The wisdom of Thomas Merton

I'm sharing some quotes by Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who spent a good portion of his life exploring world religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sufism. His wisdom is reflected in the quotes I have chosen to post today.

• A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
• When ambition ends, happiness begins.
• Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.
• Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
• We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
• Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
• We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
• Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
• We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.
• The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
• We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
• In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.
• If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
• To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
• The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

Some of my favorite spiritual writers

Faith and religion are two different things; the latter is an organized attempt to systematize and support the former, but it is my contention that a strong faith will outlast religion in the long run. My father had a strong faith in God, and fed it with spiritual literature, some of it by Catholic writers. He shared that interest with me, and I have read many of the books he recommended. Some of his favorite authors (and now mine) are Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Evelyn Waugh, C.S.Lewis, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Merton, and Willa Cather. He also was a fan of Graham Greene and G.K. Chesterton, but I have not read their books as of yet. All of the books I've read by these writers have left an indelible impression on me. They made me think and reflect on many of life's situations, problems and (often-tragic) outcomes. Not all of them are directly spiritual in tone (inspirational); some of them are heart-wrenching, others witty, still others poignant and spiritually-challenging. The books are all excellent in their own right, and worth reading.

Francois Mauriac's books:

• The Viper's Tangle
• The Desert of Love
• Therese
• A Woman of Pharisees

Georges Bernanos books:

• The Diary of a Country Priest

Evelyn Waugh's books:

• Brideshead Revisited
• A Handful of Dust

C.S. Lewis' books:

• The Screwtape Letters
• Mere Christianity
• A Grief Observed
• Surprised by Joy
• The Four Loves
• The Problem of Pain

Thomas Hardy's books:

• Jude the Obscure
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• The Return of the Native
• The Go-Between

Thomas Merton's books:

• No Man is an Island
• Thoughts in Solitude
• Wisdom of the Desert

Willa Cather's books:

• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• My Antonia