Notes From Thomas Merton's Asian Journal
In 1968 Thomas Merton went to Asia to explore Asain culture aand spirituality and to find a Buddhist Teacher to study and practice with. The paragraph below is an exerpt from the final talk he gave on the day of his his unexpected death in Bangkok on December 10th 1968.
"I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own traditions, because they have gone, from the natural point of view, so much
deeper in this than we have. The combination of the natural techniques and the graces and the other things that have been manifested in Asia and the Christian liberty of the gospel should bring us all at last to that full and independent liberty which is beyond mere cultural differences and mere externals – and mere this and that."
In 1968 Thomas Merton went to Asia to explore Asain culture aand spirituality and to find a Buddhist Teacher to study and practice with. The paragraph below is an exerpt from the final talk he gave on the day of his his unexpected death in Bangkok on December 10th 1968.
"I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism, and to these great Asian traditions, we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own traditions, because they have gone, from the natural point of view, so much
deeper in this than we have. The combination of the natural techniques and the graces and the other things that have been manifested in Asia and the Christian liberty of the gospel should bring us all at last to that full and independent liberty which is beyond mere cultural differences and mere externals – and mere this and that."