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Zen and the Birds of Appetite
Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite ―one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.
141 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Thomas Merton
552 books1,890 followersThomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani and in May 1949 he was ordained to priesthood. He was a member of the convent of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
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April 28, 2025
Thomas Merton was a problematic kinda guy.
Just like the rest of us, thankfully, and like me - because he showed us how living under the constant shadow of our own Cross can vitally renew our sense of real compassion.
And lead us to the quiet, open space of No-Self.
Most of us want out of the place of pain. After all, our media feeds tell us we CAN transcend the sorrow.
But the media are more interested in creating a high level of functional desire and conformity in the human animal, and they therefore readily give us an easy escape from our pain.
Because desire and conformity drive the economy.
But is that best for us?
I think, in lone contradistinction to the endless hoopla, that reconnecting with our basic human pain and aloneness reconnects us with others like us, for the first time - folks from whom the marketplace has always alienated us.
And when we vitally reconnect with those around us, through facing our own discomfort, we discover a quite ordinary sense of tranquility.
But reconnecting with our pain is like the moment a cold piece of butter hits a hot frying pan, if we’re dancing to the beat of the consumeristic drum.
The butter shrieks as it sizzles, and skidaddles away from the hot centre of that pan like a little ricochet.
We cannot stand too much reality, especially when we’re constantly jarred into nightmares by the media’s tidal wave of newspeak. There’s nowhere else to go...
We have to return to silence within.
The Cross of our personal pain inside us speaks to us out of something much deeper and won’t leave us alone.
Especially in quiet times of reading and reflection.
So, we don’t call a doctor - we read books like this one.
Merton speaks to us from a cutting, oblique angle of intense meditation on why the larger world is drifting away from us, OUTSIDE of our lost egos. At odds with us.
Maybe we’ll squirm, but he sure knows how to spin an intriguing tale or two.
For when this Trappist spokesman for us plain folks’ unease, as the shadow of the world’s grinding machine falls heavy upon us, tells us our suffering has a UNIVERSAL RESONANCE throughout this planet’s interconnected humanity -
WE LISTEN.
For Merton had broken out of the Cosmic Egg of the deep sleep that’s descended upon each of us.
And he tells us we can do the same, if we find the hard truth about our unease...
And its ultimate resolution in the peace of wholeness.
But only if the pain is faced head-on, and overcome, as a fearsome Minotaur which always blocks our way to the Nirvana of self knowledge:
And the peace that passes understanding.
Just like the rest of us, thankfully, and like me - because he showed us how living under the constant shadow of our own Cross can vitally renew our sense of real compassion.
And lead us to the quiet, open space of No-Self.
Most of us want out of the place of pain. After all, our media feeds tell us we CAN transcend the sorrow.
But the media are more interested in creating a high level of functional desire and conformity in the human animal, and they therefore readily give us an easy escape from our pain.
Because desire and conformity drive the economy.
But is that best for us?
I think, in lone contradistinction to the endless hoopla, that reconnecting with our basic human pain and aloneness reconnects us with others like us, for the first time - folks from whom the marketplace has always alienated us.
And when we vitally reconnect with those around us, through facing our own discomfort, we discover a quite ordinary sense of tranquility.
But reconnecting with our pain is like the moment a cold piece of butter hits a hot frying pan, if we’re dancing to the beat of the consumeristic drum.
The butter shrieks as it sizzles, and skidaddles away from the hot centre of that pan like a little ricochet.
We cannot stand too much reality, especially when we’re constantly jarred into nightmares by the media’s tidal wave of newspeak. There’s nowhere else to go...
We have to return to silence within.
The Cross of our personal pain inside us speaks to us out of something much deeper and won’t leave us alone.
Especially in quiet times of reading and reflection.
So, we don’t call a doctor - we read books like this one.
Merton speaks to us from a cutting, oblique angle of intense meditation on why the larger world is drifting away from us, OUTSIDE of our lost egos. At odds with us.
Maybe we’ll squirm, but he sure knows how to spin an intriguing tale or two.
For when this Trappist spokesman for us plain folks’ unease, as the shadow of the world’s grinding machine falls heavy upon us, tells us our suffering has a UNIVERSAL RESONANCE throughout this planet’s interconnected humanity -
WE LISTEN.
For Merton had broken out of the Cosmic Egg of the deep sleep that’s descended upon each of us.
And he tells us we can do the same, if we find the hard truth about our unease...
And its ultimate resolution in the peace of wholeness.
But only if the pain is faced head-on, and overcome, as a fearsome Minotaur which always blocks our way to the Nirvana of self knowledge:
And the peace that passes understanding.
July 30, 2011
This book has more personal significance for me than most others. Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk, poet, writer, and social activist. I highly reccommend this book for anyone interested in Christianity, Zen, or the spiritual experience. I read this when I was in high school, during a time when I had rejected a fundamentalist / literal interpretation of Christianity and was exploring eastern philosophy, but had not quite grasped the principles of eastern thought. Because I grew up indoctrinated in the Christian church, I found it easy to follow Merton's thought process and language. But what makes Merton special is that his spiritual life is grounded in experience, and not conceptual ideology. It is from this place, the place of direct experience, that he connects Christianity with Zen Buddhism. This book not only helped me understand Zen. It helped me reconcile my Christian upbringing. It helped me interpret Christianity metaphorically. It helped me understand that the spiritual experience is the direct experience of the unity of life, which is beyond thought, beyond conceptualization, and ultimately beyond religion.
Want to read
December 30, 2015
"The Zen consciousness is compared to a mirror" Thomas Merton
"The mirror is thoroughly egoless and mindless" Zenkei Shibayma ,On Zazen Wasan
http://www.merton.org/hiddenwholeness/
January 26, 2011
I take it for granted that if you want to understand Zen, then reading the work of a Catholic monk is probably not the way to do it. Merton's account of a Zen which is radically divorceable from the Buddhist context in which it developed is almost certain to be appropriative. So it goes.
That said, Merton's account of a Zen Catholicism nonetheless remains a powerful vision of what a (completely orthodox, and perhaps at times too completely orthodox) Christian theological praxis centered on mysticism might look like--and has looked like over the ages, as Merton provides an extensive (if not quite comprehensive) overview of Catholic mysticism throughout history, and discuses how their insights fall in line with what he understands Zen to be. I stand convinced that there is even more need for Merton's (and the Saints') brand of experiential Zen Catholicism today, in an era when the modernist systematic theology and premodern superstition inherent in other forms of Christianity no longer speak to our postmodern times, then when Merton was writing half a century ago.
And while Merton's Zen Catholicism is focused on personal experience, it does not fall prey to the sort of radical individualism (ultimately narrowly focused on personal sin and individul salvation) which riddles and plagues Protestantism. Instead, the Church itself is able to play a key role both as the mystic Body of Christ and as the source of the Sacraments. Merton recognizes that "faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ."
This book did and does much to confirm, deepen, and enrich my understanding of the rightful place of mysticism and mystic experience at the very center of Christianity (and, in particular, my own brand of liberal Anglo-Catholicism).
That said, Merton's account of a Zen Catholicism nonetheless remains a powerful vision of what a (completely orthodox, and perhaps at times too completely orthodox) Christian theological praxis centered on mysticism might look like--and has looked like over the ages, as Merton provides an extensive (if not quite comprehensive) overview of Catholic mysticism throughout history, and discuses how their insights fall in line with what he understands Zen to be. I stand convinced that there is even more need for Merton's (and the Saints') brand of experiential Zen Catholicism today, in an era when the modernist systematic theology and premodern superstition inherent in other forms of Christianity no longer speak to our postmodern times, then when Merton was writing half a century ago.
And while Merton's Zen Catholicism is focused on personal experience, it does not fall prey to the sort of radical individualism (ultimately narrowly focused on personal sin and individul salvation) which riddles and plagues Protestantism. Instead, the Church itself is able to play a key role both as the mystic Body of Christ and as the source of the Sacraments. Merton recognizes that "faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ."
This book did and does much to confirm, deepen, and enrich my understanding of the rightful place of mysticism and mystic experience at the very center of Christianity (and, in particular, my own brand of liberal Anglo-Catholicism).
April 20, 2013
Initial Question:
How does Merton connect Zen (distinct from Buddhism) to the story of Jesus? What's "broken" and how does Merton suggest redemption and repair?
Musings Influenced by the Book:
Zen is not a thing; it's more of an absence. Within the Christian experience, it is the absence of resistance to Christ living in us and through us. Zen is not an obedience, but an alive-ness to what is, an absence of the question - it simply is.
Stripped of its Buddhist story, Zen as a reality fits within the Christian experience. Zen is the experienced reality of St. Paul's phrase, "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me." The ancient Christians referred to this as "union" with God - an expression of life that lived from the core of the human person and seen from within as an inability to discern the origin of action: was it God or me who did this? This blur, this lack of question, and this free expression of what is (without resistance) is living "Zen."
My favorite quote:
“…liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can.” *Zen and the Birds of Appetite* p. 31
The general take away:
Awakening is the goal. This is something Christians have always talked about. The Christian sense of awakening differs from the traditional Buddhist story with regards to what one awakens to.
For the Christian, awakening is coming to the sense of the Father's divine love and present care and seeing all things that would flounder that reality purge away. It is in the life of Christ living in us that we come to see this love and have it live through us.
For the Buddhist, the awakening is more of a coming to see that all things are life and that there is no individual "me" - I am the Life, you are the Life, and all things that exist are life in this moment.
How does Merton connect Zen (distinct from Buddhism) to the story of Jesus? What's "broken" and how does Merton suggest redemption and repair?
Musings Influenced by the Book:
Zen is not a thing; it's more of an absence. Within the Christian experience, it is the absence of resistance to Christ living in us and through us. Zen is not an obedience, but an alive-ness to what is, an absence of the question - it simply is.
Stripped of its Buddhist story, Zen as a reality fits within the Christian experience. Zen is the experienced reality of St. Paul's phrase, "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me." The ancient Christians referred to this as "union" with God - an expression of life that lived from the core of the human person and seen from within as an inability to discern the origin of action: was it God or me who did this? This blur, this lack of question, and this free expression of what is (without resistance) is living "Zen."
My favorite quote:
“…liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can.” *Zen and the Birds of Appetite* p. 31
The general take away:
Awakening is the goal. This is something Christians have always talked about. The Christian sense of awakening differs from the traditional Buddhist story with regards to what one awakens to.
For the Christian, awakening is coming to the sense of the Father's divine love and present care and seeing all things that would flounder that reality purge away. It is in the life of Christ living in us that we come to see this love and have it live through us.
For the Buddhist, the awakening is more of a coming to see that all things are life and that there is no individual "me" - I am the Life, you are the Life, and all things that exist are life in this moment.
June 11, 2013
I think that I've gone as far with this book as I can. Actually, I've read most, if not all, of it in bits and pieces over the past few years, but this time I thought that I should sit down and read it start-to-finish.
I didn't quite make it to "finish", but that really has nothing to do with Merton's writing. I've just personally reached a stage at which I'm put off by "theology" (in its definition as a "rational definition of religious questions" or a "system or school of opinions concerning God") in any form. Zen, in particular, seems ill-suited to such "study"--although it seems to me that Buddhism seems to get discussed a lot more than it's practiced at times--and Christianity has always depended much too heavily on words and doctrine for my taste (although I suspect that Jesus himself didn't "go on" nearly as much as the Gospels would lead one to believe, and taught more by example than by explanation).
Two quotes from the book that I particularly like are these:
"...the chief characteristic of Zen is that it rejects these systematic elaborations in order to get back, as far as possible to the pure unarticulated and unexplained ground of direct experience."
and (somewhat as a contrast)
"Christianity (runs the risk of being) in effect reduced to a world view, at times a religious philosophy and little more, sustained by a more or less elaborate cult, by a moral discipline and a strict code of Law...a sense of security in one's own correctness..."
Merton also says of Buddha that "His doctrine was not a doctrine but a way of being in the world. His religion was not a set of beliefs or convictions or of rites and sacraments but an opening to love. His philosophy was not a world view but a significant silence..." (I believe that this could also be a description of Jesus, regardless of all the religion-building that went on after his death.)
My own sense is that the spiritual relationship is absolutely personal and specific to the individual, and can manifest itself in an infinite number of ways (perhaps even in ways the individual himself would not necessarily think of as "spiritual"). There's really no point in discussing it, for the most part, and dissecting and debating it only diminishes it (not to mention, of course, the endless conflicts opposing views on what's "right" have caused throughout history).
What I AM interested in as far as Merton is concerned is his own personal journey, and his struggles. What was it like to be a Christian monk in the 1960's who seemed to find himself fascinated, and perhaps drawn to, spiritual traditions that his associates disdained and dismissed (almost a "forbidden fruit")? What direction would his life have taken had he lived? What was really going on in his mind, heart, and spirit, beneath the surface of all the philosophical inquiry? I guess I could go and read some of his later journals but, as I said in an earlier comment, that always seems like something of an invasion of privacy, or something (even if he meant to have them published at some point). But I do admire him a great deal for making the effort, which must have put him at risk of losing the secure standing within the monastic community that he'd no doubt worked hard to acquire. And I hate to see him derided for it, as he seems to be even now.
I didn't quite make it to "finish", but that really has nothing to do with Merton's writing. I've just personally reached a stage at which I'm put off by "theology" (in its definition as a "rational definition of religious questions" or a "system or school of opinions concerning God") in any form. Zen, in particular, seems ill-suited to such "study"--although it seems to me that Buddhism seems to get discussed a lot more than it's practiced at times--and Christianity has always depended much too heavily on words and doctrine for my taste (although I suspect that Jesus himself didn't "go on" nearly as much as the Gospels would lead one to believe, and taught more by example than by explanation).
Two quotes from the book that I particularly like are these:
"...the chief characteristic of Zen is that it rejects these systematic elaborations in order to get back, as far as possible to the pure unarticulated and unexplained ground of direct experience."
and (somewhat as a contrast)
"Christianity (runs the risk of being) in effect reduced to a world view, at times a religious philosophy and little more, sustained by a more or less elaborate cult, by a moral discipline and a strict code of Law...a sense of security in one's own correctness..."
Merton also says of Buddha that "His doctrine was not a doctrine but a way of being in the world. His religion was not a set of beliefs or convictions or of rites and sacraments but an opening to love. His philosophy was not a world view but a significant silence..." (I believe that this could also be a description of Jesus, regardless of all the religion-building that went on after his death.)
My own sense is that the spiritual relationship is absolutely personal and specific to the individual, and can manifest itself in an infinite number of ways (perhaps even in ways the individual himself would not necessarily think of as "spiritual"). There's really no point in discussing it, for the most part, and dissecting and debating it only diminishes it (not to mention, of course, the endless conflicts opposing views on what's "right" have caused throughout history).
What I AM interested in as far as Merton is concerned is his own personal journey, and his struggles. What was it like to be a Christian monk in the 1960's who seemed to find himself fascinated, and perhaps drawn to, spiritual traditions that his associates disdained and dismissed (almost a "forbidden fruit")? What direction would his life have taken had he lived? What was really going on in his mind, heart, and spirit, beneath the surface of all the philosophical inquiry? I guess I could go and read some of his later journals but, as I said in an earlier comment, that always seems like something of an invasion of privacy, or something (even if he meant to have them published at some point). But I do admire him a great deal for making the effort, which must have put him at risk of losing the secure standing within the monastic community that he'd no doubt worked hard to acquire. And I hate to see him derided for it, as he seems to be even now.
August 27, 2017
These are Merton's reflections on the intersections between Zen Buddhism and mystical Christianity, and like all his writings are excellent. Being in the thick of a contemplative practice helps me understand his observations; I'm not sure this book would have made any sense even a year ago.
February 21, 2016
It became so obvious, by the end of Thomas Merton's life, that he had fully absorbed the lessons of Zen Buddhism. It was a relatively small step, really, from his earlier writing (examples can be found in the stern statements in New Seeds of Contemplation). It appears to me that all that time living in a hovel in the woods removed "religion" from Merton's approach to life, and left him simply empty of the world. This book is the final celebration of how he transformed from a strict Catholic mystic that operated, really, within the teachings and confines of the church, to a free man that needed nothing of rules or regulations or the teachings of others.
The book is a beautiful example of a man's spiritual maturity culminated. It is poetry, and it is in its own way a celebration of pure Zen. Nothing sanctimonious, nothing indulgent, just a man writing his heart, his empty accomplishment that is ultimately no real accomplishment at all.
In 1997, this book was hard to find. It seemed a rare and obscure statement by someone who was perhaps mostly known as a different person. But I believe it reveals everything about who he was, and who he became.
The book is a beautiful example of a man's spiritual maturity culminated. It is poetry, and it is in its own way a celebration of pure Zen. Nothing sanctimonious, nothing indulgent, just a man writing his heart, his empty accomplishment that is ultimately no real accomplishment at all.
In 1997, this book was hard to find. It seemed a rare and obscure statement by someone who was perhaps mostly known as a different person. But I believe it reveals everything about who he was, and who he became.
September 19, 2025
Thomas Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite is an attempt to reconcile two things that are irreconcilable: Roman Catholicism and Zen Buddhism. Merton tried hard to see in Meister Eckhard and the Egyptian monks of the desert a Christian equivalent of Zen. But it was not to be.
The interesting thing was that he liked what he saw of the Eastern religions, and he revered Buddhist scholar Daisetz Sukuki, but he could not write about it without being aware of the censorship of his religious superiors. As a Trappist monk, he could not publish without a Nihil Obstat and an Imprimatur -- and in the process he published an interesting failure of a book.
The interesting thing was that he liked what he saw of the Eastern religions, and he revered Buddhist scholar Daisetz Sukuki, but he could not write about it without being aware of the censorship of his religious superiors. As a Trappist monk, he could not publish without a Nihil Obstat and an Imprimatur -- and in the process he published an interesting failure of a book.
December 12, 2018
St. Bonaventure - God is the One whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
August 28, 2021
One wonders what a Catholic monk is doing digging into Zen.
In 1965, the Catholic Church reorganized itself under the Second Vatican Council, which released a set of documents and statements declaring new ideas about their positions in regards to religious life, the carrying out of mass, and their relationship to others in the world.
One such text deals with other religions:
"In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship. ... The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings, which though different in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of truth which enlightens all men."
The spirit of Vatican II is the spirit in which Fr Merton frames his dialogue historically between the Desert Fathers, Meister Eckhart, a few Zen masters, and DT Suzuki. It is fascinating, as always, to read Merton's perspectives on certain movements within the Catholic Church, particularly those who he calls "progressives". A term which means something entirely opposite today.
"Is there some new possibility, some other opening for the Christian consciousness today? If there is, it will doubtless have to meet the following great needs of man: .... On the contrary, I might suggest a fourth need of modern man which is precisely liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can."
This book is a scrapbook of essays and reflections, and through one can track Merton's thinking shift from early misunderstandings ("For the Buddhist, life is a static and ontological fullness") to poetic proclamations (“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you want to discover nature’s nakedness you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay.”).
While being cautious to avoid syncretism - I suppose it would have drawn immediate and universal rancor and rejection from his colleagues and most in the world - he still begins to draw the topography around contextualizing the similarities and differences between Zen and Catholicism. It is important to note that these differences cannot be approached within one theme:
"Now the great obstacle to mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism lies in the Western tendency to focus not on the Buddhist experience, which is essential, but on the explanation, which is accidental and which indeed Zen often regards as completely trivial and even misleading."
Merton also launches into several defenses of Buddhism and Zen, such as dealing with what must have been the most common criticism of Buddhism at the time: "Is the basic teaching of Buddhism—on ignorance, deliverance and enlightenment—really life-denying, or is it rather the same kind of life-affirming liberation that we find in the Good News of Redemption, the Gift of the Spirit, and the New Creation?"
It is always a pleasure to engage with Merton, and even more so to see Suzuki at the end basically yell at him for not taking the idea of emptiness far enough and basically just lazily grafting it onto Christian mystical experience.
In 1965, the Catholic Church reorganized itself under the Second Vatican Council, which released a set of documents and statements declaring new ideas about their positions in regards to religious life, the carrying out of mass, and their relationship to others in the world.
One such text deals with other religions:
"In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship. ... The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings, which though different in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of truth which enlightens all men."
The spirit of Vatican II is the spirit in which Fr Merton frames his dialogue historically between the Desert Fathers, Meister Eckhart, a few Zen masters, and DT Suzuki. It is fascinating, as always, to read Merton's perspectives on certain movements within the Catholic Church, particularly those who he calls "progressives". A term which means something entirely opposite today.
"Is there some new possibility, some other opening for the Christian consciousness today? If there is, it will doubtless have to meet the following great needs of man: .... On the contrary, I might suggest a fourth need of modern man which is precisely liberation from his inordinate self-consciousness, his monumental self-awareness, his obsession with self-affirmation, so that he may enjoy the freedom from concern that goes with being simply what he is and accepting things as they are in order to work with them as he can."
This book is a scrapbook of essays and reflections, and through one can track Merton's thinking shift from early misunderstandings ("For the Buddhist, life is a static and ontological fullness") to poetic proclamations (“The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you want to discover nature’s nakedness you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay.”).
While being cautious to avoid syncretism - I suppose it would have drawn immediate and universal rancor and rejection from his colleagues and most in the world - he still begins to draw the topography around contextualizing the similarities and differences between Zen and Catholicism. It is important to note that these differences cannot be approached within one theme:
"Now the great obstacle to mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism lies in the Western tendency to focus not on the Buddhist experience, which is essential, but on the explanation, which is accidental and which indeed Zen often regards as completely trivial and even misleading."
Merton also launches into several defenses of Buddhism and Zen, such as dealing with what must have been the most common criticism of Buddhism at the time: "Is the basic teaching of Buddhism—on ignorance, deliverance and enlightenment—really life-denying, or is it rather the same kind of life-affirming liberation that we find in the Good News of Redemption, the Gift of the Spirit, and the New Creation?"
It is always a pleasure to engage with Merton, and even more so to see Suzuki at the end basically yell at him for not taking the idea of emptiness far enough and basically just lazily grafting it onto Christian mystical experience.
September 17, 2019
I found this book and immediately I was drawn to it as a parallel to a book I read back in college, "Living Buddha, Living Christ". There, a Buddhist delves into the Christian faith and draws parallels to the Buddhist thinking. Here, I found a Christian who has delved into Buddhism/Zen, and compares and contrasts them in a nuanced and western way.
I remember a big focus in "Living Buddha, Living Christ" being on the Holy Spirit; here one of the main focuses was Merton's comparison between "becoming the Buddha/Buddha mind" and the idea of "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me", which I found fascinating.
Later in the book, it doesn't even need to have "Living Buddha, Living Christ" as a companion piece, as it has Zen/Buddhist author D. T. Suzuki enter into a direct dialogue with Merton. Merton follows up this dialogue with an explanation of how his original thinking in the dialogue was a good way of how *not* to understand Zen, which I found both amusing and humbling of Merton.
I was punching a bit above my weight on this book, and it took me a bit to get my ground with the vocabulary and philosophy. As such, my first reading was more of cursory understanding of it rather than a true engagement with it. I might come back to this book at a later time with the purpose of truly processing it.
I remember a big focus in "Living Buddha, Living Christ" being on the Holy Spirit; here one of the main focuses was Merton's comparison between "becoming the Buddha/Buddha mind" and the idea of "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me", which I found fascinating.
Later in the book, it doesn't even need to have "Living Buddha, Living Christ" as a companion piece, as it has Zen/Buddhist author D. T. Suzuki enter into a direct dialogue with Merton. Merton follows up this dialogue with an explanation of how his original thinking in the dialogue was a good way of how *not* to understand Zen, which I found both amusing and humbling of Merton.
I was punching a bit above my weight on this book, and it took me a bit to get my ground with the vocabulary and philosophy. As such, my first reading was more of cursory understanding of it rather than a true engagement with it. I might come back to this book at a later time with the purpose of truly processing it.
February 9, 2025
Reading about Zen, written by a Catholic monk. That's quite a proposal.
I was raised Catholic, and if I knew that the type of metaphysical and abstract thinking, deep philosophy, was part of Catholicism, I very well still could be a Catholic today..... it's unclear to me if Merton would be an agnostic today, 60 years after the book was published. He seems to treat Jesus Christ more as an leader and a spiritual example, and the trinity as a metaphysical construct rather than an explicit physical reality in the world. Faith seems less important to him than living experience in moral example of Christ.
In any event, Christianity aside, this was the single best semantic description of what I understand Zen to be. I've read many Zen books in the last year, and they all scratch an itch, but fall short of the clear elucidation that Merton provides. The greatest value and greatest message I took from this read was the ability to explicitly describe what should not be able to be explicitly described. Koans make sense to me more now than ever. The duality and nonduality in Samsara and Nirvana are now clearly unclear to me. The benefit and cost of language and semantic representation are now more prominent in my daily life.
I was raised Catholic, and if I knew that the type of metaphysical and abstract thinking, deep philosophy, was part of Catholicism, I very well still could be a Catholic today..... it's unclear to me if Merton would be an agnostic today, 60 years after the book was published. He seems to treat Jesus Christ more as an leader and a spiritual example, and the trinity as a metaphysical construct rather than an explicit physical reality in the world. Faith seems less important to him than living experience in moral example of Christ.
In any event, Christianity aside, this was the single best semantic description of what I understand Zen to be. I've read many Zen books in the last year, and they all scratch an itch, but fall short of the clear elucidation that Merton provides. The greatest value and greatest message I took from this read was the ability to explicitly describe what should not be able to be explicitly described. Koans make sense to me more now than ever. The duality and nonduality in Samsara and Nirvana are now clearly unclear to me. The benefit and cost of language and semantic representation are now more prominent in my daily life.
January 5, 2025
Just when I thought I was done reading Christian literature, Thomas Merton came in the picture. This book was incredibly beautiful and really helped me find a spiritual home and identity within Christian Buddhism. I am incredibly eager to dig into more of his later works. The dialogue offers a unique marriage of traditional non-deistic and non-dualistic aspects of Buddhism into Christianity. Offering a neat look at meditation, self-emptying and reality.
June 9, 2024
Again, one realizes how little one has read when one tries to comprehend how much Thomas Merton has, in order to understand Buddhism as he did. Mostly over my head, but the meetings of the International Merton Society, Southern California chapter, helped get a glimpse of the intersection of Eastern and Western religions.
March 27, 2023
This book is an interesting review of zen and what it means. It also contrasts beliefs that are zen with several religions. It makes it clear that zen is not Buddhism or Christianity, but there are Buddhists and Chrisians that are zen.
July 7, 2024
I wanted this to be much more than it was to me.
November 22, 2020
Interesting juxtaposition of Zen Buddhism with Christianity which demonstrates Merton's broad theological erudition. Includes insightful commentary from a Zen Buddhist perspective by D.T. Suzuki.
June 28, 2024
Though at times, this book was a bit over my head, Zen and the Birds of Appetite is a beautiful and worthwhile comparison between Christianity and Zen. While they are indisputably different in almost every way, they have one very important thing in common: paradise is found in emptying oneself to return to a state of innocence, purity, and fullness, a process which entails shedding the ego to make room simply for what is.
This was a short, yet meaningful and accessible read that I found highly relevant to my life and current faith journey.
☆☆☆/☆☆☆☆☆
This was a short, yet meaningful and accessible read that I found highly relevant to my life and current faith journey.
☆☆☆/☆☆☆☆☆
July 3, 2025
This meaty book delves into reality from both Christian and Zen perspectives, offering profound thoughts for those who will listen. I'll read it again for sure.
November 24, 2022
This collection of ten essays was published in l968, shortly before Merton’s accidental death at the age of 53. They have in common a look at the practice of Zen and its relationship to Christian mystical practice. The title refers to a buzzards hovering around a corpse in at first what you might think is a metaphor for Zen, the search for spirituality or enlightenment . But Zen enriches no one in the sense that there is no body to be found.
There is a Zen dimension to the words of the Gospel. Its moral meaning, of course, can be endlessly discussed and worked out in terms of how a follower of Christ should act. Merton stresses, though, that when an individual breaks through the limitations and rules of cultural and structural religion, “one is apt to end by ‘birth in the Spirit’ and what the New Testament refers to as “freedom of the Sons of God,” and can be understood as a Zen-like sense.
Hard to grasp? Yes, but as Merton points out, “For Zen, for the moment fact is transferred to a statement, it is falsified. One ceases to grasp the naked reality of experience and one grasps a form of words instead.” In the same way, a person immersed in the Holy Spirit of Christ cannot put that experience into words.
Christianity is a religion that emphasizes “grace”, a kind of gift of dependence on what is called “God” as revealed through the god-man, Jesus. Zen, on the other hand, is not a religion at all, but a form of enlightenment that frees h humans from all external forms. Christianity tends to express Christ-like teachings in language and symbols that are accessible to many people. They may be beneficial in leading a meaningful life, but it is not the experience of an awareness of reality that comes about through “grace.” One can talk about and define grace, but to be in a “state of grace” is finally incommunicable in words, and is close to Zen in this respect.
Being in a state of grace implies the emptying out of ego-consciousness and its filling with the reality of God’s glory and love become apparent in the dimensions of Christ. John in his gospel talks about light and darkness which are metaphors for this experience. Buddhism, at least in its Zen form talks about enlightenment being part of crossing to “the other shore”, a new kind of reality.
Near the end of one of Merton’s essays, he talks about what is called the Great Mystery, or Divine Wisdom. If we experience it, we stop asking questions about it, we just accept and live it. In the same way, it seems that in Zen individuals seek “enlightenment” but it is a paradox that when it is found, it is no longer “enlightenment.” To seek may bring about finding, but once found, what was being sought disappears. In the end, words fail to fully explain either Zen or Christianity .
There is a Zen dimension to the words of the Gospel. Its moral meaning, of course, can be endlessly discussed and worked out in terms of how a follower of Christ should act. Merton stresses, though, that when an individual breaks through the limitations and rules of cultural and structural religion, “one is apt to end by ‘birth in the Spirit’ and what the New Testament refers to as “freedom of the Sons of God,” and can be understood as a Zen-like sense.
Hard to grasp? Yes, but as Merton points out, “For Zen, for the moment fact is transferred to a statement, it is falsified. One ceases to grasp the naked reality of experience and one grasps a form of words instead.” In the same way, a person immersed in the Holy Spirit of Christ cannot put that experience into words.
Christianity is a religion that emphasizes “grace”, a kind of gift of dependence on what is called “God” as revealed through the god-man, Jesus. Zen, on the other hand, is not a religion at all, but a form of enlightenment that frees h humans from all external forms. Christianity tends to express Christ-like teachings in language and symbols that are accessible to many people. They may be beneficial in leading a meaningful life, but it is not the experience of an awareness of reality that comes about through “grace.” One can talk about and define grace, but to be in a “state of grace” is finally incommunicable in words, and is close to Zen in this respect.
Being in a state of grace implies the emptying out of ego-consciousness and its filling with the reality of God’s glory and love become apparent in the dimensions of Christ. John in his gospel talks about light and darkness which are metaphors for this experience. Buddhism, at least in its Zen form talks about enlightenment being part of crossing to “the other shore”, a new kind of reality.
Near the end of one of Merton’s essays, he talks about what is called the Great Mystery, or Divine Wisdom. If we experience it, we stop asking questions about it, we just accept and live it. In the same way, it seems that in Zen individuals seek “enlightenment” but it is a paradox that when it is found, it is no longer “enlightenment.” To seek may bring about finding, but once found, what was being sought disappears. In the end, words fail to fully explain either Zen or Christianity .
July 13, 2016
This is a wonderful book for those seeking a more mystical approach to the tenets of Christianity. Merton does an amazing job of simplifying the core differences (and similarities!) between Zen-Buddhism and Christianity. He does a god job of documenting some of the more "radical" theologians in the Church's history and "New Consciousness."
Some of the passages benefit from re-reading; not because they are difficult to comprehend, but because of the meditative nature of some of messages. This is not a volume to be rushed by. I suggest reading a chapter and putting it away, do your day, and come back to it a day or two later. It's a small collection of essays but don't be fooled by the physical weight and slim appearance. The half-page author's note at the beginning alone contains in it hours of material to think about. This book will take you on a journey as deep as you want to go.
The portions with D.T Suzuki alone are worth the price of admission.
Some of the passages benefit from re-reading; not because they are difficult to comprehend, but because of the meditative nature of some of messages. This is not a volume to be rushed by. I suggest reading a chapter and putting it away, do your day, and come back to it a day or two later. It's a small collection of essays but don't be fooled by the physical weight and slim appearance. The half-page author's note at the beginning alone contains in it hours of material to think about. This book will take you on a journey as deep as you want to go.
The portions with D.T Suzuki alone are worth the price of admission.
September 9, 2010
The title's deceiving. From the title, I expected this book to cover how Zen deals with desire. Instead, I got a book that was more concerned with finding common ground between Christianity and Zen for fruitful dialog without falling into syncreticism.
The author's approach is interesting. He is very sympathetic to Zen and acknowledges a commonality to mystic experience, but still manages to avoid the "all religions are the same" message of some other books.
The author still manages to teach a few things about Zen and when he does this, he does this pretty well, albeit a bit verbosely and the book is a bit dry in some spots.
See Zen Catholicism for a related take and a better coverage of Zen, desire and happiness.
The author's approach is interesting. He is very sympathetic to Zen and acknowledges a commonality to mystic experience, but still manages to avoid the "all religions are the same" message of some other books.
The author still manages to teach a few things about Zen and when he does this, he does this pretty well, albeit a bit verbosely and the book is a bit dry in some spots.
See Zen Catholicism for a related take and a better coverage of Zen, desire and happiness.
May 10, 2015
Very dated. In 1968 the book might have been relevant, even provocative, despite Merton's cloying writing style that is painful to read. One thing is for sure, Merton was a very productive writer.
October 1, 2022
It is difficult to explain why I'm drawn to mysticism, perhaps because mysticism is at once both an impossibly complex (not pinnable by words) and a radically simple (thus requiring remarkable spiritual maturity) mode of being. But Merton provides some useful words and frameworks for my mystic inclinations, and even better yet, in this book, he does so from the standpoint of the two religious traditions with which I am most familiar - Christianity and Buddhism (even if the exact traditions, Catholicism and Zen, are more unfamiliar to me).
I appreciated a lot of things about this book. One, that through this mystic framework, Merton illuminated the misconception of Buddhism as apathetic, passive, or removed from the real world. He showed how it, in its ceaseless interrogation of the "self," actually invites practitioners into a more full unity with all other beings and lands. This breeds compassion, and it makes enlightenment and the achievement of buddhahood a necessarily communal act.
Second, I appreciated the importance given to direct experience, as opposed to merely intellectual understanding of a topic. The importance of direct engagement is something I believe in deeply, but it is so difficult to write about, because in writing about it, I am filtering awe into letters. As such, though I believe these experiences are important in developing compassion and union between God/self/all, I am not sure how to talk about them, to best practice them, nor how to invite others into that type of experience. I am convinced that this is most effective on small scales, even if some work can be done on larger ones.
Third, I appreciate this bringing-together of Buddhist and Christian frameworks, particularly in terms of mysticism. Merton relied heavily on conversations with Suzuki, and he also wove in teachings from other Zen and Catholic monks, poets, and artists.
It sparked a lot of contemplation and wondering on my end, but at the same time, it urged me not to remain so much in my thoughts. To go outside and touch the soil. To grin.
I want to finish with a few quotes.
"Though there has been much philosophical speculation among various schools of Buddhism, the basic insight of Buddhism goes beyond speculation and renounces it. Sakyamuni (Buddha) himself refused to answer speculative questions, and he would not permit abstract philosophical discussion. His doctrine was not a doctrine but a way of being in the world. His religion was not a set of beliefs and convictions or of rites and sacraments, but an opening to love. His philosophy was not a world view but a significant silence, in which the fracture implied by conceptual knowledge was allowed to heal and reality appeared again in its mysterious 'suchness.'" (79)
"The trouble is that as long as you are given to distinguishing, judging, categorizing and classifying - or even contemplating - you are superimposing something else on the pure mirror. You are filtering the light through a system as if convinced that this will improve the light." (7)
"Is there some new possibility, some other opening for the Christian consciousness today? If there is, it will doubtless have to meet the following great needs of man:
First; His need for community, for a genuine relationship of authentic love with his fellow man. This will also imply a deep, in fact completely radical, seriousness in approaching those critical problems which threaten man's very survival as a species on earth - war, racial conflict, hunger, economic and political injustice, etc... Second; Man's need for an adequate understanding of his everyday self in his ordinary life. There is no longer any place for the kind of idealistic philosophy that removes all reality into the celestial realms and makes temporal existence meaningless...Man needs to find ultimate sense here and now in the ordinary humble tasks and human problems of every day. Third; Man's need for a whole and integrated experience of his own self on all its levels, bodily as well as imaginative, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. There is no place for the cultivation of one part of human consciousness, one aspect of human experience, at the expense of the others, even on the pretext that what is cultivated is sacred and all the rest profane. A false and divine 'sacredness' or 'supernaturalism' can only cripple man....
For all these needs, but especially the last, the Christian will do well to retune to the simple lessons of the Gospel and understand them, if he can, not in terms of an imminent second coming, but certainly in terms of a new and liberated creation 'in the Spirit.' Then he can be delibered from the obsessions of a culture that thrives on the stimulation and exploitation of egocentric desire.
But he will also do well, perhaps, to turn to Asian religion and acquire a more accurate understanding of its 'unworldliness.'... I believe Zen has much to say not only to a Christian but also to a modern man. It is non doctrinal, concrete, direct, existential, and seeks above all to come to grips with life itself, not with ideas about life, still less with part platforms in politics, religion, science or anything else" (30-31).
"When man is grounded in authentic truth and love the roots of desire themselves wither, brokenness is at an end, and truth is found in the wholeness and simplicity of Nirvana: perfect awareness and perfect compassion. Nirvana is the wisdom of perfect love grounded in itself and shining through every thing, meeting with no opposition. The heart of brokenness is then seen for what it was: an illusion, but a persistent and invincible illusion of the isolated ego-self, setting itself up in opposition to love, demanding that its won desire be accepted as the law of the universe, and hence suffering from the fact that by its desire it is fractured in itself and cut off from the loving wisdom in which it should be grounded." (84)
I appreciated a lot of things about this book. One, that through this mystic framework, Merton illuminated the misconception of Buddhism as apathetic, passive, or removed from the real world. He showed how it, in its ceaseless interrogation of the "self," actually invites practitioners into a more full unity with all other beings and lands. This breeds compassion, and it makes enlightenment and the achievement of buddhahood a necessarily communal act.
Second, I appreciated the importance given to direct experience, as opposed to merely intellectual understanding of a topic. The importance of direct engagement is something I believe in deeply, but it is so difficult to write about, because in writing about it, I am filtering awe into letters. As such, though I believe these experiences are important in developing compassion and union between God/self/all, I am not sure how to talk about them, to best practice them, nor how to invite others into that type of experience. I am convinced that this is most effective on small scales, even if some work can be done on larger ones.
Third, I appreciate this bringing-together of Buddhist and Christian frameworks, particularly in terms of mysticism. Merton relied heavily on conversations with Suzuki, and he also wove in teachings from other Zen and Catholic monks, poets, and artists.
It sparked a lot of contemplation and wondering on my end, but at the same time, it urged me not to remain so much in my thoughts. To go outside and touch the soil. To grin.
I want to finish with a few quotes.
"Though there has been much philosophical speculation among various schools of Buddhism, the basic insight of Buddhism goes beyond speculation and renounces it. Sakyamuni (Buddha) himself refused to answer speculative questions, and he would not permit abstract philosophical discussion. His doctrine was not a doctrine but a way of being in the world. His religion was not a set of beliefs and convictions or of rites and sacraments, but an opening to love. His philosophy was not a world view but a significant silence, in which the fracture implied by conceptual knowledge was allowed to heal and reality appeared again in its mysterious 'suchness.'" (79)
"The trouble is that as long as you are given to distinguishing, judging, categorizing and classifying - or even contemplating - you are superimposing something else on the pure mirror. You are filtering the light through a system as if convinced that this will improve the light." (7)
"Is there some new possibility, some other opening for the Christian consciousness today? If there is, it will doubtless have to meet the following great needs of man:
First; His need for community, for a genuine relationship of authentic love with his fellow man. This will also imply a deep, in fact completely radical, seriousness in approaching those critical problems which threaten man's very survival as a species on earth - war, racial conflict, hunger, economic and political injustice, etc... Second; Man's need for an adequate understanding of his everyday self in his ordinary life. There is no longer any place for the kind of idealistic philosophy that removes all reality into the celestial realms and makes temporal existence meaningless...Man needs to find ultimate sense here and now in the ordinary humble tasks and human problems of every day. Third; Man's need for a whole and integrated experience of his own self on all its levels, bodily as well as imaginative, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. There is no place for the cultivation of one part of human consciousness, one aspect of human experience, at the expense of the others, even on the pretext that what is cultivated is sacred and all the rest profane. A false and divine 'sacredness' or 'supernaturalism' can only cripple man....
For all these needs, but especially the last, the Christian will do well to retune to the simple lessons of the Gospel and understand them, if he can, not in terms of an imminent second coming, but certainly in terms of a new and liberated creation 'in the Spirit.' Then he can be delibered from the obsessions of a culture that thrives on the stimulation and exploitation of egocentric desire.
But he will also do well, perhaps, to turn to Asian religion and acquire a more accurate understanding of its 'unworldliness.'... I believe Zen has much to say not only to a Christian but also to a modern man. It is non doctrinal, concrete, direct, existential, and seeks above all to come to grips with life itself, not with ideas about life, still less with part platforms in politics, religion, science or anything else" (30-31).
"When man is grounded in authentic truth and love the roots of desire themselves wither, brokenness is at an end, and truth is found in the wholeness and simplicity of Nirvana: perfect awareness and perfect compassion. Nirvana is the wisdom of perfect love grounded in itself and shining through every thing, meeting with no opposition. The heart of brokenness is then seen for what it was: an illusion, but a persistent and invincible illusion of the isolated ego-self, setting itself up in opposition to love, demanding that its won desire be accepted as the law of the universe, and hence suffering from the fact that by its desire it is fractured in itself and cut off from the loving wisdom in which it should be grounded." (84)
September 19, 2024
This is heavy and worth it, because Merton, while working through a deep analysis/study of East and West within their religious systems and structures and the dialog between those, manages to keep the big questions open.
Special mention to a chapter on Nishida and his "Study of Good" - to read.
__________
Some notes:
- "In other words to regard Zen merely and exclusively as Zen Buddhism is to falsify it and, no doubt, to betray the fact that one has no understanding of it whatever. Yet this does not mean that there cannot be "Zen Buddhists", but these surely will realize the difference between their Buddhism and their Zen - even while admitting that for them their Zen is in fact the purest expression of Buddhism. But, of course, the reason for that is that Buddhism itself points beyond any theological or philosophical "ism".
- "The meaning of life is found in openness to being...///"
- "Hence, it becomes overwhelmingly important for us to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as candidates for realization, attainment and fulfilment. In other words, this means that a spiritual guide worth his salt will conduct a ruthless campaign against all forms of delusion arising out of spiritual ambition and self-complacency which aim to establish the ego in spiritual glory. That is why a St. John of the Cross is so hostile to visions, ecstasies and all forms of "special experience." That is why zen masters say: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."
- "Zen implies a breakthrough, an explosive liberation from one-dimentional conformism, a recovery of unity which is not the suppression of opposites but a simplicity beyond opposites. To exist and function in the world of opposites while experiencing that world in terms of a primal simplicity does imply if not a formal metaphysic, at least a ground of metaphysical intuition. ///
Hence the Zen saying: before I grasped Zen, the mountains were nothing but mountains and the rivers nothing but rivers. When I got into Zen, the mountains were no longer mountains and the rivers were no longer rivers. But when I understood Zen, the mountains were only mountains and the rivers only rivers.
The point is that facts are not just plain facts. There is a dimension where the bottom drops out of the world of factuality and of the ordinary. Western industrial culture is in the curious position of having simultaneously reached the climax of an entire totalitarian rationality of organization and of complete absurdity and self-contradiction. Existentialists and a few others have noticed the absurdity. But the majority persist in seeing only the rational machinery against which no protest avails: because, after all, it is "rational", and it is "a fact". So, too, is the internal contradiction.
The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there. It might be good to open your eyes and see."
Special mention to a chapter on Nishida and his "Study of Good" - to read.
__________
Some notes:
- "In other words to regard Zen merely and exclusively as Zen Buddhism is to falsify it and, no doubt, to betray the fact that one has no understanding of it whatever. Yet this does not mean that there cannot be "Zen Buddhists", but these surely will realize the difference between their Buddhism and their Zen - even while admitting that for them their Zen is in fact the purest expression of Buddhism. But, of course, the reason for that is that Buddhism itself points beyond any theological or philosophical "ism".
- "The meaning of life is found in openness to being...///"
- "Hence, it becomes overwhelmingly important for us to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as candidates for realization, attainment and fulfilment. In other words, this means that a spiritual guide worth his salt will conduct a ruthless campaign against all forms of delusion arising out of spiritual ambition and self-complacency which aim to establish the ego in spiritual glory. That is why a St. John of the Cross is so hostile to visions, ecstasies and all forms of "special experience." That is why zen masters say: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."
- "Zen implies a breakthrough, an explosive liberation from one-dimentional conformism, a recovery of unity which is not the suppression of opposites but a simplicity beyond opposites. To exist and function in the world of opposites while experiencing that world in terms of a primal simplicity does imply if not a formal metaphysic, at least a ground of metaphysical intuition. ///
Hence the Zen saying: before I grasped Zen, the mountains were nothing but mountains and the rivers nothing but rivers. When I got into Zen, the mountains were no longer mountains and the rivers were no longer rivers. But when I understood Zen, the mountains were only mountains and the rivers only rivers.
The point is that facts are not just plain facts. There is a dimension where the bottom drops out of the world of factuality and of the ordinary. Western industrial culture is in the curious position of having simultaneously reached the climax of an entire totalitarian rationality of organization and of complete absurdity and self-contradiction. Existentialists and a few others have noticed the absurdity. But the majority persist in seeing only the rational machinery against which no protest avails: because, after all, it is "rational", and it is "a fact". So, too, is the internal contradiction.
The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there. It might be good to open your eyes and see."
October 12, 2025
I was thinking for some time about similarities between Christianity and Stoicism and I wanted to read something about the topic. During my research I haven’t found something of note but I encountered Thomas Merton’s Zen and the Birds of Appetite a wonderful book that compares and contrast the Zen philosophy and Christianity. Build as collection of essays and letters between himself and Suzuki Daisetz Teitaro, Zen and the Birds of Appetite was a good Segway into what Zen as a philosophy is.
A few major take away-s and parallels between the 2:
- Zen consciousness does not categorize and distinguish; it does not judge beauty and ugliness under canonical rules. Similar to this we can find the Gospel word that say “Judge not and you will not be judge”.
- As Prajnaparamita Sutra considers that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” so does the Old Testament bring us the say “I am what I am” to reflect that God can be any form including emptiness. (I am not doing the book justice with this oversimplification)
- Zen and Buddhism to an extent are based on experience rather than “revelation” which is the one of the central topics in Christianity (see the revelations to Mary”). This is used as an explanation on why Christianity accepts more easily structural and formulaic approach to religions
- This experience driven approach to Zen is wonderfully summarized by Wittgenstein “Don’t think: Look!”
- A nice explanation of Zen is illustrated by the alarm clock stories. Upon hearing an alarm clock one might jump out of bed with distress that one is late. Other times one might sleep in or just snooze the alarm clock for another ten minutes. Neither of this reflects what Zen is. Zen is just the factual that the alarm has rang.
- Zen has 2 objectives : penetration of meaning and suffering by meditation and protection of all beings from suffering by compassion and nonviolence.
- All evil and defilement comes from our attachment to ones self.
- He who quarrel is no monk, he ho returns evil for evil is no monk, he who is angry is no monk
- Lastly I loved the concept of “Dana” as in giving, but no philanthropic wise rather disseminating knowledge, giving your self to a higher cause giving back to the world via art. All of this brought me back to the idea of giving mercy, as Jesus pointed out mercy should be giving without a fuss and without signaling it.
A few major take away-s and parallels between the 2:
- Zen consciousness does not categorize and distinguish; it does not judge beauty and ugliness under canonical rules. Similar to this we can find the Gospel word that say “Judge not and you will not be judge”.
- As Prajnaparamita Sutra considers that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” so does the Old Testament bring us the say “I am what I am” to reflect that God can be any form including emptiness. (I am not doing the book justice with this oversimplification)
- Zen and Buddhism to an extent are based on experience rather than “revelation” which is the one of the central topics in Christianity (see the revelations to Mary”). This is used as an explanation on why Christianity accepts more easily structural and formulaic approach to religions
- This experience driven approach to Zen is wonderfully summarized by Wittgenstein “Don’t think: Look!”
- A nice explanation of Zen is illustrated by the alarm clock stories. Upon hearing an alarm clock one might jump out of bed with distress that one is late. Other times one might sleep in or just snooze the alarm clock for another ten minutes. Neither of this reflects what Zen is. Zen is just the factual that the alarm has rang.
- Zen has 2 objectives : penetration of meaning and suffering by meditation and protection of all beings from suffering by compassion and nonviolence.
- All evil and defilement comes from our attachment to ones self.
- He who quarrel is no monk, he ho returns evil for evil is no monk, he who is angry is no monk
- Lastly I loved the concept of “Dana” as in giving, but no philanthropic wise rather disseminating knowledge, giving your self to a higher cause giving back to the world via art. All of this brought me back to the idea of giving mercy, as Jesus pointed out mercy should be giving without a fuss and without signaling it.
July 19, 2024
MERTON'S MORE DEVELOPED REFLECTIONS ON ZEN
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, as well as a best-selling writer, poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. He wrote many books, including 'The Seven Storey Mountain,' 'Mystics and Zen Masters,' 'The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton.' Tragically, he was accidentally electrocuted while in Thailand at a conference of Christian and non-Christian monks.
The title of this 1968 book is explained as referring to buzzards hovering over a corpse: "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen."
He begins with the observation, "as structures, as systems. and as religions, Zen and Catholicism don't mix any better than oil and water." (Pg. 3) He adds later, "you can hardly set Christianity and Zen side by side and compare them. This would almost be like trying to compare mathematics and tennis." (Pg. 33) Similarly, "it is never easy to say with any security that what a Christian mystic and a Sufi and a Zen Master experience is really 'the same thing.'" (Pg. 44)
He corrects D.T. Suzuki's position in 'Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist,' stating that Suzuki was "much too convinced that (Meister) Eckhart was unusual in his time"; he notes that "Eckhart's condemnation was in fact due in some measure to rivalry between Dominicans and Franciscans, and his teaching... belonged to a mystical tradition that was ... the most vital religious force in the Catholicism of his time." (Pg. 42) He adds, "Speaking for myself, I can venture to say that in Dr. Suzuki, Buddhism finally became for me completely comprehensible..." (Pg. 61)
This book by Merton seems to display a much greater grasp and confidence about Zen than his earlier "Mystics & Zen Masters" did, and it is a marvelous book for anyone interested in spirituality, or comparative religions.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, as well as a best-selling writer, poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. He wrote many books, including 'The Seven Storey Mountain,' 'Mystics and Zen Masters,' 'The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton.' Tragically, he was accidentally electrocuted while in Thailand at a conference of Christian and non-Christian monks.
The title of this 1968 book is explained as referring to buzzards hovering over a corpse: "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen."
He begins with the observation, "as structures, as systems. and as religions, Zen and Catholicism don't mix any better than oil and water." (Pg. 3) He adds later, "you can hardly set Christianity and Zen side by side and compare them. This would almost be like trying to compare mathematics and tennis." (Pg. 33) Similarly, "it is never easy to say with any security that what a Christian mystic and a Sufi and a Zen Master experience is really 'the same thing.'" (Pg. 44)
He corrects D.T. Suzuki's position in 'Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist,' stating that Suzuki was "much too convinced that (Meister) Eckhart was unusual in his time"; he notes that "Eckhart's condemnation was in fact due in some measure to rivalry between Dominicans and Franciscans, and his teaching... belonged to a mystical tradition that was ... the most vital religious force in the Catholicism of his time." (Pg. 42) He adds, "Speaking for myself, I can venture to say that in Dr. Suzuki, Buddhism finally became for me completely comprehensible..." (Pg. 61)
This book by Merton seems to display a much greater grasp and confidence about Zen than his earlier "Mystics & Zen Masters" did, and it is a marvelous book for anyone interested in spirituality, or comparative religions.
September 20, 2020
For some reason I have this deep respect and near-obsession with Thomas Merton despite having never read one of his works in full before now. I think my passion stems from stumbling upon some quotes of his that spoke to me, and the fact that he resided for some time in Kentucky, where I was raised, at an abbey I visited once on a field trip. Anyway, I'm glad to have finally dipped my toe in his oeuvre - and I feel this was the perfect read for my present state of mind. This book is short but full of insight and meaning, and takes care to explain its various ideas thoughtfully and completely. The book is a comparison of Christian mysticism and Zen/Zen Buddhism, with additional chapters explaining different Zen concepts and a dialogue between Merton and Zen scholar Suzuki. For a person like me who grew up with Christian ideology and later explored Zen on my own, this book was kind of the perfect set-up to better understand Zen from a western mindset. Merton did an excellent job of balancing the two ideologies/ways of life and exploring the similarities and differences between the two, while remaining very respectful and humble from his own perspective. I felt this to be an extremely insightful and educational book, and it was exactly the kind of book and the kind of subject matter I was craving at this time. This is a great read for anyone interested in better understanding Zen, regardless of their interest in or familiarity with Christianity.
October 3, 2018
This is my second reading of Thomas Merton's "Zen and the Birds of Appetite". This book entails discussions comparing and contrasting insights of Christian Mysticism and Buddhism. Although perhaps difficult to the casual reader, the discussions are intriguing and are generally well explained. In their description of the "inner reality" or the direct confrontation with the "Absolute," "Being," or "Void," Christianity's explanation is theological and affective and through love. The individual is subject to a personal transcendent consciousness found and activated in Christ. In Buddhism, the explanation is metaphysical, intellectual through insight and emptiness. Buddhism takes emptying as a complete negation of personality whereas Christianity finds in "purity in heart and unity of spirit," a supreme transcendent fulfillment of personality. In other words, Christianity maybe seen as affective, personal, and dualistic whereas Buddhism maybe seen as non personal, non dualistic, non and non affective. This is a provocative book which gives excellent insight into the various interpretations of the experience of "Reality". I would highly recommend it.
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