Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs's Reviews > Zen and the Birds of Appetite

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.