Dancing in the Water of Life

by Thomas Merton

  Reading the little book on Eberhard Arnold on the Bruderhof [Emmy Arnold, Torches Together: The Beginning and Early Years of the Bruderhof Communities, 1964]. I think this (from his statement on his fiftieth birthday) applies well enough to be almost a word of God to me. “Let us pledge to him that all our own power will remain dismantled and will keep on being dismantled among us. Let us pledge that the only thing that will count among us will be the power and authority of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit; that it will never again be us that count but that God above will rule and govern in Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

  June 12, 1964

  Full summer heat. Blazing and stifling. Not cool anywhere, either at hermitage or in monastery. (The novitiate generally gets a cool breeze from the forest, to the N.W.)

  A busy week. I finished the rewriting I was asked to for the peace section of Seeds of Destruction. Two new poems also.

  After writing the above about travel–by surprise I got a letter Wednesday from Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s secretary saying Suzuki was going to be in New York this month, could definitely not come here, but really wanted to meet me: so could I come there? I thought about it and since it is probably the only chance I will ever have to speak to him, I thought it important enough to ask Dom James’ permission. I certainly did not think he would give it, but, somewhat reluctantly, he did, and a flight is booked for me next Monday 15th. Since this decision has been reached I am upset and distracted, certainly without much real joy at the thought of seeing Suzuki. I can think of nowhere I would less rather go than New York. I am to stay on the Columbia campus or at any rate uptown, out of the midtown section where I would meet friends, and that is all right.

  The only way I can stomach the whole idea is that I think, in good faith, it was God’s will for me to ask, and for some reason I should go, not only for my own benefit. I am not supposed to understand, but have to trust. There is more here than I know. I see how much I am attached to this place, these woods, this silence. That is as it should be. And if I am to be shaken up a bit, shaken “loose,” that is good also.

  June 13, 1964

  Rain in the night, at bedtime. Rain this morning during my early Mass, Mass of Our Lady. At the last Gospel I could see the blue vineyard knob in the grey west with a scapular of mist on it, and then during thanksgiving those other knobs, the pointed one, the woods, of which I never tire. Is it really true that I have no “place”? The little poplar tree I planted on the west side of the chapel in 1957 or 58 is now up to the second floor windows, and I saw great drops of rain sitting on the fat leaves after the rain had stopped.

  Where will I say Mass in New York? Corpus Christi probably. Last night I dreamt I had found a clean, cool convent of nuns on West 114th, near where I used to have my room. I seem to think less about Suzuki than about a million trifles: will I get to the Guggenheim museum: will I find all the Klees in the Guggenheim museum? Will I find Rajput painting and Zen drawings in the Metropolitan, and will I perhaps slyly get to some concert?

  PART II

  The Suzuki Visit

  June 1964

  June 15, 1964

  All shaved and ready to go after I get Father Abbot’s blessing and some money. But I can’t say I look forward to the trip with pleasure or with joy. I have thought of all kinds of things that could be unpleasant (boring and talkative neighbor on the plane) and the mere thought of New York gives me stomach spasms. Seeing Suzuki is important, and this is in the hands of God.

  Apart from this, New York is in a ferment with the race trouble, and I may witness a little of it, who knows? Columbia is right over Harlem. There has been violence on a small scale all around Harlem and near it. What can one do or think in the presence of blind and irrational forces, which are so inevitable and so understandable? Causes have effects, and the effects are long overdue. What else can one expect? If only people knew what to do. No one really does. Legislation is far behind the needs. If by chance I were to suffer something in and for this critical need, at least that might be offered. Suffering and silence are perhaps the greatest values–provided one has not hesitated to speak, even though uselessly, when speaking was demanded.

  However, I have no intention of looking for trouble. I have one job to do: to see Suzuki and try if possible to keep my presence in New York unknown. And then perhaps to look up a few things in the libraries.

  June 16, 1964

  Extraordinary climb and lift of the jet (my first time on one) straight up into the clouds like a huge projectile, leaving over Louisville and the river, out of the dirty mist lying on the valley like a scum of water, fairly large wave of cumuli rising here and there out of the scum like something in a fair or dream.

  After Columbus (long stay during which I read a John Cheever story in the New Yorker) terrific climb to get over storms, and then the usual thing, as soon as you are 35,000 feet on top of piles of bright cloud in the absolutely pure sky, the girls start bringing you shrimps. Extraordinary–when the girl came to ask my destination, and when New York came out as the most obvious and natural thing in the world, I suddenly realized after all that I was a New Yorker–and when people had asked my destination in the past, it was New York, to which I was coming back.

  Actually I thought I was going to hate the trip–but I loved it, and as Sandy Hook came in sight I knew what it was, immediately. Then the long string of beaches on the Jersey shore, and the twinkling water with boats in it, and dark brown hot Brooklyn and Manhattan over there. Idlewild, Kennedy Airport, enormous rumble of trucks and buildings, a vast congeries of airports, and then in the American Airlines Building fantastic beings, lovely humans, assured yet resigned, some extraordinarily beautiful, all mature and sophisticated actual people, with whom I was in a profound rapport of warmth and recognition–these are my people for God’s sake! I had forgotten–the tone of voice, the awareness, the weariness, the readiness to keep standing, an amazing existence, the realization of the fallible condition of man, and of the fantastic complexity of modern life.

  I loved being here, seeing familiar houses and places and unfamiliar huge apartments yet knowing where I was (Forest Hills, e.g.). Then sure enough the Fair, preposterous, just like the old one but tamer, no tower and ball, but the same place, same Jewish cemetery that I used to look at with river-dazed eyes. I tried to pick out Hillside Avenue (Elder Avenue) or whatever the street was where I lived forty years ago.

  Morning of the 16th bright clear sky and wind on Broadway, noble and vast with lots of new trees. Mass at Corpus Christi all by myself at Our Lady’s altar before that lovely Italian Medieval triptych-no word for it. Fortunately the priest whose alb I had grabbed and who was to say the 8 o’clock mass was late. Good morning in the library. Read the Teaching of Maelruain (Rule of Tallaght) and some Irish poems. On FM in the afternoon Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto and a lot of the new jazz. Van Gogh exhibition at the Guggenheim. Some of his last things most moving, the vast open sky over a field, a tree full of black calligraphy with a wonderful saffron light around it and dark world. The Chateau of Anvier. I had never seen this. One of his greatest. Also the yellow house at Arles and self-portraits (better ones here).

  My room in Butler Hall [at Columbia University] looks out over Harlem. Out of Harlem–the noise of traffic and the uninterrupted cries of playing children, cries of life and joy coming out of purgatory, loud and strong the voice of a great living organism. Shots too–and there is no rifle range! Frequent shots–at what? More frequent than in the Kentucky woods behind the hermitage in hunting season. And drums, bongos, and the chanting of songs, and dogs barking and traffic, buses like jet planes. Above all the morning light, then the afternoon light, and the flashing windows of the big new housing developments.

  The campus is better, the old south field track is gone, dorms there now (the sundial is gone), flashy new buildings and lots of foreign students.

  About Suzuki later. How impressive and what a warm and charming visit today! The tea, the joy.

&nb
sp; [June 17, 1964]

  Suzuki and his secretary Mihoko Okamura. This a.m. he was reading from the Blue Cliff Collection. How he liked the bits from Fernando Pessoa I read to him! His most enthusiastic response.

  Yesterday–a little (very informal) tea ceremony–I liked the tea very much. Suzuki says [Paul] Tillich likes the tea ceremony, says it clears the head, and won’t hear a word of [Meister] Eckhart, saying he is a heretic. That Zen is dying in Japan (and everywhere). On the poverty of translations of Zen texts into English.

  Yesterday–his talk with Heidegger. “Thought Heidegger understood.”

  We could not get anywhere definite on the idea of “person.” We are all different expressions (words) of the same emptiness (cf. Pessoa). Agreed on not encouraging novices to be “mystics.” Mihoko Okamura told me how happy Suzuki was to see me and to be understood, and it was worthwhile to have written so many books, etc. Most of the Zen stories he told me I had heard before except for Hakuin’s dream about his Mother and the mirrors. I asked him to write out the four ideographs of the tea ceremony. The thing he insisted on most–in Christianity and Buddhism–love more than enlightenment. He says he has written an essay on humor, based on Bespoir’s Le Rire, which he considers very important. How much he likes Chuang Tzu–“he best philosophy in Asia.”

  June 20, 1964

  The first thing about New York was that I was delighted to see it again, recognized Sandy Hook immediately from the air, and the new bridge over the Narrows. So much recognition, everywhere, right down to the two big gas tanks in Elmhurst, landmarks of all the family funerals, from mother, to Aunt Elizabeth, to Pop’s and Bonnemaman’s! When the plane took off from Louisville and was climbing up above the clouds, the hostess came and asked my destination. I said New York and as soon as I said that, there was a great joy in my heart because after all, I was going home!

  And staying in Butler Hall, on the thirteenth floor (I had 13A for two nights), watching sunset and sunrise over Harlem, and meditating, and looking out toward the Sound, when it was clear, and watching the red lights go on and off on top of the stacks of what must be the atomic reactor in Long Island City. There were shots in Harlem and I found out two gangs of Black Muslims were fighting. It was not at all secure and respectable around Butler Hall. There have been muggings and murders everywhere and the last day I was in New York a man was murdered in an elevator in an apartment house in the ‘90’s.

  Two good long talks with Suzuki. He is now ninety-four, bent, slow, deaf, but lively and very responsive. Much support from Mihoko Okamura, his secretary, very charming and lively. They were both extremely friendly. Apparently he had read several of my books, and it seems a lot of Zen people read The Ascent to Truth. That is somewhat consoling, though it is my wordiest and in some ways emptiest book. He was very pleased with the essay in Continuum,1 thought it one of the best things on Zen to have been written in the West. Mihoko made the green tea and whisked it up in the dark brown bowl and I drank it in three and a half sips as prescribed: but found it wonderful. (J. Laughlin had said it was awful.)

  So I sat with Suzuki on the sofa and we talked of all kinds of things to do with Zen and with life. He read to me from a Chinese text–familiar stories. I translated to him from Octavio Paz’s Spanish version of Fernando Pessoa. There were some things he liked immensely. (Especially “Praise be to God that I am not good!”–“That is so important,” said Suzuki with great feeling.) He likes Eckhart, as I already know from the book I got at the University of Kentucky several years ago. These talks were very pleasant, and profoundly important to me–to see and experience the fact that there really is a deep understanding between myself and this extraordinary and simple man whom I have been reading for about ten years with great attention. A sense of being “situated” in this world. This is a legitimate consideration, but must not be misunderstood. A story he told of Hakuin’s dream of his mother was new to me. The mother with two mirrors, one in each sleeve, the first one black, the second containing all things. Then on the first one Hakuin sees all things and Himself seeing them looking out.

  I tried to explain things that perhaps did not need explaining, and we both agreed on the need to steer clear of movements and to avoid promoting Zen or anything else. Mihoko seemed very eager about this too and obviously knows her Zen. I felt she and I were in close sympathy too, in fact I like her very much. For once in a long time felt as if I had spent a moment in my own family. The only other person with whom I have felt so at home in recent years is Victor Hammer. And Carolyn. It was rather like one of their visits. (I hear Victor is to have an operation for cataracts.)

  The evening before the flight home I moved downtown to a hotel close to the air terminal, listened to FM radio, went to La Moule for supper and had a very good one with a couple of glasses of wine and some Benedictine. That day, too, on the way down, saw the Van Gogh exhibit at the Guggenheim. The only thing I found really irrational about the place is that most of the pictures are not hung but in storage. Hence, no Klee, no Miró, etc. Alas.

  Coming home. Taking off over the Atlantic, clouds over New Jersey, read a bit of [Auguste] Jundt on LesAmis de Dieu [LesAmis de Dieu au quatorzième siècle, 1879] which I had borrowed from the Columbia Library. Looked at the long thin edges of the Appalachians in West Virginia, bounced through thunderstorms over Eastern Kentucky, and then came down to Louisville in rain and muggy heat and went to say Mass at Carmel.

  Perhaps Suzuki and Mihoko will come down to Gethsemani if they are in the U.S. next year. Suzuki said I must come to Japan–but I cannot. He said it with meaning, not in a polite formula. And I know I should go there. God will provide that just as He provided this extraordinary meeting.

  Said Mass two mornings entirely by myself, without servers, deeply moved, at the altar of Our Lady before which I made my profession of faith in Corpus Christi Church twenty-six years ago! No one recognized me or discovered who I was. At least I think not.

  PART III

  The Joy and Absurdity of Increasing Solitude

  June 1964–April 1965

  June 23, 1964

  Blazing hot, stuffy air, barely moved by a little breeze here in the woodshed. What a day it is going to be! Even the woods will be an airless furnace. It calls for one of those nature poems, a kerygma of heat such as the Celts never had. (Finished Kenneth Jackson’s excellent book on Early Celtic Nature Poetry before Prime as the fierce sun began to burn my field.)

  First real interest in the “Honest to God” question.1 Is it really so new? I think the problem is real enough and even one which Christianity has faced since the beginning. But the solution tends to be a debacle?? A complete surrender to nonsense and desperation and confusion. Is it really true that man is now totally and complacently content with modern technological culture as it is? Is there a great distance from Bonhoeffer’s acceptance to Eichmann’s acquiescence? Certainly! One must not stop at appearances and at a few texts out of context.

  June 26, 1964. Saints John and Paul

  Said a Mass for John Paul [Merton, his brother] and included Sartre in it. Cooler. Two great pigeons have set up shop in the rafters of the woodshed, and with gurgling and cooing and beating of wings make the place more delightful. This morning they were playing some kind of serious game, flying around the gutters and looking at me through cracks between the gutter and the roof.

  I finished the old Jundt book on Les Amis de Dieu which I borrowed from the Columbia Library. (Will not forget reading the chapter on the book of the mine rocks while flying over the Appalachians.) Must find out more about Rulman Merswin. This afternoon–wrote a note on Kabir [One Hundred Poems of Kabir, 1962] for the Collectanea [Cisterciensia].

  June 30, 1964

  Bob Giroux sent M. Serafian’s The Pilgrim. I have read about twenty-five pages of it and find it great. So much finer than X. Rynne’s gossip column. The most serious book about the Council I have read since Küng’s book (the one before the Council [The Council, Reform and Reunion, 1961]; I have not
read any others). Simply clarifies and confirms what is already obvious: the ghastly problem that all through the Church the “will of God” can and does resolve itself into “the will of an Italian Undersecretary in the Holy Office” and that in fact the conservative Vatican bureaucrats think they have the right to contradict the Pope himself–they are the ones who are infallible. Mystique of infallibility, conservatism, and power politics. This is leading to a colossal crisis in order and obedience throughout the Church. When will it really break? I don’t know. The risks are great, and the promises–no one knows. In any event something is going to happen.

  Curious similarities with the conservative pattern in the South–the defiance of law by those who are convinced that their own mystique of society is sacrosanct, leading to the collapse of law and to anarchy.

  How badly we need a real spirit of liberty in the Church, it is vitally necessary and the whole Church depends on it. Thank God “Serafian” has had the courage and good sense to admit and state frankly that so far the Council has dealt in relative trivialities! The problems that are largely irrelevant to the world at large, problems that are generated by gratuitously adopted and formalistic attitudes of the Church herself–incrustations of her own history. “The irrelevancy of the problems which Catholicism considers fundamental and over which it has consumed itself in two long, expensive sessions is an offshoot of the Church’s attitude to humanity.” Bull’s eye! He traces this to the inner contradiction in the Post-Constantinian Church between a mystique of virginity and flight from the world on one hand and the pragmatic worldliness and political orientation, identification of the Church with post-Roman civilization.