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Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk and creator, innate within Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales département of France. Merton wrote supplementary than Fifty books, 2000 verse form, & the infinite total of essays, reviews, & lectures that st& been recorded and published.

Merton was educated in the United States & France prior to attending Oakham School in England. His father was an creative person from either New Zealand and his mother was from a United States. His mother died once he was 6 & his father once he was 16. When the fateful number one month at Cambridge University, during which period he fathered an love child, Merton moved to the United States to accept his grandparents. He proceeded to choose his bachelor's & master's degrees at Columbia University in New York City, where he mass produced the acquaintance of a class action of creative person & writers world health organization would remain his friends for life.

Merton converted to Catholicism in his early twenties during a time he was writing his master's thesis in William Blake. His want to enter a Franciscans being thwarted, he taught at St. Bonaventure's College, in Olean, New York and, following a retreat at the Trappist (Cistercian of the Strict Observance) Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky during Easter 1941, he came to a crisis with call up looming and was finally accepted as a choir novice (with the intention of becoming a priest) at Gethsemani on December 10th, 1941.

When you took his hanker years at Gethsemani (in which he was encouraged to write) Merton changed from either a passionately inward-searching immature monk of his best known book, a autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, to a musing writer & poet world health organizatiin became swell known for his dialogue by owning more faiths & his could have on non-nonviolent resistance in a period of the race riots and Vietnam War of the 1960s, and eventually achieved the solitude he got hanker desired around a hermitage in 1965. When you took these years he got numbers of battles sustaining his abbot about not existence allowed away from a monastery, balanced by his international reputation & vast correspondence using numerous easily-known numbers of the day.

the newly archimandrite allowed him the freedom to undertake a tour of Asia at the prevent of 1968, during which he unforgettably met a Dalai Lama in India. He besides manufactured the visit to Polonnaruwa (in what was so Ceylon), where he experienced the religious personal experience when viewing tremendous statues of the Buddha. There exists speculation that Merton wished to remaaround in Asia as a hermit. Nonetheless, he died around Bangkok on 10th December 1968, having touched the badly-grounded electric fan when stepping away from his bath. His system was flown back to Gethsemani in which he is buried. Since his demise, his influence has continued to develop & he is considered by several to exist as the twentieth century American mystic.

Mertin put the ban on publishing lot of his act until Twenty-five years fallowing his dying. Fallowing that period his diaries were published.

Around recognition of his close association sustaining Bellarmine University, the official repository for Merton's archives is the Thomas Merton Center on the Bellarmine campus around Louisville, Kentucky.

Selected Bibliography

The Human in the Divided Sea, 1946 A Seven Level Mountain, 1948 (ISBN 0156010860) Waters of Siloe, 1949 (ISBN 0156949547) Seeds of Contemplation, 1949 (ISBN 0313207569) A Ascent to Truth, 1951 (ISBN 0860120244) Infect a Woods, 1953 A Go of the Fathers, 1954 A Dwelling Bread, 1956 A Silent Life, 1957 Thoughts around Solitude, 1958 A Lay Journal of Thomas Merton, 1959 Disputed Questions, 1960 A Behavior of Titans, 1961 A Freshly Human, 1961 (ISBN 0374514445) Newly Seeds of Contemplation, 1962 (ISBN 081120099X) Emblems of the Year of Fury, 1963 Life & Sanctity, 1963 Seeds of Destruction, 1965 Conjectures of the Hangdog Bystander, 1966 (ISBN 0385010184) Raids on the Unspeakable, 1966 Religious mystic & Zen Masters, 1967 Cables to the Ace, 1968 Faith & Violence, 1968 Our Argument using a Gestapo, 1969 A Climate of Cloistral Prayer, 1969 Contemplation inside the Globe of Action, 1971 A Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, 1973 There is no Human is an Island, 1978 Alaskan Journal of Thomas Merton, 1988 A Intimate Merton: His Life from either His Journals, 1999 Peace in the Post-Christian Era, 2004

Thomas Merton Center
The Thomas Merton Center is the official repository of Merton's artistic estate which includes over twelve hundred photographs and eight hundred drawings in addition to his writing. The Center archives over forty-five thousand Merton-related materials.

Monastic Liberation as Counter-Cultural Critique in the Life and Thought of Thomas Merton
Article by Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish philosophy, who is interested in Merton's piety. [Cross Currents]

Thomas Merton - Resources for Catholic Educators
Links to web pages and other resources on Thomas Merton.

The Thomas Merton Foundation
Supports the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine College and is dedicated to raising awareness of the spiritual discipline and contemplative practices of Thomas Merton. Mission, programs, publications, news.

Thomas Merton Monk and Poet
Web site dedicated to Thomas Merton and includes Merton retreats, journals, and links.

Merton, Thomas
Short biobibliographical entry in the Columbia Encyclopedia.

The Thomas Merton Connection
Article by Alan Altany asks what Merton was seeking in his exploration of Buddhism. [Hundred Mountain]

International Thomas Merton Society
Promotes an understanding and appreciation of the character of Thomas Merton and encourages study and research that will help to make better known the unique contribution he has made to the literature of spirituality.

Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Founded to promote interest in and study of Thomas Merton and his concerns throughout the British Isles.

Thomas Merton: Celebrity Monk
Transcript of a radio broadcast in which John Russell examines Thomas Merton's life and work. Lawrence Cunningham and Monica Furlong, two of Merton's biographers, and Father Michael Casey, an Australian Trappist monk, are interviewed. Includes rare archival material of Merton speaking only hours before he died in Bangkok in 1968. [Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation]


Society: Religion and Spirituality: Buddhism: Buddhism and Other Religions: Christianity
Society: Religion and Spirituality: Christianity: Denominations: Catholicism: Orders: Men's Orders: Benedictines: Trappists





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