By Jeff Kenney
Introduction:
The Abbey of Gethsemani is a Trappist monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky, and is best known for its most famous resident: monk, poet, writer, and international religious figure Thomas Merton, who entered the monastery in 1941 and lived there until his death in 1968. While there, he published an astonishing array of articles, journals, photographs, and of course books, the most famous (and first) of which was his best-selling 1949 autobiography, “The Seven Story Mountain.”
Gethsemani has become a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Merton’s readers, as well as those seeking silence and an atmosphere of Christian contemplation and charity, from around the world. Please see the Abbeys website, at http://www.monks.org, for more information.
I spent a weekend at Gethsemani during the summer of 2001, and filled dozens of pages of journal notes with observations and thoughts. What follows is an introduction to basic ideas of contemplation (which Merton espoused, and the monks of Gethsemani seek to practice), and the notes I took.
Contemplative Prayer
After completing the typing up of the notes that follow, taken while on a 3-day retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, I realized that perhaps a bit of background is in order, particularly for those readers not remotely versed in basic monastic and contemplative theology. Initially, I began looking up resources on the history of monasticism, a topic so well divulged to me by one of the monks at Gethsemani (see later in the notes). I had started a tidy little history lesson before realizing that perhaps the most relevant aspect of the whole trip for me (and in a broader sense, for anyone who visits a place like Gethsemani or has any interest whatsoever in what is being practiced there), is not so much monasticism, but the depth of relationship with God implicit in the basic tenants of Christian contemplation and mysticism.
I have been reading Thomas Merton off and on for over five years now, and until nine months ago, I had never really heard the word “contemplation.” That is, I’d heard the word, and thought it was just a vague term defined generically as it might be in the dictionary. I had no idea it was a distinct way of viewing and practicing the Christian life, and all that it entailed. Had I known all of this earlier – even years earlier – my entire view of Christianity would have been permanently and radically altered. Had I known what the word “contemplation” meant, I might not have so deeply investigated Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism.
Not that I regret investigating them; I still believe they have much to teach us (in fact, their relationship to Christian contemplation reveals the universality of the workings of God in humanity, as far as I’m concerned). And I have great respect for practitioners of those Eastern lifestyles. I will say – and I can reference a source no less reliable than the Dalai Lama himself in this matter – that it is my belief that Western people, particularly those raised in a Christian tradition, who try to immerse themselves completely in eastern philosophy and practice, are 1) probably doing so as a means of rejecting or reacting to Christianity, which is understandable but not conducive to long-term, genuine spiritual growth, and 2) attempting to cut themselves off from their own culture, a culture which is largely engrained in them so deeply that they simply cannot evade its psychological influences, try as they might; this process often involves a sort of romantic fascination with eastern culture, which appears exotic and even flawless (or close to it!) to the uninitiated westerner.
The fact is, folks, eastern culture has a lot of wonderful things to teach we narrow-minded westerners, but it is not the cultural Shangri-la, which does not, after all, exist. I suppose my larger concern is simply the sometimes juvenile efforts put forth by western seekers, to clothe themselves in eastern philosophy and practice so much as to “cover up” their western-ness. And let me tell you, there is very little as tiring as the throngs of (admittedly well-meaning) American folks – often “New Age” types, if I may generalize here – who can be found at Buddhist events, temples, and monasteries, trying to out-do each other in “genuine” eastern-ness…which of us is more “authentic,” and has truly transcended our foul, western ways?
So, with apologies for this digression, I submit to the frustrated American, particularly those of us un-moved by what have become the banal, pedestrian manifestations of Christian practice in our culture today, that those elements of Eastern philosophy and practice which so attracted you are, and have always been, a very legitimate part of Christian tradition and practice. They are not, sadly, mentioned in many Protestant churches (nor, frankly, many Catholic ones!), but they exist.
What Is Contemplation?
The term “contemplation” refers essentially to a type of prayer, as well as a view of the self and God, and the way in which our selves interact with God. Contemplation can be seen as one form of a sort of broader Christian tradition we know of as mysticism, which pertains to a more internal, introspective, genuinely supernatural way of viewing and experiencing God and His word. It would be a dangerous thing here to create any notions of division or segregation where they do not exist, but suffice it to say that the mystic might be less concerned with outward manifestations of Christian life (reciting prayers, attending services, even doing charity), and would concentrate his or her efforts upon the inner dwelling of God in their own being. In its extreme form, mysticism could involve visions – one could certainly say that the Biblical prophets were all mystics. But again, mysticism is a fairly broad term that can encompass many elements of spiritual life.
One reason, frankly, that mysticism and contemplation may be foreign to Protestant ears is that Protestants are missing out on 1500 years of Christian tradition, involving hundreds of long-known Christian saints, monks, writers, and figures who were mystics. The true shame in this, if nothing else, is that many Christians – especially those who seek a deeper, more mystical relationship with God – find themselves discouraged by the cerebral, unreflective brand of Christianity that most people think IS Christianity, and thus find themselves seeking something MORE, outside of the traditions of Christianity. The recent practice of Christianity, as the essential religious view of the Western world, has failed many of those thirsting for “waters from a deeper well” than that of God as far-away Father figure, untouchable and unknowable, and has driven many, many Christians into the New Age movement as well as into Eastern philosophy.
Let me offer a quick aside here and clarify that, in my opinion, any thinking and genuinely seeking person of a spiritual bent, will undoubtedly investigate Eastern philosophy at some point in their lives. And well they should; these ideas offer valuable insights and ideas that escape the normal scope of our culture – particularly our consumer-driven American culture. I encourage any and every Christian to look into what Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists (and for that matter, any world religions!) have to say; if nothing else, it will help us understand one another better, and possibly help us understand our own faith better. While I am all for shielding the eyes and ears from elements outside of Christianity that might lead us off the path, I think willful, wanton ignorance has done far more to hurt Christians than it has to help us!
Back to contemplation: I was no different than many, and simply felt that Christianity did not have much to offer me, once I stumbled upon eastern ideas of meditation, transcendence, the self, ego, detachment, and so forth. There is a part of us all, but especially some of us who seem just made this way, that thirsts for the silence and unspoken peacefulness of introspection; what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called “individuation,” diving headlong into the dark waters of the unconscious to find the true, deeper nature of the self (perhaps it is Kierkegaard’s “Great leap of faith”).
Let me clarify here, also, that I do not present contemplation as a means of conforming Christianity to meet a passing fancy for eastern philosophy. Far from it! Contemplative notions have numerous Biblical injunctions at their roots, and some of the earliest post-Biblical Christians, to whom Buddhist, Taoist, or Hindu terminology would have been utterly foreign, were some of the earliest Christians to develop contemplation into what it is now (these would be the Desert Fathers, hermits and ascetics who fled ‘civilization’ into the desert in the 300’s A.D.). But more on that shortly.
What Do Contemplatives Believe?
Well, at the very basis of the contemplative ideal is that God is not some distant being, “out there,” involving us in an “I-Thou” relationship that is distinctly a segregated affair. As Thomas Merton points out in “Opening the Bible,” God is not who we turn to when we have exhausted our powers of reasoning, when we have reached the end of our abilities to answer our questions and concerns. Instead, He is the very ground of our being, that FROM WHICH WE spring forth in existence. That is, we are made in God’s image – what does that mean? To the contemplative, it means that God resides within us, informing our hearts constantly, and that our true and real “selves” are made in the likeness of God; in effect, that our mission as Christians is to become our true “Selves” as God created us.
The problem, then, is that we, via the world, have created for ourselves a false, egotistical notion of what our “self” is. We seek glory, power, success, money, fame, renown…or even that we become attached to THINGS, which make us slaves to an invented, superficial “self” that dwells on the surface of our psyche. Most of the activity of our conscious minds resides here: the constant chatter of a person trapped in a world of noise and confusion, of ego, desire, and greed. These are the seemingly ceaseless voices that pop into our heads even during normal, “mental” prayers…all part of a false “self” which many of us will confuse for our true identities. All that resides in this self will die when our bodies die; it is temporal, shallow, and a part of this world in a fallen, finite sense.
Some comments, from Thomas Merton: “All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered….Ultimately the only way I can become my (true) self is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence. Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God.”
(Quotes from Merton’s “New Seeds of Contemplation.”)
It should be noted here that therein lies what seems to me the fundamental distinction between eastern outlooks like Buddhism, and Christian contemplation: for the Buddhist, the “self” is a myth entirely; informing the “self” is nothingness, and emptiness which is to be sought in order to circumvent the cycle of suffering derived from attachments and desires, which can never be fulfilled. For the Christian, there is indeed emptiness at the center of the self, but it is an emptiness that is, paradoxically, full of the complete fullness that is God…God, who resides at the center of layer upon layer of falsity and ego, that which must be stripped away in order to find God, in whose image our True Selves is made. (By the way, paradox is familiar ground in contemplation; see the St. John of the Cross quote I stumbled across in my Gethsemani journal on Saturday night!)
So What Do Contemplatives DO?
That question plagued me for a while, until I began to dig beyond the theoretics that inform what contemplatives BELIEVE. The fact is, there is no hard and fast formula, for what ought to be obvious reasons, for contemplation. One thing I must clarify is that by contemplation, we’re really talking about contemplative PRAYER. It may not seem like prayer, but is simply a deeper level of prayer. St. Teresa of Avila, a wonderful contemplative writer herself (and the first woman declared an official Doctor of the Catholic Church), uses the analogy of Martha and Mary. Martha, busying herself with the practical tasks of feeding Christ and the disciples, and keeping the house, becomes frustrated with Mary, who spends her time listening silently to Jesus’ teachings. While both are serving Christ in their own way, Mary is seen as the contemplative, who stills her mind and body to receive the words of the Lord.
As is also alluded to by the retreat master on the first morning (Saturday) I was at Gethsemani (see the journal), St. Paul also wrote that it is when he is weakest, that he is strong, for then it is no longer he (Paul), but the Lord who takes over; the retreat master noted that contemplation often begins when we have exhausted our mental prayers (that is, prayers in which we “speak” to God conversationally, asking forgiveness, petitioning him for aid or intercession for loved ones – this sort of prayer is important and should not be abandoned, but is distinct from contemplative prayer, in which the busy thoughts and mental processes of the mind are to be replaced by a real and present awareness of God’s presence in our hearts). This is generally seen as involving silence, a stilling of the mind and body, and an effort to quiet the mind of all rational cognition, and to replace it instead with love and awareness of God. Obviously, techniques to attain this level of awareness and stillness may parallel some techniques used in eastern meditation (Merton himself became quite interested in Zen in the last decade of his life, and after all, Zen, though considered a school of Buddhism, is really just a practical method of sitting and thinking…really, for that matter, so is Buddhism itself!).
But Merton stresses, as do most contemplative Christians, that contemplation is a gift, not something that can be attained through our own efforts: “The only one who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone.” (“New Seeds of Contemplation”)
This is an important thing to remember, and I think another distinction between Christian contemplation and eastern practice: while our efforts are very important in deepening our relationship with God, and in tilling the soil of our souls to be ripe for His presence, only God can grant us the gift of contemplation, and it is a gift.
One major theme that many contemplatives return to (particularly in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which is most directly derived from the aforementioned Desert Fathers) is Paul’s admonission to the Thessalonians to “pray incessantly” (1 Thes 5:17). This is the basis of the Desert Fathers’ efforts to integrate prayer and awareness of God into a means of living, which involved asceticism, a concept unfortunately foreign to many modern Christians.
Asceticism?
Though alive and well in monastic circles, ascetic practice seems strange to many of us not raised to think of it as normal Christian living. This is off since John the Baptist was a major ascetic (separating himself from the world, living in the wilderness in animal skins and eating wild locusts and honey – if ever there were a hermit, it was he!), and so was Christ, who preluded his ministry by spending 40 days fasting in the desert. Thomas A. Kempis, in his classic “The Imitation of Christ,” says:
"A man who is not yet perfectly dead to self is easily tempted, and is overcome even in small and trifling things. And he who is weak in spirit, and still prey to the senses and bodily passions, can only with great difficulty free himself from worldly lusts. Therefore he is sad when he does so withdraw himself, and is quickly angered when anyone opposes him. Yet, if he obtains what he desires, his conscience is at once stricken by remorse, because he has yielded to his passion, which in no way helps him in his search for peace. True peace of heart can be found only by resisting the passions, not by yielding to them. There is no peace in the heart of a worldly man, who is entirely given to outward affairs; but only in a fervent, spiritual man."
(Thomas A. Kempis, "The Imitation of Christ," Chapter 6)
Thomas Merton’s initial reaction to reading Aldous Huxley on asceticism may parallel the reactions of many of us, at first:
"(Huxley's) big conclusion was this: we must practice prayer and asceticism.
Asceticism! The very thought of such a thing was a complete revoltion in my mind. The word had so far stood for a kind of weird and ugly perversion of nature, the masochism of men who had gone crazy in a warped and unjust society. What an idea! To deny the desires of one's flesh, and even to practice certain disciplines that punished and mortified those desires: until this day, these things had never succeeded in giving me anything but gooseflesh.”
But Merton’s mind, of course, was changed: “He showed that this negation was not something absolute, sought for its own sake: but that it was a freeing, a vindication of our real selves, a liberation of the spirit from limits and bonds that were intolerable, suicidal -- from a servitude to flesh that must ultimately destroy our whole nature and society and the world as well…. The desires of the flesh - and by that I mean not only sinful desires, but even the normal, ordinary appetites for comfort and ease and human respect, are fruitful sources of every kind of error and misjudgment, and because we have those yearnings in us, our intellects present to us everything distorted and accommodated to the norms of our desire." (Merton: “The Seven Story Mountain”)
Thus, asceticism is not a matter of punishing oneself for the sake of punishment, but a means of liberating oneself from slavery to greed, lust, gluttony, and dependence upon human pleasure. This is not a matter of hating pleasure (which is given to us, after all, by God!), but of being free from addiction to it, and hence free to embrace Christ. Spiritual discipline was once a very succinct part of Christian practice almost universally (it is still preserved, in a much watered-down form, in the modern observance of Lent).
So the Desert Fathers combined ascetic practices with a form of prayer designed to help us to “pray incessantly.” One manifestation of this, perhaps best known to modern western Christians through the classic 19th century writing, “The Way of a Pilgrim,” and through J.D. Salinger’s novel, “Franny and Zooey,” is the ‘Jesus Prayer,’ as derived from the Gospels: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
This prayer, recited alongside a simple breathing technique, is meant to help order the thoughts of the contemplative towards Christ and away from distraction. In fact, the pilgrim in “The Way of a Pilgrim,” finds the prayer, as well as his breathing, all becoming so attuned rhythmically to the beat of his heart, that he needn’t even speak the prayer anymore, but becomes lost in the experience of it. It is this losing of our ‘selves,’ even if for a moment, in contemplation, that unites us with God in our ‘Selves’ and is contemplation.
The Cloud of Unknowing; The Dark Night of the Soul
Two major works in Christian literature speak to another aspect of contemplation: St. John of the Cross’ classic “Dark Night of the Soul,” and the anonymously written “The Cloud of Unknowing.” Both pertain to the dieing of the self that must be undergone in order to enter into contemplation, and the initial fear and uncertainty experienced by the contemplative therein.
We like to keep God in a box. We find it convenient to create an image of God as best suits our comfort and convenience, and any challenge to that notion of God is rather frightening to us. We have somehow become accustomed to the notion that spiritual “moments” must be happy, good-feeling moments, though the fact that God often reveals the most to us through trials, ought to teach us better. The genuine struggle to reach a state of contemplation, a state of internal union with God, seems universally acknowledged to be an initial trial. “The Cloud of Unknowing” says, “When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don’t know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out towards God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as is necessary, but still go on longing after him whom you love. For if you are to feel him or see him in this life, it must always be in this cloud, in this darkness.”
St. John of the Cross writes of beginners in contemplation, in “Dark Night of the Soul:” “Consequently, it is at the time they are going about their spiritual exercises with delight and satisfaction, when in their opinion the sun of divine favor is shining most brightly on them, that God darkens all this light and closes the door and the spring of sweet spiritual water they were tasting as often and as long as they desired. For since they were weak and tender, no door was closed to them, as St. John says in the Book of Revelation [Rv. 3:8]. God now leaves them in such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their discursive imaginings. They cannot advance a step in meditation, as they used to, now that the interior sense faculties are engulfed in this night. This usually happens to recollected beginners sooner than to others since they are freer from occasions of backsliding and more quickly reform their appetites for worldly things. A reform of the appetites is the requirement for entering the happy night of the senses.”
So, it must be stressed that contemplation is not some instant happiness-pill, nor some easy, few-step method for attaining union with God. In “New Seeds of Contemplation,” Merton writes: “For every growth in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial “doubt.” This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the “faith” of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false “faith” which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our “religion” is subjected to inexorable questioning.”
Yet, St. John of the Cross beautifully sums up the paradox of this pain and joy in verse:
“O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.”
And, Finally…
I think that elaborating much more, at this point, would be overkill (if indeed it isn’t already!). The above is meant to be a bit of a primer on contemplation, for those curious for one. To me, it is extremely valuable for Christians to understand that contemplation is a part of their tradition. Some would say, and I would not disagree, that it is the culmination of their tradition as a living union with God, or at least an effort at such. Obviously, a true and complete union with Him comes only after our death, but as we live, should we not strive to hear His voice as clearly as we can, to “speak to your heart in silence upon your bed,” as David exhorts in the Psalms? Before proceeding to the journal notes I took at Gethsemani during my retreat of the summer of 2001, I end with yet another quote from Thomas Merton:
“Contemplation is a mark of a fully mature Christian life. It makes the believer no longer a slave or a servant of a Divine Master, no longer the fearful keeper of a difficult law, no longer even an obedient and submissive son who is still too young to participate in his Father’s counsels. Contemplation is that wisdom which makes man the friend of God…this is precisely the message of the Gospel:
‘No longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you….he who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit.’ (John 15: 15-16, 5, 7)
The experience of contemplation is the experience of God’s life and presence within ourselves not as object but as transcendent source of our own subjectivity.
Christianity is a religion of love. Christian morality is a morality of love. Love is impossible without obedience that unites the wills of the lover and the One loved.”
(These quotes are from Merton’s “The New Man,” 1961)
Go on to the Journal...