Redeemer Pres. NYC Pointing People to Buddhism

http://www.redeemer.com/families/parents/resources.html
To better understand loving and living for God
Suggested Readings:
DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS – Richard Foster, Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila

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Thomas Merton taught among other things: “It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, ... now I realize what we all are ... If only people could all see themselves as they really are. I suppose the big problem would be that we would bow down and worship each other.... At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth....This little point ... is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton, pp. 157-158)

“If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. 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.

To unify your life, unify your desires. To spiritualize your life, spiritualize your desires. To spiritualize your desires, desire to be without desire.” (This is strikingly similar to Buddhist teachings).

“To live in the spirit is to live for a God in Whom we believe, but Whom we cannot see. To desire this is therefore to renounce the desire of all that can be seen. To possess Him Who cannot be understood is to renounce all that can be understood.” (Again, strikingly similar to Buddhist teachings).

“By renouncing the world we conquer the world, rise above its multiplicity and recapitulate it in the simplicity of a love which finds all things in God."

This is what Jesus meant when He said that any one who would save his life will lose it, and he who would lose his life, for the sake of God, would save it.” Thoughts in Solitude 1958, pgs 49-50

You may see shades of Buddhist thought here. So it won’t be surprising that in 1969 Merton wrote that he wanted “to become as good a Buddhist as I can.” (Steindl-Rast, 1969). This written a year after his well-known trip to Asia where he wrote upon departure from San Francisco:

“Joy. We left the ground--I with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around. ... May I not come back without having settled the great affair. And found also the great compassion, mahakaruna… I am going home, to the home where I have never been in this body.” (Asian Journal, pages 4-5).

He was calling the home of Buddhism his spiritual home.

Merton: "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."