Thomas Merton's Death-Before-Dying, December 4, 1968
Eckhart Tolle begins his "Power of Now" with a very powerful description of an enlightenment experience. The very same day I read it, a friend read me the following entry from Thomas Merton's Journals, dated June 4, 1968--four days before his death in Thailand at the age of 53. Merton, who was drawn to Buddhism in the last decade of his life, and who shared a profound friendship with D.T. Suzuki, went on his Buddhist pilgrimage in late 1968. In the following passage, Merton travels to a Buddhist shrine-retreat built into the side of a mountain in Sri Lanka--one I imagine similar to those the Taliban destroyed in Afghanistan in 2001. If only Allah's henchmen had approached those statues with the same amazement-prone reverence and awe as Merton did. Here, in a sense, is a description of what should have happened when God's troops entered those caves: from troop to trope in a non-combatant flash, dying in the same same moth-friendly fire of fanna [extinction]. Note how the multiple, multiplying presences of those Buddhas engulfed and awakened Merton. In my mind's eye, I saw an Olympic diver caught in every station of a perfect dive into what my teacher called "the ocean of ilm [divine knowledge]." Now, days later, I still experience an easily-summoned afterglow from the gift and grace of being able to look over Merton's shoulder into that cave. Thanks Bonnie Ostroff. for sharing this eternal glimpse with me. May it be awakened every day of my remaining life.
December 4, 1968. Colombo [Sri Lanka].
Polonnaruwa with its vast area under trees. Fences. Few people. No beggars. A dirt road. Lost. Then we find Gal Vihara and the other majestic complex stupas. Cells. Distant mountains, like Yucatan.
The path dips down to Gil Vahara: a wide, quiet hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. I am able to approach the Buddha barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, or sunyata, which has seen through everything--without refutation--without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure, rock and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures.
Looking at the figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The sheer evidence of the reclining figure, their smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more "imperative" than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, no "mystery." All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life is charged with dharmakaya--everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual vitality running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuran and Polannaruwa, my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains, but I have now seen and I have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. This is Asia in its purity, not covered with garbage, Asian or European and American. It is clear, pure, complete. It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to discover it.
--Thomas Merton, "The Intimate Merton: His Life from Journals," Harper One, 1999, pages 361-2.
December 4, 1968. Colombo [Sri Lanka].
Polonnaruwa with its vast area under trees. Fences. Few people. No beggars. A dirt road. Lost. Then we find Gal Vihara and the other majestic complex stupas. Cells. Distant mountains, like Yucatan.
The path dips down to Gil Vahara: a wide, quiet hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. I am able to approach the Buddha barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, or sunyata, which has seen through everything--without refutation--without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure, rock and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures.
Looking at the figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The sheer evidence of the reclining figure, their smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more "imperative" than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, no "mystery." All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life is charged with dharmakaya--everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual vitality running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuran and Polannaruwa, my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains, but I have now seen and I have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. This is Asia in its purity, not covered with garbage, Asian or European and American. It is clear, pure, complete. It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to discover it.
--Thomas Merton, "The Intimate Merton: His Life from Journals," Harper One, 1999, pages 361-2.
posted by David Federman @ 6:40 AM
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