In looking for another famous quote from Thomas Merton’s, Seven Storey Mountain, I happened upon a quote from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander which is just a powerful and insightful given the current political and cultural climate.
For myself, I am more and more convinced that my job is to clarify something of the tradition that lives in me, and in which I live: the tradition of wisdom and spirit that is found not only in Western Christendom but in Orthodoxy and also at least analogously in Asia and in Islam.” –Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton.
I have been reading and listening to the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra and I’m impressed at this analogue as Merton calls it. A contemplative heart and soul resides in all mystics regardless of their faith tradition. It is a point on which we could all agree.
Merton spoke of this when he referred to Thich Nhat Hanh as “my brother.”