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Thomas Merton and Spiritual Maturity By Jonathan Montaldo At the same time I should like to emphasize that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learned is never to think for myself; I fully agree with André Gide that “Toutes choses sont dites déjà,” and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the “inferior philosophers.” Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a “common universe of discourse” transcending the differences of tongues. Ananda Coomaraswamy1 On January 13, 1961, Thomas Merton wrote a letter to the widow of Ananda Coomaraswamy, the art historian and philosopher of the perennial tradition in the world’s religions. As Merton voiced his understanding of her husband’s vocation to Doña Luisa, he was consciously aligning his own vocation with that of Coomaraswamy. He was acknowledging his own desires to be a scholar and contemplative of humankind’s original unity and his inner struggle, like Coomaraswamy’s before him, to become a peacemaker. “First of all,” Merton wrote to Doña Luisa, Ananda Coomaraswamy is in many ways to me a model: the model of one who has thoroughly and completely united in himself the spiritual tradition and attitudes of the Orient and of the Christian West, not excluding also something of Islam, I believe. This kind of comprehension is, it seems to me, quite obligatory for the contemplative of our day, at least if he is in any sense also a scholar. I believe that the only really valid thing that can be accomplished in the direction of world peace and unity at the moment is the preparation of the way by the formation of men who, isolated, perhaps not accepted or understood by any “movement,” are able to unite in themselves and experience in their own lives all that is best and most true in the various great spiritual traditions. Such men can become as it were “sacraments” or signs of peace, at last. They can do much to open up the minds of their contemporaries to receive, in the future, new seeds of thought. Our task is one of very remote Jonathan Montaldo is a former president of the International Thomas Merton Society and former director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY. He has edited numerous volumes of Merton’s writings, including Entering the Silence, the second volume of Merton’s complete journals, and (with Patrick Hart, OCSO) The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals.
Merton Seasonal Spring 2013.indd 17
Jonathan Montaldo
3/25/13 12:49 PM