In the mystical tradition the "dark," or apophatic way has a long history. It is the way of John of the Cross, of Master Eckhart, of Juliana of Norwich, of the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and of Thomas Merton. This dark path of contemplation that Merton followed, wrote about extensively, and considered the focal point of his life is the subject of William H. Shannon's book.

Includes excerpts from "Seven storey mountain", "Conjectures of a guilty bystander" and many other works including a chronology of Merton's life.

The author of The Seven Storey Mountain explores the mysticism of Saint John of the Cross. The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution. . . . The desire for unworldliness, detachment, and union with God is the most fundamental expression of this revolutionary spirit. In Ascent to Truth, author and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton makes an impassioned case for the importance of contemplation. Drawing on a range of thinkers—from Carl Jung to Pope Pius XII—Merton defines the nature of contemplative experience and shows how the Christian mysticism of sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite Saint John of the Cross offers essential answers to our disquieting and troubling times. “For any who have the desire to look into meditation and contemplation . . . this is the book for which they have waited.” —New York Herald Tribune Book Review “For those who may be curious about mysticism, and for those who may be called to a life of contemplation, this is an excellent book.” —Catholic World

A collection of thirty-nine short essays in which Thomas Merton examines what true contemplation is and how it can impact one's spirituality.

What if we truly belong to each other? What if we are all walking around shining like the sun? Mystic, monk, and activist Thomas Merton asked those questions in the twentieth century. Writer Sophfronia Scott is asking them today. In The Seeker and the Monk, Scott mines the extensive private journals of one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past for guidance on how to live in these fraught times. As a Black woman who is not Catholic, Scott both learns from and pushes back against Merton, holding spirited, and intimate conversations on race, ambition, faith, activism, nature, prayer, friendship, and love. She asks: What is the connection between contemplation and action? Is there ever such a thing as a wrong answer to a spiritual question? How do we care about the brutality in the world while not becoming overwhelmed by it? By engaging in this lively discourse, readers will gain a steady sense of how to dwell more deeply within--and even to love--this despairing and radiant world.

This unique reflection was prompted by an invitation Matthew Fox received to speak on the centennial of Thomas Merton’s birth. Fox says that much of the trouble he’s gotten into — such as being excommunicated in 1993 from the Dominican Order by Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) — was because of Thomas Merton, who sent Fox to Paris to complete a doctoral program in philosophy. Fox found that Merton’s journals, poetry, and religious writings revealed a deeply ecumenical philosophy and a contemplative life experience similar to that of Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century mystic/theologian who inspired Fox’s own “creation spirituality.” It is little surprise to find Fox and Merton to be kindred spirits, but the intersections Fox finds with Eckhart are intellectually profound, spiritually enlightening, and delightfully engaging.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Roman Catholic priest, a Trappist monk, a social activist, and a poet. Author of the celebrated autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton has been described as the most important American religious writer of the past hundred years. One of the notable characteristics of Merton's writing, both in poetry and in prose, was his seamless intermingling of religious and Romantic elements, an intermingling that, because of his gifts as a writer and because of his enormous influence, has had the effect of making widespread a distinctive form of religious thought and expression. In Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination, Ross Labrie reveals the breadth of Merton's intellectual reach by taking an original and systematic look at Merton's thought, which is generally regarded as eclectic and unsystematic.

A great introduction to the religions of the East by a monk from the West. Merton’s biographer, George Woodcock, once wrote that “almost from the beginning of his monastic career, Thomas Merton tentatively began to discover the great Asian religions of Buddhism and Taoism.” Merton, a longtime social justice advocate, first approached Eastern theology as an admirer of Gandhi’s beliefs on non-violence. Through Gandhi, Merton came to know the great Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita and in time came to have dialogues with the Dalai Lama and Taoist leader D. T. Suzuki. Merton then became deeply interested in Chuang Tzu and Zen thought. On Eastern Meditation, edited by Bonnie Thurston (author of Merton and Buddhism), gathers the best of his Eastern theological writings into a gorgeously designed gift book edition.

This paperbook collection of his prose writings reveals the extent to which Thomas Merton moved from the other-worldly devotion of his earlier work to a direct, deeply engaged, often militant concern with the critical situation of man in the world.