Thomas Merton (1915–68,) ordained as Father Louis, was a Trappist monk, social critic, spiritual guide, and minor poet. He was one of the most prominent American Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.
Born in Prades in the French Pyrenees to a New Zealander father and an American mother, Merton studied and taught English at Columbia University. In 1938, he converted to Roman Catholicism and, in 1941, joined the Trappist order at Our Lady of Gethsemane Abbey, Kentucky.
Merton’s bestselling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1946; also titled Elected Silence, 1949,) depicted a traditional conversion story to Catholicism. However, Merton’s approach to monastic spirituality, chronicled in his vast literary output, resonated the transformations in modern-day Catholicism—a greater openness to other spiritual beliefs and a deep concern for the ethical dilemmas of the modern world.
Merton wrote personal journals, poetry, and social criticism. His notable works include Seeds of Contemplation (1949) and Contemplation in a World of Action (1971.) A collaborator of the Dalai Lama, Zen author D. T. Suzuki, and Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Merton authored popular books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism.
Morton’s perception of monasticism matured, and he became a hermit. He died from accidental electrocution by a damaged shower while attending a world conference of contemplatives in Bangkok.
Lawrence S. Cunningham, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, wrote the acclaimed biography Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision (1999.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Merton
One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendour that is all around us.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Reality
If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Nation
The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Personality
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Kindness, Compassion, Awareness
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness”, the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Vision, Solitude, Life
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Harmony, Balance
I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Control
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
—Thomas Merton
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality
To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
—Thomas Merton
We are already one and we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. Whatever we have to be is what we are.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Unity
He who attempts to act and do things for others and for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them only the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, and his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
—Thomas Merton
In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Love
The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: One liners, Temptation
Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Events
There is no way under the sun of making a man worthy of love, except by loving him.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Laughter, Love
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Faith, Fear, Divinity, God, Anxiety
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Pride
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Love
It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!
—Thomas Merton
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Truth
Attachment to spiritual things is.. just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Attachment
Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Memory
We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Failure, Growth, Courage
Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Discipline, Being True to Yourself
Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Faith
Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.
—Thomas Merton
October is a fine and dangerous season in America…a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: America
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Acceptance
When ambition ends, happiness begins.
—Thomas Merton
Topics: Ambition, One liners, Happiness
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