Thomas Merton's Encounter with Buddhism and Beyond: His Interreligious Dialogue, Inter-Monastic Exchanges, and their Legacy by Jaechan Anselmo Park

The Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago in 1893 marked the dawn of a new era for interreligious dialogue. The kind of dialogue that this event initiated can be characterized as having been theological or intellectual, as it sought to uncover between the many religions and denominations represented similarities and differences on the level of ideas and beliefs. Since that time interreligious dialogue has expanded to foster more experiential and hands-on avenues of exchange. Arguably the most important single person in paving the way to these newer kinds of dialogue was Thomas Merton (1915–1968), the Cistercian monk, author, poet, mystic, seeker, and activist, who was based at Gethsemani Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.

On the night before his untimely death in Thailand, Merton is recorded to have said, "Zen and Christianity are the future" (xxiii). How it was that Merton came to feel this way and what specifically he may have meant by the statement are the subject of the book by the South Korean Benedictine monk Jaechan Anselmo Park, titled Thomas Merton's Encounter with Buddhism and Beyond: His Interreligious Dialogue, Inter-Monastic Exchanges, and their Legacy. In the course of the book, Park examines the early roots of Merton's encounter with the Buddhist other; the branches of Christian-Buddhist dialogue cultivated during the latter part of Merton's life; and their fruits, in the form of specific monastic exchange programs established in Asia and the West over the last few decades. Drawing on the extensive literature on Merton's life, as well as the vast corpus of Merton's own writings, Park seeks to fill in the details of a story about which most readers of this journal will already have a general outline. What gets highlighted are Merton's specific motivations for first embarking upon this kind of exchange and what he discovered to be the most promising ways forward.

For one, Park makes clear that Merton set out in his exploration of Buddhism not as a straying from his Christianity, but with the hope of learning how to get more from his experience of being a Christian monk. In the model of religious exchange he would end up articulating, monastics, as the torchbearers of their respective religions, would be expected to play the most important role. Merton also concluded that for monks and nuns of different religions to live among one another can be a valuable experience. Another key facet of what Merton came to maintain was that the transcendent experiences produced by contemplative practice form a bridge between religions that may, on the surface, seem very different from one another (these two facets of the exchange being interrelated, Park refers to the model Merton arrived at as "inter-monastic/contemplative dialogue"). In this emphasis on peak religious experiences that are maintained to reveal a more universal religious truth, we see Merton's significance in carrying William James's understanding of religion into the twentyfirst century.

The first three chapters of Thomas Merton's Encounter with Buddhism and Beyond speak to scholars of religious modernism as well as readers who may be interested to know more about Merton's life and works for the wide range of reasons that this singularly eclectic and tradition-crossing figure has given us. In a somewhat hagiographic fashion, these chapters convey the story of Merton's life through his encounter and dialogue with Buddhism, beginning during his time as a student at Columbia. Over a period of decades Merton corresponded with the extremely important Zen modernizers D. T. Suzuki (1870–966) and Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926). In 1968, Merton embarked upon a profoundly impactful trip to Asia, which included what Park describes as "a culminating moment of enlightenment" (25) while visiting a Buddhist monument in Sri Lanka. Amidst Merton's own record of his experiences on this trip—published in 1973 as The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton—we find a detailed description of this moment in which Merton realized that "everything is emptiness, everything is compassion" (quoted by Park, 42; some have taken this as evidence of Merton's having obtained the first level of bodhisattvahood, 44). Around this time Merton had a series of meetings with eminent Tibetan lamas in India, including the Dalai Lama. Merton expressed his intention to seek training in the advanced Tibetan yoga of dzogchen or the "great perfection," as a means of cultivating and dwelling within a wordless state of self-transcendence. It seems that during the brief period of his time in Asia, Merton's primary interest shifted from Zen Buddhism to the Tibetan form (87). Two months into the trip, Merton died by accidental electrocution in his room while attending a congress of Asian monastic leaders in Thailand. We can only imagine where else Merton's journey into Buddhism might have taken him in the decades that followed.

In the course of the first three chapters of the book, Park seeks to organize and make sense of Merton's activities surrounding interreligious, inter-monastic, and contemplative dialogues. Park divides Merton's life into distinct periods; traces the evolution of Merton's ideas of "contemplation" and religious experience; and outlines the different types of Buddhist-Christian dialogue that Merton conceived of. Park also engages in some evaluation of how much Merton actually knew about Buddhism, seemingly in an attempt to deflect criticisms that Merton's knowledge of the tradition was insufficient. Dealt with in particular detail is a set of specific principles for a maximal form of interrelated inter-monastic and contemplative dialogue as envisioned by Merton.

In the final chapter of Thomas Merton's Encounter with Buddhism and Beyond, Park's interest shifts to an evaluation of his legacy. There is also a shift in terms of who it is that Park the author is speaking to, as Park here articulates suggestions to interested parties regarding how to grow and strengthen monastic traditions around the world, especially in Asia—including Christian monastic communities in Asia. To this end, Park relates a history of a number of organizations devoted to inter-monastic/contemplative dialogue that have arisen in the wake of Merton's efforts, including Aide à l'Implantation Monastique, the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, the East–West Spiritual Exchange program, and the successive Gethsemani Encounters that have taken place starting in 1996. Park addresses programs that have brought Asian monastics of various religions to the West, and Euro-American monastics to Asia, for months-long monastery stays, to foster shared experience and common ground. Park also describes programs established at monasteries and nunneries in South Korea by which laypeople and monastics of other religions are given a chance to stay at such an institution for a period of days or weeks. Having achieved a meaningful historical perspective on these programs through this research project, as well as through decades of personal involvement with a number of them, Park is in a unique position to understand their value and to offer prescriptions for how they can be improved in the future. It seems that one of Park's primary aims in undertaking this research project and writing this book has been to provide a resource for those directly involved with this kind of work.

Conceptually and in his prose (organized through a relentless cascade of triads), Park relies heavily on a particular specialized vocabulary: "contemplative dialogue,""mutual self-mediation," "spiritual communion," "inner-mystical experiences," "transcultural maturity." One of Park's central claims in the book concerns Merton's innovative work in "inter-monastic/contemplative dialogue." I suspect that for many readers, some of these terms may already be very familiar ones. But personally, as a non-Christian, non-Buddhist, nonmonastic, noncontemplative scholar whose research is in the histories of Buddhist meditative traditions, I often found myself not entirely certain what Park really meant in his use of these terms. As a life-long nonparticipant in faith traditions, I can only guess at what Park may intend "spiritual communion" to mean. My greatest ongoing bugbear of them all remains the rhetoric of "contemplation," which is pervasive throughout this book. I believe Park uses the term in ways entirely consonant with current prevailing discourses: as a catch-all to refer to a wide range of meditative, prayerful, or more generally philosophical or religious practices. This gets complicated further when we are told such things as that Merton came to a realization that "contemplation could not be separated from human activities" (17). Then what is it? Or what isn't it? It is also noted that Merton "used the terms 'contemplative,' 'mystical,' 'aware,''enlightened,' or 'spiritually transformed' interchangeably" (28). "Contemplation" is the watchword of the moment, reflective of a zeitgeist that bridges religiosity, scholarship, and secular cultural practices. And yet the enduring vagueness of the meaning of the term remains a problem, at least for this observer of these trends.

The book is effective in synthesizing the findings of an extensive body of secondary literature devoted to understanding the life of Thomas Merton. Park works especially closely with the work of Pierre-François de Béthune, Fabrice Blée, John Dadosky, William Shannon, and Bonnie Thurston. Moreover, writing as a Catholic monk and a practitioner with years of direct involvement in programs in South Korea and North America that understand themselves as continuing Merton's work, Park has a particularly well-informed take on the matters at hand. In the end, the book is illuminating concerning the past, present, and as Park hopes, the future of Father Merton's unique take on how Buddhists and Christians can best learn from one another.