I am tempted to let this text as it stands. The warning here is against thinking that by being mystic or living a greatly disciplined life that we can substitute stoicism for the gospel. Or mysticism. Or scholarship. And we simply cannot. And this is a great error, which we can all fall into.

I’m going to be a bit critical of Merton’s interest in and writings on Asian philosophy and religion, not because I don’t admire his brilliance, but because his commitment to orthodox Catholicism appears suspiciously attenuated by the end of his life. In the 1969 book Recollections of Thomas Merton’s Last Days in the West, Benedictine monk Br. David Steindl-Rast wrote that Thomas said that he wanted “to become as good a Buddhist as I can.” When he flew out of San Francisco for Asia on October 15, 1968, he left with the expectation of religious discovery, as if his monastic life at the Abbey of Gethsemani was a spiritual precursor to the insights he would gain in the East. He wrote in his journal:

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, 4)

He writes as if his Christianity and his Buddhism had already become enmeshed into a new hybrid religion, with “Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny,” and he expresses his desire never to return until he has found mahakaruna, the Buddhist notion of “great compassion.” As a Christian, I admire Buddhist mahakaruna, but as a Christian I also know that one need not look beyond Christianity to find it. I wonder—and we shall never know in this life the answer—what “home” Merton was headed for that day in October.

I am quite aware that the Buddhist practice of mindfulness has become mainstream. But we always have to be aware that our disciplines, our mysticism, or deepest feelings of spirituality and compassion do not the gospel make.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

(Colossians 2:8-23 ESV)

And when it comes to human tradition, all churches have to confess to falling into that error: from the Orthodox, who venerate the church fathers overmuch, to the Romans, who manage to do the same thing without a time limit of 320AD, to the ultra Lutherans and ultra Calvinists who venerate Luther and Calvin in a manner that would horrify both of those gentlemen, to the Pentecostal who looks far more to visions and mysticism than the gospel, and the thread of mysticism that weaves through all these groups.

Merton was a poet, and a mystic, and a good writer. He was wiser than I. He was a better man than I will ever be. But he fell into the error of thinking similarities in practice led to identical content, and that there was more than one way to salvation.

Which is not the case. There is only one way to avoid perdition, and that is through Christ. And if we could be righteous in our own power, there would have been no need for his death, let alone his resurrection. Our sanctity, piety and mystic experiences are not sufficient.

And in my experience, those who are most saintly are those who are most aware of their frailties and temptations. So do not fall into the trap Merton did: indeed pray that his salvation was true, and he remained abiding in the faith. As we should be praying for each other.