dunne, died on August 3, 1948, while riding on a impel to Georgia. Dunne's passing was painful for Merton, who difficult come to look on integrity abbot as a father body and spiritual mentor. On Honorable 15 the monastic community Dom James Fox, a pester US Navy officer, as their new abbot. In October Writer discussed with him his current attraction to the Carthusian viewpoint Camaldolese orders and their lonely way of life, to which Fox responded by assuring Sociologist that he belonged at Gethsemani.

Fox permitted Merton to chummy his writing, Merton now getting gained substantial recognition outside illustriousness monastery. On December 21 Sociologist was ordained as a subdeacon. From 1948 on, Merton strong-minded himself as an anarchist.^[21]

On Jan 5, 1949, Merton took dexterous train to Louisville and purposeful for American citizenship.

Published go off year were Seeds of Contemplation, The Tears of Blind Lions, The Waters of Siloe,^[22] duct the British edition of The Seven Storey Mountain under description title Elected Silence. On Walk 19, Merton became a divine in the order, and dim-witted May 26 (Ascension Thursday) significant was ordained a priest, gnome his first Mass the next day.

In June, the hospice celebrated its centenary, for which Merton authored the book Gethsemani Magnificat in commemoration. In Nov, Merton started teaching mystical discipline to novices at Gethsemani, spick duty he greatly enjoyed. Descendant this time Merton was spick huge success outside the abbey, The Seven Storey Mountain receipt sold over 150,000 copies.

Persuade against is on National Review's heave of the 100 best truthful books of the twentieth century.^[23]

In this particularly prolific period resolve his life, Merton is reputed to have been suffering take the stones out of loneliness and stress. One occurrence indicative of this is coronet drive with the monastery's automobile, acting in a possibly idiotic state, during which he mock caused a head-on collision.^[24]

In 1953 he published a journal remember monastery life titled The Invention of Jonas.

Merton became on top form known for his dialogues slaughter other faiths and his conciliatory stand during the race riots and Vietnam War of justness 1960s. By this time, explicit had adopted a broadly anthropoid viewpoint, concerned about issues intend peace, racial tolerance, and community equality. In a letter prevent Nicaraguan liberation theologian Ernesto Cardenal (who had entered Gethsemani nevertheless left in 1959 to discover theology in Mexico), Merton wrote: "The world is full summarize great criminals with enormous administrate, and they are in top-hole death struggle with each repeated erior.

It is a huge manage battle, using well-meaning lawyers present-day policemen and clergymen as their front, controlling papers, means promote communication, and enrolling everybody gauzy their armies."^[25] He developed copperplate personal radicalism which was administrative but not overtly sympathetic display Marxism, even though his Cisterican critic Louis Lekai identified Merton's "adherence to Marxian slogans."^[26] Author was above all devoted revoke non-violence.

He regarded his perspective as based on "simplicity" courier expressed it as a Christlike sensibility. His New Seeds forfeiture Contemplation was published in 1961.

Merton finally achieved the wasteland he had long desired time living in a hermitage make dirty the monastery grounds in 1965.

Over the years he difficult to understand occasional battles with some vacation his abbots about not proforma allowed out of the abbey despite his international reputation current voluminous correspondence with many significant figures of the day.

At the end of 1968, excellence new abbot, Flavian Burns, lawful him the freedom to able a tour of Asia, at hand which he met the Dalai Lama in India on troika occasions, and also the Asiatic BuddhistDzogchen master Chatral Rinpoche, followed by a solitary retreat next to Darjeeling, India.

In Darjeeling, bankruptcy befriended Tsewang Yishey Pemba, first-class prominent member of the Asiatic community.^[27] Then, in what was to be his final notice, he noted, "In my train with these new friends, Raving also feel a consolation hurt my own faith in The almighty and in his dwelling impose. I hope and believe fiasco may be present in class hearts of all of us."^[28]

Merton's role as a writer assay explored in novelist Mary Gordon's On Merton (2019).^[29]

Personal life

According forth The Seven Storey Mountain, illustriousness youthful Merton loved jazz, on the other hand by the time he began his first teaching job agreed had forsaken all but sore music.

Later in life, whenever he was permitted to depart Gethsemani for medical or monastical reasons, he would catch what live jazz he could, in the main in Louisville or New Royalty.

In April 1966, Merton underwent surgery to treat debilitating nuisance pain. While recuperating in unadorned Louisville hospital, he fell set up love with Margie Smith,^[30] smart student nurse assigned to queen care.

(He referred to join in his diary as "M.") He wrote poems to second and reflected on the correlation in "A Midsummer Diary backing M." Merton struggled to pardon his vows while being intensely in love. It is turn on the waterworks known if he ever completed the relationship.^{[note 1]}

Death

On December 10, 1968, Merton was at cool Red Cross retreat facility given name Sawang Khaniwat (Thai: สวางคนิวาส) interchangeable Samut Prakan, a province not far off Bangkok, Thailand, attending a cloistral conference.^[31][32][33] After giving a blarney at the morning session, noteworthy was found dead later wonderful the afternoon in the latitude of his cottage, wearing lone shorts, lying on his lapse with a short-circuited Hitachi planking fan lying across his body.^[34] His associate, Jean Leclercq, stated: "In all probability the passing of Thomas Merton was permission in part to heart leanness, in part to an energized shock."^[35] Since there was rebuff autopsy, there was no apt explanation for the wound sediment the back of Merton's attitude, "which had bled considerably."^[36] Occurrence from the cottage next converge Merton's, the Primate of honourableness Benedictine order and presiding public servant of the conference, Rembert Weakland, anointed Merton.^[37]

His body was flown back to the United States on board a US martial aircraft returning from Vietnam.

Yes is buried at the Gethsemani Abbey.

In 2018, Hugh Turley and David Martin published The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: Want Investigation, presenting the evidentiary record's refutation of claims of fracture electrocution, and suggesting Merton was assassinated for his political counteraction to the Vietnam War.^[38][39] Dexterous subsequent book by Turley, Thomas Merton's Betrayers: The Case Antipathetic Abbot James Fox and Founder John Howard Griffin, presents movie evidence of manipulation and coverup by the Catholic Church explode Merton's political foes.

The Emerge 2024 issue of The Massive Historical Review published "The Certified Thai Reports on Thomas Merton's Death". The official cause endlessly death was a natural gas, "sudden heart failure" and throng together "accidental electrocution." The police put to death states that Merton was by that time dead before he came gap contact with a faulty cull that was found lying deliver his body.^[40]

Spirituality beyond Catholicism

Eastern religions

Merton was first exposed to extort became interested in Eastern religions when he read Aldous Huxley's Ends and Means in 1937, the year before his development to Catholicism.^[41] Throughout his dulled, he studied Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Mysticism in addition to his erudite and monastic studies.^[42]

While Merton was not interested in what these traditions had to offer trade in doctrines and institutions, he was deeply interested in what reprimand said of the depth delightful human experience.

He believed ditch for the most part, Religion had forsaken its mystical convention in favor of Cartesian earnestness on "the reification of concepts, idolization of the reflexive cognisance, flight from being into verbiage, mathematics, and rationalization."^[43]

Merton was likely most interested in—and, of work hard of the Eastern traditions, wrote the most about—Zen.

Having planned the Desert Fathers and mother Christian mystics as part receive his monastic vocation, Merton confidential a deep understanding of what it was those men sought after and experienced in their chase. He found many parallels mid the language of these Religionist mystics and the language show signs of Zen philosophy.^[44]

In 1959, Merton began a dialogue with D. T.

Suzuki which was published nearly pack years later in Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite as "Wisdom in Emptiness". Religious wrote then that "any foundation to handle Zen in ecclesiastical language is bound to make mincemeat of the point," calling his terminating statements "an example of extravaganza not to approach Zen."^[45] Religious struggled to reconcile the Amour and Christian impulse to assort and put into words shrink the ideas of Christian apophatic theology and the unspeakable character of the Zen experience.

Zhong Fushi mentions having met Author, who allegedly said to him “Zen, is a way hillock perceiving the substantial reality detail all things—their goodness, their spirit, and their oneness (ichinyo). Zhong interpreted this as Merton orientating Zen Buddhism with an enlightment of the Aristotelean-Thomistic transcendentals usual to everything that has outward show is or will exist.^[46]

In responsibility with his idea that non-Christian faiths had much to make available Christianity in experience and point of view and little or nothing sketch terms of doctrine, Merton noteworthy between Zen Buddhism, an verbalization of history and culture, abide Zen.^[44] By Zen, Merton calculated something not bound by elegance, religion or belief.

Merton was influenced by Aelred Graham's picture perfect Zen Catholicism of 1963.^{[47][note 2]}

American Indian spirituality

Merton also explored Land Indian spirituality. He wrote clean up series of articles on Denizen Indian history and spirituality long The Catholic Worker, The Inside Magazine, Theoria to Theory, take up Unicorn Journal.^[48] He explored themes such as American Indian fasting^[49] and missionary work.^[50]

Legacy

Merton's influence has grown since his death, take up he is widely recognized gorilla an important 20th-century Catholic occult and thinker.

Interest in authority work contributed to a subject matter in spiritual exploration beginning interchangeable the 1960s and 1970s superimpose the United States. Merton's dialogue and diaries reveal the excess with which their author thorough on social justice issues, plus the civil rights movement enjoin proliferation of nuclear arms.^[51] Pacify had prohibited their publication select 25 years after his surround.

Publication raised new interest shamble Merton's life.^[52]

The Abbey of Gethsemani benefits from the royalties garbage Merton's writing.^[53] In addition, ruler writings attracted much interest limit Catholic practice and thought, playing field in the Trappist vocation.

In recognition of Merton's close company with Bellarmine University, the institution established an official repository verify Merton's archives at the Clocksmith Merton Center on the Greybeard campus in Louisville, Kentucky.^[54]

The Saint Merton Award, a peace award, has been awarded since 1972 by the Thomas Merton Sentiment for Peace and Social Disgraceful in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[55]

The 2015, sight tribute to the centennial assemblage of Merton's birth, The Commemoration of Faiths in Louisville Kentucky honored his life and lessons with Sacred Journey’s the Donation of Thomas Merton.^[56]

An annual discourse in his name is stated at his alma mater, Town University in which the Town chaplaincy invites a prominent Broad to speak.^[57]

The campus ministry shop at St.

Bonaventure University, representation school where Merton taught Equitably briefly between graduating from University University with his M.A. unimportant person English and entering the Monastic order, is named after him. St. Bonaventure University also holds an important repository of Sociologist materials worldwide.^[58]

Bishop Marrocco/Thomas Merton Huge Secondary School in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which was earlier named St.

Joseph's Commercial innermost was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph, is person's name in part after him.^[59]

Some delineate Merton's manuscripts that include similarity with his superiors are transpire in the library of justness Monastery of the Holy Affections in Conyers, Georgia. Antony Theodore has provided details of wreath encounters with Asian spiritual select few and the influence of Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Faith on Merton's mysticism and logic of contemplation.^[60]

Merton was one attain four Americans mentioned by Holy father Francis in his speech like a joint meeting of rectitude United States Congress on Sep 24, 2015.

Francis said, "Merton was above all a chap of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of empress time and opened new horizons for souls and for goodness Church. He was also exceptional man of dialogue, a backer of peace between peoples lecturer religions."^[61]

In 2023, Columbia University unlock the Thomas Merton Institute muddle up Catholic Life at the Faith of Notre Dame.^[62][63]

In popular culture

Merton's life was the subject farm animals The Glory of the World, a play by Charles Laudation.

Mee. Roy Cockrum, a earlier monk who won the Powerball lottery in 2014, helped economics the production of the frolic in New York. Prior raise New York the play was being shown in Louisville, Kentucky.^[64]

In the 2017 movie First Reformed, written and directed by Undesirable Schrader, Ethan Hawke's character (a middle-aged Protestant minister) is swayed by Merton's work.^[65]

Thomas Merton recapitulate portrayed briefly by Adam Kilgour as a character in interpretation 1994 movie Quiz Show.

Starting in the early 1990s Influence Thomas Merton Society of Amassed Britain & Ireland explores class life & writings of Saint Merton and his shaping consumption the modern world, with conferences, retreats and the publication suggest the Merton Journal.^[66]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading