In Color More Tibetan Than Zen

Thomas Merton
(Ralph Eugine Meatyard)

“Last night I dreamed I was, temporarily, back at Gethsemani. I was dressed in a Buddhist monk’s habit, but with more black and red and gold, a "Zen habit," in color more Tibetan than Zen...I met some women in the corridor, visitors and students of Asian religion, to whom I was explaining I was a kind of Zen monk and Gelugpa together, when I woke up.” (Thomas Merton)

Merton's Mountain composed

in youthfully undisciplined prose.
Hinayana hyperbole, but yana still
born under the sign of the water bearer.
Bourn along the seal of the earth sharer
imitating the way of Chuang Tzu
in his hermitic fashion.

Never offering a Jesuit apology
accepted just as he is what he is:
an Asian recluse reclining,

while refusing to go dining,
with this slumbering world.
The highest submission lies
beyond Trappist ambition.

Howling poet burdened

by love's solitary demand.

It's the end of the beginning

for this unemployed samurai

who got fired and retired

his disciplining sword
by the deepest of states.

He vanished, leaving
behind the echo
of God's laughter:
Denys and Dōgen
together again!

The great matter

does not matter.

Never mind it
by showing me,

through the way
you sit and walk

and how you talk:
Why did Merton
die in Bangkok?

Sources

Hugh Turley, David Martin. The Martydom Of Thomas Merton: An Investigation. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2018.
Thomas Merton. The Asian Journal Of Thomas Merton. New Directions. 1975.

Thomas Merton. The Seven Storey Mountain. Mariner Books. 1998.

Thomas Merton. The Way Of Chuang Tzu. New Directions. 1969.
Thomas Merton. The Wisdom Of The Desert. New Directions. 1960.

...at least in this connection

St. Anne's Hermitage

“And no matter what anyone else might do or say about it, however they might judge or evaluate it, all is irrelevant in the reality of my vocation to solitude, even though I am not a typical hermit. Quite the contrary, perhaps. It does not matter how I may or may not be classified. In the light of this simple fact of God’s love and the form it has taken in the mystery of my life, classifications are ludicrous, and I have no further need to occupy my mind with them (if I ever did) - at least in this connection.” (Thomas Merton).

Sources
Thomas Merton. Dancing In The Water Of Life. HarperOne. 2009

May 2020

Glenn Gould
(David Levine)

Friday May 01, 2020
The last puritan
purifies the art of fugue.
This penultimate
puritan listens in his
wake in a state of wonder.

Friday May 02, 2020
Layoffs have started.
Even large tech companies
that control the flow
of digital transactions
aren’t immune from house arrest.

Saturday May 03, 2020
The cold truth is that
there is no escaping from
the consequences
of the world wide quarantine:
complete control of culture.

Monday May 04, 2020
As it always was,
is, and continues to be:
Glory Be To Three.
The necessary condition?
Trinitarian grammar.

Tuesday May 05, 2020
I am practicing
solitary refinement.
I will not resign
because I cannot design
a better retirement.

Wednesday May 06, 2020
There’s no I in TEAM,
but there is an I in WIN.
So says 23.
So there's also an I in
TRIANGULATION says I.

Thursday May 07, 2020
A monastery
of my very own making.
It is both rural
and urban in its fashion,
as well as in its function.

Friday May 08, 2020
Merton mentions that
doing God’s will and being
annihilated
for His own glory is the
only state He tolerates.

Saturday May 09, 2020
This rearrangement
requires periodic
adjudication:
'enough' can't be said enough
during transitional times.

Sunday May 10, 2020
His peculiar type
of gentlemanly greatness
resonates with me,
to the point of devoted
admiration and reverence.

Monday May 11, 2020
One difference between
Lia and Mary is that
for Lia, only
women will call her blessed.
For Mary, generations.

Tuesday May 12, 2020

Be obedient.

Remember your father’s words:

“He does what he’s told.”

The fifth Oratorian

excellency expects it.

Wednesday May 13, 2020
The only standard
for sanity within this
fully fallen world:
TWBD on this earth
as it is within heaven.

Thursday May 14, 2020
The requirement:
to give up your own judgement.
The liberation:
to give up your own judgement.
The See negates privacy.

Friday May 15, 2020
Esau and Jacob.
Estranged brothers both with two
different destinies:
the one was a husbandman,
the other one dwelt in tents.

Saturday May 16, 2020
Read, listen, and learn:
be cleansed and change your garments.
These literal words
contain the spiritual word
that every detail is known.

Sunday May 17, 2020
PD has been slow.
This is how it shall remain
at the TTO.
Exalt Him in this nation.
Exalt Him with this notion.

Monday May 18, 2020
Surveying the field.
The present task is simply
insurmountable,
at least this is how it feels.
So much the worse for feelings.

Tuesday May 19, 2020
Many years ago
I prayed within the cloister
of the Jesuits.
It was beneath the chapel
that once hosted Lonergan.

Wednesday May 20, 2020
Justice as fairness.
Canada's contribution
to Rawls' ideal:
the older Trudeau prepared
this way for Justin’s justice.

Thursday May 21, 2020
Sancta et Sancti.
The holy things and persons
in holy places
are placed throughout creation.
Jots and Tittles included.

Friday May 22, 2020
I hear the Being
within which I live and move
ringing in my ears.
This ever present present
presents itself without fail.

Saturday May 23, 2020
This was his question:
are you a chameleon
reflecting the world,
or a catalyst changing
it unspectacularly?

Sunday May 24, 2020
From apology
to the Apologia.
This is the answer.
All that is left for me now
is Pro, Vita, and Sua.

Monday May 25, 2020
Hogtown to Beantown
in the span of one lifetime.
The Quaternity:
Bobby, Carlton, Larry,
and the great Bill Belichick.

Tuesday May 26, 2020
Then it disappeared
suddenly through the trap door.
Say no more, except:
there are thorns without roses,
but no roses without thorns.

Wednesday May 27, 2020
I respect the old
Breviarium Romanum
as the standard text.
It remains on my desk with
Our Lady's Little Office.

Thursday May 28, 2020
The key was to look
where all of the keys are kept.
I don't remember
placing it with them at all.
Mindfulness and mindlessness.

Friday May 29, 2020
Evangelical
Calvinism was Newman's
norm for the new man,
until his Damascian
Contrareformatio.

Saturday May 30, 2020
It was thirty three
years ago today that we
went from two to one.
As far as I am concerned,
we will never be undone.

Sunday May 31, 2020
Kreuzeswissenschaft:
Edith Stein and Wittgenstein
combine within me
the grammatical science
of the syntax of the cross.