Zen and the Birds of AppetiteNew Directions Publishing, 2010. júl. 27. - 144 oldal Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite—one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ. |
Tartalomjegyzék
A Christian Looks at | |
The Man and his Work | |
Transcendent Experience | |
Zen in Japanese | |
Wisdom in Emptiness | |
Postface | |
Más kiadások - Összes megtekintése
Gyakori szavak és kifejezések
Absolute Asian Avidya awareness basic become Blakney Buddha Buddhist meditation Cartesian Cassian Catholics Christ Christian consciousness Christian experience Christian mysticism Church Cistercian completely concept contemplative cultural D.T. Suzuki Desert Fathers desire Dhammapada dialogue disciple divine doctrine ego-self emptiness enlightenment everything evil existence existential expression fact freedom gift God’s Godhead grasp ground Hence hermit Hui Neng idea important Innocence insight intellectual interpretation Japanese kind Kitaro Nishida knowledge live man’s means Meister Eckhart metaphysical mind monk moral mysterious Nirvana Nishida object one’s ontological ordinary Paradise Paramita perfect perhaps person philosophical poverty Prajna progressive Christians purity of heart question radical reality realization religious revelation robbers seeks sense simply soul speak spiritual statement structures suffering Sunyata teaching theological things Thomas Merton thought tradition transcendent experience true truth ultimate understanding unity Void West Western wisdom words Zen Buddhism Zen experience Zen Masters Zen-man