Thomas Merton And Mahatma Gandhi Essay Research

Thomas Merton And Mahatma Gandhi Essay, Research Paper

Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi both speak of God in a personal way. They both

speak of God as truth. Famous Thomas Merton, Trappist American monk, was a

traditional Christian. Born in France in 1915 and died in Asia in 1968 Merton

was greatly influenced by the complexities of the twentieth century. His

writings served as a personal may in his search for God.. He pursued the

ascending path towards the eternal kingdom of truth, towards heaven, while

leaving the world of shadowy existence behind. Truth would be a passion of his

life. He also took it upon himself to speak on behalf of the disenfranchised of

the word. Thomas Merton was a dynamic, modern man who committed himself to a

lifelong search for a meaningful and authentic way of life. He had only one

desire and that was the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be

submerged in his peace, to be lost in the secret of his face. This singular

passion and boundless energy led him to combine in one life a unique variety of

roles, prolific spiritual writer and poet, monk and hermit, social activist, all

while living at the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. Merton, a monk

under a vow of silence, found fame by not seeking it, by speaking the truth.

Much can be said with the praise .the truth will set your free. Merton

provided a path that is still setting people free. Freedom from silence. Many

feel that a monastery is a sanctuary to escape from the realities of the real

world. Merton saw it as helping rescue the world from the new dark ages. .In

the night of our technological barbarism, monks must be as trees which exist

silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air.. Some believe

Merton.s world was the monastery grounds, the whole world was. He believed

that all men and women are to be seen and treated as Christ. Failure to do this,

involves condemnation for disloyalty to the most fundamental of revealed truths.

Encounters with Christ must be followed by the encounters and both must be

experienced with the same love. It.s a love that frees, not a love that wants

to possess or manipulate. The great Indian teacher, Mahatma Gandhi, philosophy

was very similar. Merton loved people, but he also loved nature. He told us to

begin .by learning how to see and respect the visible creation which mirrors

the glory and the perfection of the invisible God.. Everything that surrounds

us, the trees, the ocean, the waves, the sky, the sun, the birds, it is in all

this that we will find our answers. God is omnipresent; we do not see this

because we are not contemplative. Merton believed a Christian society is one in

which men give their share of labor and intelligence and in return receive their

share of the fruits of the labor, which is seen in the Kingdom of God, a society

centered upon the divine truth and the divine mercy. In such a society the

prophetic role of the monk would be fulfilled, in the sense that his

renunciation of the right of ownership was an affirmation of God.s ownership

of everything and of man.s right to be a possessor only in so far as he was

willing to share with others what he did not need. Merton did not feel impelled

to become involved in political deeds. He believed the monk.s duty was to

cultivate consciousness and awareness however, truth and God demanded he speak

out loudly and often against all forms of war. He stated that the Vietnam war

was an example of Americans seeing their country as the center of the world,

imposing their will, in the name of freedom, on weaker nations that might stand

in their way. It was a needless destruction of human life, a rape of a culture

which could only lead to the death of the spirit of an exhausted people. He saw

men striving to negotiate for peace, and failing because their fear overbalanced

their true good will. .The root of all war is fear.. He taught that we must

fearlessly love even the men we cannot trust, for the enemy was war itself, and

peace could not be brought about by hatred. .Peace does not consist in one

man, one party, one nation, crushing and dominating everyone else. Peace exists

where men who have the power to be enemies are, instead, friends by reason of

the sacrifices that they have made in order to meet one another on a higher

level, where the differences between them are no longer a source of conflict. By

such reasoning, Merton brought himself very near to Gandhi.s position on war

as well as that of the struggle for civil rights. He saw nonviolence as not

merely the only just means but also the only practicable one of resisting evil

and injustice. Merton believed the Gandhian teachings on civil disobedience were

of urgent importance to the world and especially to Americians. The Christian

does not need to fight and indeed it is better that he should not fight, for

in

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