Poems in Interreligious Dialogue: Searching for God in the Poetry of Ku Sang and Thomas Merton

<p>Twentieth-century poets Ku Sang and Thomas Merton, two Catholic poets from Korea and America, respectively, were both aware of a space between themselves and God. Their poetry reveals attempts to go and find him. Because their searches for God entailed an interreligious nexus, insofar as their poetry blended Buddhist and Christian religious imagery, I utilise a comparative method, drawn from the field of Comparative Theology, which juxtaposes religious texts from differing faith traditions; I place Zen Buddhist kōans side-by-side with the Christian poems, each poem understood as representing a way to seek God. Moreover, I provide close readings of each poem and kōan, with critical commentary on the poems and interpretation of any new meaning revealed by the juxtaposition of texts. As a result of my examination, I propose that exploration of how these poets expressed their own understanding of God’s whereabouts, achieved by contact with poetic experience at the naked level of the poem, yields insight both into the two men’s unique contributions to broader knowledge of poets searching for God and how they were transformed for the sake of searching at all.</p>

Poems in Interreligious Dialogue: Searching for God in the Poetry of Ku Sang and Thomas Merton

<p>Twentieth-century poets Ku Sang and Thomas Merton, two Catholic poets from Korea and America, respectively, were both aware of a space between themselves and God. Their poetry reveals attempts to go and find him. Because their searches for God entailed an interreligious nexus, insofar as their poetry blended Buddhist and Christian religious imagery, I utilise a comparative method, drawn from the field of Comparative Theology, which juxtaposes religious texts from differing faith traditions; I place Zen Buddhist kōans side-by-side with the Christian poems, each poem understood as representing a way to seek God. Moreover, I provide close readings of each poem and kōan, with critical commentary on the poems and interpretation of any new meaning revealed by the juxtaposition of texts. As a result of my examination, I propose that exploration of how these poets expressed their own understanding of God’s whereabouts, achieved by contact with poetic experience at the naked level of the poem, yields insight both into the two men’s unique contributions to broader knowledge of poets searching for God and how they were transformed for the sake of searching at all.</p>

Faith and Reason in Thomas Merton: the “Unified Heart” – a Monk’s Solution?

"Fede e ragione in Thomas Merton: il “cuore unificato” – la soluzione di un monaco? L’articolo prende l’avvio da uno scambio di lettere tra il monaco americano Thomas Merton ed il filosofo francese Jacques Maritain sul rapporto fede-ragione. Dopo aver considerato l’approccio mertoniano, avvicinandolo ad una posizione simile riscontrata in un carteggio anteriore tra Jacques Maritain ed il Beato Vladimir Ghika (un altro corrispondente affiattato del filosofo francese), l’articolo prosegue suggerendo che per Merton il problema non consistette tanto nel conciliare i dati della scienza con i dogmi della fede, quanto nel raggiungere quell’ “unificazione del cuore” auspicata dal filosofo Martin Buber come il vero cammino dell’uomo. Parole-chiave: fede e ragione, Thomas Merton, Vladimir Ghika, Jacques Maritain, Martin Buber, hasidismo, neotomismo, monachesimo, intelligenza, intuizione"

The ‘New Monasticism’

The chapter provides a description and analysis of the contemporary phenomenon known as ‘new monasticism’. It examines key figures whose work influenced the rise and development of the movement (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, George MacLeod, Teilhard de Chardin, and Thomas Merton). It offers a typology of new monasticism (conceptual, classical, and contextual) based on the sources on which it draws. It describes the various experiments of monastic living that characterize the different approaches: conceptual (e.g. Rutba House, the Simple Way); classical (e.g. Monasteries of the Heart, Céli Dé); and contextual (e.g. Taizé, Focolare, mayBe, Kumla). And it examines how new monasticism can be situated—socially, culturally, and spiritually—in relation to other contemporary movements in spirituality and ‘lived religion’.

Face to Face: the Growth of the Self in Thomas Merton

The late Trappist monk and prolific author, Thomas Merton was intensely concerned with the self – or to be more precise, with a desire to break free from the tyranny of the self he took to be his identity. His early years in France and England were marked by a sense of loss and dislocation. After leaving Cambridge for Columbia, his subsequent life in America and decision to be baptised a Catholic at the age of 23 eventually led to his taking vows as a Cistercian monk. Given the name Frater Louis, the ‘world’ with all its temptations and unresolved issues had been left safely behind along with his old identity. Or so he thought. In fact, Merton’s years as a Trappist would lead to a best-selling autobiography written under obedience to his abbot with many more books to follow. Compared at the time of its publication to St Augustine’s Confessions, it would lead to his international renown as Thomas Merton. He voiced his disquiet over what he called ‘this shadow, this double, this writer who […] followed me into the cloister … I cannot lose him.’ In time, Merton came to the realisation through lived experience and his voracious reading of the Bible, St Augustine, the mystics, the individuation process propounded by Jung, Zen Buddhism and others that the ‘self’ he was trying to escape was, in fact, largely a ‘false’ self driven by the ego. This paper traces Merton’s journey from the that self to the authentic self which is found in God, in transcendence. Obsession with ‘the self’ as understood in the 21st century makes a study of Merton’s path to selfhood that much more vital. The advent of the ‘Selfie’, the self-promotion that social media affords and the examples of narcissistic individuals in positions of power gives the lie to lives where self-consciousness is confused with self-realisation. Nothing, as Merton discovered, could be further from the truth.