Like a finger pointing to the moon

‘Really I do not feel myself in opposition with anyone or with any form of spirituality, because I no longer think in such terms at all: this spirituality is the right kind, that is the wrong kind etc. Right sort and wrong sort: these are sources of delusion in the spiritual life and there precisely is where the Buddhists score, for they bypass all that. Neither this side of the stream nor on the other side: yet one must cross the stream and throw away the boat, before seeing that the stream wasn’t there.’

This quote from Thomas Merton, in a letter in 1962, shows how through contemplative prayer he had moved beyond seeing different religions as opposed to one another, but this perspective developed over his years in the Abbey of Gethsemani. As a young monk Merton thought that only Christians could be truly adopted as children of God through grace, and his early writing reflect this narrow view and his somewhat Roman Catholic exclusivism. During the 1950s, Merton gradually recognized, not only that other Christian denominations are valid ways of reaching Christ, but that other religions have a positive place in God’s salvation. However, Merton still saw those other religions as merely partial expressions of the truth, and grace to be found fully only in Christianity

It was his deepening contemplative practice and his interest in Zen Buddhism that seemed to open him to a wider view. So, he writes to the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki:

‘I will not be so foolish as to pretend to you that I understand Zen. To be frank, I hardly understand Christianity. … I have my own way to walk, and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. … It seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation. But I still don’t know what it is. No matter. I don’t know what the air is either.’

This acceptance and openness spreads to other traditions, so by the mid-60s Merton writes of how ‘the Holy Spirit may perfectly well be more active in the heart of a Hindu monk than in my own.’  For Merton is reaching for an apophatic Christ, a light that is not light, nor identifiable with any category or culture of light or enlightenment. And he writes of his efforts as provisional, tentative, requiring vision and lengthy reworking. Merton feels it is possible to believe simultaneously that God had acted decisively and for the salvation of all in the person of Jesus Christ, and that Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists are warranted in remaining who they are and in following their own different ways to salvation. The cosmic Christ, he believes, is present to every aspect of human history and of human endeavour. He is present in all religious traditions and must be discovered there

The transcendent light is then present within every single individual, and is enlightening and calling every person beyond herself or himself. Our answer constitutes our religion. We are all moved by the same Spirit present at the core of our being, calling us evermore to beauty, justice, oneness, life, God, Christ, Buddha, Nirvana. We must learn from each other’s tentative, concrete, historical answer. Merton warns us not to stop at the symbols, at the finger pointing at the moon. The raft is not the shore. It is us all together, for we are one.