9 Teo Savory was a poet and editor of Unicorn Press. first in Santa Barbara and later Greensboro, North Carolina. “The Cross Fighters” was later included in the collection Isbi Means Man.
10 Faith and Violence was a paperback volume published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1968 while Merton was still committed to Farrar, Straus & Giroux for prose works. Only through Naomi Burton’s timely intervention was the situation rectified.
11 Merton is here referring to a Pastoral Letter published by the United States Bishops in November 1967 titled, “The Church in Our Day.”
13 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884–1942), the Polish anthropologist, was born in Kraków and taught in Poland, England, and the United States. He lectured at Yale University from 1939 until the time of his death in 1942.
14 Zen and the Birds of Appetite, published in 1968.
15 See The Theology of Proclamation by Hugo Rahner, S.J., translated from the German, Eine Theologie der Verkundigung, by Richard Dimmler, S.J., William Dych, S.J., Joseph Halpin, S.J., and Clement Petrick, S.J., (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968).
16 Thomas J. J. Altizer’s The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake was published by Michigan State University Press (Ann Arbor) in 1967. Merton wrote a review article that appeared in the Sewanee Review 76 (Autumn 1968) and was later included in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, edited by Patrick Hart (New York: New Directions, 1982).
17 John Howard Griffin’s loaned camera was taken by Thomas Merton on his Asian journey and was returned to Gethsemani with his personal effects.
18 Quoted from The Rule of Saint Benedict, with an introduction, a new translation of the Rule, and a commentary, all reviewed in the light of earlier monasticism by Reverend Basilius Steidle, a Benedictine monk of the Archabbey of Beuron (Canon City, CO: Holy Cross Abbey, 1967). See chap. 52.1.
1 The Astavakra Gita, or Samhita, is a dialogue between Astavakra, the Hindu sage to whom the text is ascribed, and his disciple, Janaka.
2 Alexander Yelchaninov (1881 1934) was a Russian priest and teacher.
3 Merton’s reference to Descartes comes from Georges Poulet, Studies in Human Time (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), 50–72.
4 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–69) was a French essayist, poet, critic, journalist, professor, senator, and novelist. See his Port Royal (Paris: Gallimard, 1961).
5 Blaise Pascal (1623 62) was a child prodigy in mathematics and physics. From 1654 on, residing within the cloister of Port Royal, he concentrated on spiritual pursuits. His most famous literary works are the Pensées and Provincial Letters. The quotes here are from Poulet, Studies in Human Time, 74–95.
6 On March 21, 1968, me New York Times reponed that “about 5,000 sheep have been struck down by some mysterious killing agent….Suspicion was pointed tonight at nerve gas being tested at me Army’s Dugway Proving Ground [Utah].” The Army refused to comment on me incident. Two days later Dr. D. A. Osguthorpe, head of a special investigating team, said, “We are as positive as medical science can ever be” that nerve gas from tests conducted by the Army had killed 6,400 sheep in western Utah’s Skull Valley.
7 Alfred Stern, Sartre, His Philosophy and Existential Psychoanalysis (New York: Dell, 1967). Merton’s opening sentence is an exact quote: “Each philosopher can only give the truth of his existence.” The rest of the quote is either Merton’s own journal writing or from another, unknown source.
8 The Unamuno quotation is from Stern’s Sartre Merton inserted the words “whole” and “in” in the last sentence. Stern lists both the Spanish original of Miguel de Unamuno’s Del Sentimiento trogico de la Vida (Madrid, 1913; New York, 1959) and the American edition, The Tragic Sense of Life (New York: Dover Publications, 1954) as his sources.
9 “The Wild Places,” Center Magazine (Santa Barbara, CA: Fund for the Republic) (July 1968): 40–44.
4 The Dalai Lama, presently in exile in India, is now only the spiritual head of the Tibetan Buddhist church, bur prior to the Communist Chinese takeover of his country, he was also its temporal ruler, with his seat in the Potala. a great palace in Lhasa.
5 Harold Talbott is an American student of Buddhism who became a Catholic in his first year at Harvard (1959). He was baptized while making a retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he went to receive Merton’s blessing. He was later a friend and student of Dom Aelred Graham, who urged Merton to look up Talbott on his Asian journey. Talbott in turn arranged for Merton’s meetings with the Dalai Lama.
6 Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the eleventh Trungpa tulku. The story of his youth and escape from Tibet after the Chinese Communist incursion “as told to” Esme Cramer Roberts, Born in Tibet, was published by Harcourt Brace in 1968.
7 Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poems (New York: Vintage Books), 40–41. This is an excerpt from “The Torch-Bearer’s Race,” written in 1928, which several times refers to the “hawk’s dream,” after which Merton titled this part of the journals.
1 Bardo Thödöl: The Tibetan Book of the Dead; or, the After-Death Experinces on the Bardo Plane, According to Lama Kazi Dawa-Sandup’s English Rendering
, compiled and edited by Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). The Tibetan Book of Dead describes the assistance of guiding the departed toward a higher rebirth.
2 This passage is excerpted and paraphrased from p. 104 of Evans-Wentz’s Bardo Thodol and the quotes that appear on the following pages of the journal are from the same source.
3 Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller. A Private Correspondence, ed. George Wilkes (New York: Dutton, 1963).
4 Rev. Segundo Llurente, S.J., a priest of Cordova, Alaska, was one of Merton’s hosts.
5 George Corley Wallace was governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1966 and 1971 to 1979 and was a candidate for president in 1968 on the American Independent Party ticket. His running mate, General Curtis LeMay (mentioned later in this poem), was Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, from 1961 to 1964. He opposed the bombing halt and urged maintenance of military strength and position in Vietnam. He was in Alaska on his way to Vietnam at this time.
6 Nicholas Joseph Begich (1931–1971) was Superintendent of Schools, Fort Richardson, Alaska, from 1963 to 1968, a member of the Alaska Senate from 1963 to 1971, and U.S. Congressman from Alaska from 1971 until his death in 1972.
7 Rama Krishna, or Ramakrishna Parahamsa (1834–1886), a Hindu ascetic and mystic, was open to other forms of religious expression. He meditated for a time as a Christian and as a Muslim, reaching the conclusion that “all religions are one.” His disciples introduced a new element of social service into Hinduism.
8 Merton was reading and quoting from Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), À I’lmage et à la Ressemblance de Dieu (Paris: Aubion-Montaigne, 1967). Cf. p. 83.
9 Suzanne Butorovich was one of Merton’s young correspondents; in their letters they discussed Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the hippie movement. For Merton’s letters to her, see the second volume of the letters, The Road to Joy: Thomas Merton’s Letters to New and Old Friends (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989), 308–14
10 Most Rev. Dermot O’Flanagan (1887–1973) was Bishop of Juneau from 1951 to 1968. Apparently he had just retired, and the bishop’s house was vacant at the time.
11 Ernest Groening (1887–1974) was governor of Alaska Territory from 1939 to 1953 and then senator from Alaska from 1959 to 1969.
12 Monsignor James I. Manske was at this time vicar general of the diocese of Juneau in Alaska.
13 The article referred to was titled “Non-violence Does Not—Cannot—Mean Passivity,” which first appeared in Ave Maria (Notre Dame) on September 7, 1968. It was later included as “Note for Ave Maria” in Thomas Merton on Peace, edited by Gordon Zahn (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 231–33.
14 This is taken from Hermann Hesse’s The Journey to the East, translated from the German by Hilda Rosner (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961), 24.
15 Paul Frederick Bowles (1910–
) is an American writer, poet, novelist, translator, and composer living in Tangier, Morocco. It is not certain which book of Bowles’s Merton was reading at the time, since it was not returned to Gethsemani with the rest of Merton’s personal effects at the time of his death.
16 Abbot Hugh McKiernan had been superior of the Trappist Monastery of Holy Cross. Berryville. Virginia, prior to this meeting. He was currently chaplain to the IHM Sisters in Santa Barbara.
1 It appears that Merton was reading Ramanuja et la mystique vishnouite by Anne-Marie Esnoul (paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964) on the airplane between San Francisco and Hawaii. In this volume he found quoted some unpublished French translations by J. Filliozat of devotional hymns written by the ninth-century Tamil poet Periyalvar. Using the parodistic technique he had developed several years earlier for his last major poetic work, The Geography of Lograire he composed this and the following poem, which are partly Merton’s translation of Periyalvar’s text and partly his own interjections of images drawn from his immediate experience.
2 The Tamils are now the predominant branch of the Dravidian race of South India. Many of them also migrated to Ceylon and other countries of Southeast Asia. Their literature is the richest among those of the Dravidian languages.
3 Ramanuja, an eleventh-century Tamil religious leader, was instrumental in putting the Vaishnavite school of Hinduism on a solid philosophical basis as a qualified monism based on the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutra; it considers the individual soul an attribute of the supreme soul, but separate from it.
4 Vishnu is one of the major triad (Vishnu—Shiva—Brahma) of gods in Hinduism. His devotees are Vaishnavites.
5 Siddhartha Gautama (Sanskrit) is the personal given name of the Buddha. Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, however, relates the life of one of the Buddha’s earliest disciples.
6 Wat Bovoranives is one of the traditional Buddhist temples of Bangkok.
7 Klong means “canal.” The chief market of Bangkok is an area of canals running into the Chao Phya River; the shops, which are also the owners’ homes, are built on stilts to keep them above the daily tides and yearly floods.
8 Sariputra was a wandering, mendicant ascetic of the brahmanical tradition who encountered the Buddha at Rajagaha and became one of his first converts and most important disciples.
9 While the Venerable Nanasampanno’s essay may exist as a separate pamphlet in the Thai language, it appears almost certain that the text Merton read was the English translation by Bhikkhu Pannavaddho of Wat Pa-barn-tard, which appeared in the May 1967 issue of the magazine Visakha Puja.
10 Borobudnur, near Jogjakarta in Java, was built about A.D. 850 under the dynasty of the Saliendra kings and is said to be the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It was partially destroyed by the Muslims but later restored by the Dutch.
11 Masao Abe on the concept of reality in Zen, as quoted in Aelred Graham’s Conversations: Christian and Buddhist (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968), 129. Masao Abe specializes in Buddhist philosophy and comparative religion and has several times been visiting lecturer at Columbia University.
13 Finley Peter Dunne, Jr., was executive director of the Temple of Understanding in Washington, which sponsored the Spiritual Summit Conference in Calcutta in October 1968, at which Merton spoke on “Monastic Experience and East-West Dialogue.”
14 The “Dance of Shiva” is perhaps the best-known iconographic figure in Hindu religious art. Showing the four-armed god dancing in a circle or arch of flames, it symbolizes the perpetual dualistic creation-destruction rhythm of the universe.
15 The term “whispered transmission” refers to the most vital aspect oforal tradition, the handing down of certain elements of doctrine from master to pupil. Every school of Tibetan Buddhism inherited it in varying degrees.
16 This quotation and the next are from Reverend Kaneko, as quoted in Aelred Graham’s Conversations. Reverend Kaneko is a priest and scholar associated with the Higashi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan, headquarters of the Jodo-Shin-Shu, or (True) Pure Land school of Buddhism, an offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism.
17 Gupta was a powerful dynasty, the dominant force in North India from about A.D. 320 to 480, when the Guptas were defeated by the invading White Huns, though there were Gupta kings ruling in eastern India until the early eighth century.
18 Mrs. Lois Flanagan was Information Center Director of the U.S. Consulate in Calcutta in 1968. Poet, translator, and teacher, P. Lal was professor of English at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta in 1968. He was also Special Professor of Indian Literature, History and Religion at Hofstra University in 1962 and in 1970.
19 The Mahabharata is one of the two great Sanskrit epics of India (the other being the Ramayana), which dates probably from the centuries just preceding the Christian era. Although there is a fictitious attribution to Vyasa as the author, the poem is surely anonymous or, rather, the cumulative accretion of the work of many bards in the oral tradition over a considerable period of time.
20 Jamini Roy (1887–1972) was introduced to Thomas Merton by Amiya Chakravarty. One of Roy’s paintings of the crucifixion was purchased and delivered to Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey in northern California by Chakravarty following Merton’s death.
21 The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic consisting of twenty-four thousand couplets that recounts the adventures of Rama, a human incarnation of the god Vishnu; his winning of Sita, paragon of womanly virtue, as his wife; her abduction by the demon king of Ceylon, Ravana; her rescue by Rama, aided by the monkey hordes of the god Hanuman; and the final arrival of Rama and Sita in heaven.
22 Dr. Wei Tat is a member of the Yuen Yuen Institute and vice president both of the Tao Teh Benevolent Association and the Dharmalaksana Buddhist Institute in Hong Kong. He is an academician of the China Academy in Taiwan.
23 Dr. Ezra Spicehandler was professor of Hebrew literature at the Cincinnati School of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and director of Jewish studies at the Hebrew Union College Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem.
24 Mrs. Dickerman Hollister of Greenwich, Connecticut, founded in 1960 the Temple of Understanding, Inc., in Washington, an international organization devoted to better understanding and cooperation among the religions and religious people of the world. She was president of the organization at the time of the 1968 First Spiritual Summit Conference in Calcutta.
25 Munishri Chitrabhanu is one of the great contemporary leaders of Jainism, the heterodox Hindu religion founded by Mahavira Jnatiputra in about the sixth century B.C. Respect for the life of every living thing, even insects, is one of the central tenets of the Jain faith.
26 Huston Smith is a former professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The World’s Religions, originally published as The Religions of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). His documentary film on Tibetan Buddhism, Requiem for a Faith, may be rented from Hartley Productions, Cat Rock Road, Cos Cob, CT 06807.
27 This homily was published in the April 1970 issue of the magazine Sisters Today (Collegeville, MN), vol. 41, no. 8.
28 Sankaracharya. one of the most important Hindu theologians, lived in India in the eighth century A.D. He wrote commentaries on the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and was the founder of the Advaita Vedanta doctrine of nondualism. His best-known work is The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, available in several translations, including the version translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press, 1947), from which the following quotes are taken.
29 Robert J. Boylan was at this time Cultural Affairs Officer with the U.S. Information Service in Calcutta.
30 This and the following paragraphs appear to be drawn from either billboards or religious cult pamphlets that Merton saw in Calcutta.
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