Stand on Your Own Feet!

Thomas Merton and the Monk without Vows or Walls

Nass Cannon

"From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet,” proclaims Thomas Merton on the day of his death. He was quoting an abbot, who gave this advice to the Tibetan monk, Trungpa Rimpoche, confronted with fleeing or staying in the face of an advancing Chinese communist army. Merton interprets this saying to be “an extremely important monastic statement” and asserts that “the time for relying on structures has disappeared.”(AJ 338) This paper explores the concept of a monk standing on his own feet without walls or vows. Traditionally, we view the monk as someone enclosed by physical boundaries, adhering to a particular spiritual tradition, bound by vows. However, stripped to its essentials what constitutes the vocation of a monk? Can its essence be hidden within any vocation? With Merton as guide, this paper focuses on the basic elements of being a monk for those both in the monastery and in the world. It considers the visible monks in the world such as the lay monk, Brother Wayne Teasdale, those of the New Monasticism, and the New Friars as well as those more hidden invisible monks. Concentrating on Merton’s thoughts in regard to purity of heart and reconciliation, the paper will review the transformational process which molds all monks and guides them to “final integration.”

An Atypical Traditional Monk

Thomas Merton is a model of a traditional although atypical monk who stands on his own feet. Secluded behind the walls of a monastery, he continues his vocation as a writer. His yearning for the freedom of solitude leads him into a hermitage. He advocates the peace movement by publicly decrying the Vietnam War and railing against the atomic bomb. He joins the civil rights movement. He studies Eastern religions. Through his writings and actions, he reflects someone who stands on its own feet, arrives at his own conclusions, and speaks the truth with the light that he is given. On the surface, he appears to be an anomaly -- an outspoken monk afloat in the cultural waters of the Cistercian traditions who bridges monastic isolation through diverse activities including a dialogue with men of goodwill from various faiths, traditions, and cultures, rendezvous with the famous such as Joan Baez, and affection for a student nurse. Although he shatters the iconic image of a monk, Merton personifies an authentic selfhood congruent with his interior convictions, a man of integrity. From him, we learn that a monk who lives from the center of his authenticity reveals his true self which is the image and likeness of God, uniquely expressed through his personhood as it exists at a particular place and time in history. For Merton, this meant integrating within himself other cultures, traditions, and religions as he sought to expand his interior boundaries to become more inclusive as expressed in his comments on “final integration”:

The one who has attained final integration is no longer limited by the culture in which he has grown up. ‘He has embraced all of life’… He passes beyond all these limiting forms, while retaining all that is best and most universal in them, ‘finally giving birth to a fully comprehensive self’. He accepts not only his own community, his own society, his own friends, his own culture but all mankind. (CWA 207)

Merton realizes that the human race in all of its diversity is the body of Christ and that all of creation pulsates at its core with energy divine. “We must, first of all, see all material things in the light of the mystery of the incarnation. We must reverence all creation because the Word was made flesh.” For Merton, the monk with this realization has begun his journey to attain final integration which is not a discovery of the mind through words or images but an exploration of the heart.

He was a Trappist Monk living in a monastery, within the enclosed walls of Our Lady of Gethsemane Abbey, at least most of the time. He was fed by the silence and solitude of a monastery which was a “tabernacle in the desert upon which the shekinah, the luminous cloud of the divine Presence, almost visibly descends”. He felt both nourished and restrained by his environment. His writings suggest that at times he was dancing with angels as when he proclaims, “Love sails me around the House. I walk two steps on the ground and four steps in the air. It is love.” On deep issues of conscience, he appears bridled by convention and the arbitrary whims of his superiors and censors, as illustrated by his lament to James Forest in the Cold War letters, “The orders are, no more writing about peace. This is transparently arbitrary and uncomprehending…” However, of greater importance, he was bound by ascetic vows:

The whole ascetic life of the monk, in all its aspects both positive and negative, is summed up in his consecration of himself, his whole life, all that he has and all that he is, to God, by his five monastic vows. The life of the monk is the life of the vows…. Conversion of manners means striving to change one's whole life and all one's attitudes from those of the world to those of the cloister…Obedience means the renunciation of our own will, in order to carry out in our whole life the will of another who represents God. Stability means renouncing our freedom to travel about from place to place, and binds us to one monastery until death. Poverty and chastity are not explicitly mentioned in the rule of St. Benedict because they were considered by him to be included in conversion of manners, but they form an essential part of the monk's obligations. (MJ 52)

Particularly during his hermitic solitude, these vows challenge him to the very depths of his existence.

…all day and all night, the hermit beats his head against a wall of doubt. That is his contemplation…a kind of unknowing of himself, a kind of doubt that questions the very roots of his existence, a doubt which undermines his very reasons for existing and for doing what he does. It is this doubt which reduces him finally to silence, and in the silence which ceases to ask questions, he receives the only certitude he knows; the presence of God in the midst of uncertainty and nothingness as the only reality. (MJ 206-207)

In this desert, Tom Merton disappears (perhaps foreshadowing his last publicly spoken words before he is electrocuted) (AJ 343) and is “swallowed up in Him” (God). (MJ 207) In union with the Holy Spirit, his liberated spirit radiates a creative openness to others reaching fruition in his speech in Calcutta when he says “we are already one…and what we have to recover is our original unity.”(AJ 308) Transcending the limits of monastic formalism, a transformed Merton can ask: “Can there be a monastic life without vows? Is a monastic life with vows necessarily better and more authentic than one without vows?” (CWA 187) He continues with the observation, “In the earliest days of desert monasticism there were no vows, no written rules, and institutional structure was kept at a minimum. The monastic commitment was taken with extreme and passionate seriousness, but this commitment was not protected by juridical sanctions or by institutional control.”(CWA 187) Merton is “…convinced that monastic life without vows is quite possible and perhaps very desirable. It might have many advantages”. (CWA 190) He wonders, “Why could not married people participate temporarily, in some way, in monastic life?” (CWA 188) Finally, he questions the very structure of monasticism, “A greater flexibility in the monastic structure would permit the development of ecumenical monastic communities. There is no reason why non-Catholics and even unbelievers should not be admitted to a serious participation -- at least temporary-- in monastic community life”. (CWA 190-191)

Visible Non-Traditional Monks

Brother Wayne Teasdale

As if in response to his musings, self-declared monks in the world appear after Merton’s death. One of these, Brother Wayne Teasdale, refers to himself as a hermit in the city. Influenced by the works of Merton and the spiritual direction of Thomas Keating in the 60’s, Brother Wayne is no ordinary hermit secluded from others; he taught at a number of institutions including Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. After living in an ashram in India for two years, he became a Christian sanyassi under the influence of Bebe Griffiths who explained to him that “the real challenge for you, Wayne, is to be a monk in the world, a sanyassi who lives in the midst of society, at the very heart of things.” In 1989, the Archbishop of Chicago formally professed him to be a lay monk.

A contemplative, Brother Wayne was active in a variety of social issues such as the cause of the Dali Lama, homelessness and the environment. He also espoused interfaith understanding through “interspirituality” which he views as the commonality of mystical experiences in diverse religions. He defines a monk as “…a person who has dedicated his or her life to seeking God.” (MW XXVI) Teasdale asserts, “The daily tasks of earning a living, paying bills, saving money, getting along with others, being entertained, enjoying healthy recreation, and learning how to interact with difficult people are all part of an active life. So they must also be part of life for a monk in the world, at the crossroads of contemporary culture and experience.”(MW XXIV) For monks in the world, he suggests “…the question becomes how to integrate their glimpse of monastic peace into their everyday lives in the world, how to cultivate contemplation within an active life.” (MW XXVI) He thinks, “To achieve this integration requires the realization that the real monastery exists within them as a dimension of their own consciousness.” (MW XXVI) Brother Wayne views the structure of “Monasticism in all its forms-Eastern, Western, primitive, inventive, contemplative, active, and mixed-exists to nurture the development, fruition, and gifts of the inner mystic or inner monk”. (MW XXVII) He espouses Keating’s pronouncement that “The essence of monastic life is not its structures but its interior practice, and the heart of interior practice is contemplative prayer.” (MW XXVII)

Similar to the desert fathers who went out to the desert and were tested by demons, Brother Wayne thinks “…in our age, the desert is the city—that is civilization.”(MW 13) He desires for there to be more monks in the world because he believes, “A contemplative in the heart of the world has the opportunity to be aware of, to relate to, to touch and heal this suffering, to be a sign of love and hope to those who are so vulnerable in this difficult and indifferent world.”(MW 15) He advises those who wish to be monks in the world to focus their life of prayer on contemplative meditation, spiritual reading, the practice of nature, including walking and sky meditation and allowing for silence and solitude.(MW23-24) He counsels that an effect of contemplation is to root out the hidden motivations in our unconscious, the seeds of selfishness and negativity and to further our integration.(MW 41) A monk transformed by contemplation can envision a society of compassion, mercy, and love and be the leaven to radically transform the world by transforming others, eliminating cultural and economic selfishness.(MW 135)

Teasdale views Merton as a forerunner of interspirituality through his study and appreciation of Eastern spiritual classics. He also believes that Merton’s notion that “we are already one…and what we have to recover is our original unity”(AJ 308) goes beyond our cultural, psychological and religious differences, points to the future of monasticism and is key to transforming the world. To enable this transformation, Brother Wayne envisions a universal order of mystics or contemplatives which would …”include people from all traditions and no tradition at all. They would include young and old, men and women, certain and skeptical, confused, and enlightened.” (MW 218)

New Monasticism

An expression of Teasdale’s vision may be the new monasticism movement.
Although some of the communities date to the early 1970’s with a heritage going back to 1930, the term, “New Monasticism” was popularized by Jonathan Wilson in the 1990’s. It is based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer belief, “the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.” Wilson proposed a new monasticism which would aim at healing fragmentation and eliminate the distinction of sacred and secular vocations. This would be accomplished by a small group of disciples who through intense theological reflection and commitment would lead contemplative and communal lives with a focus on hospitality and concern for the poor. In 2004, a number of existing communities formulated a rule of life, known as the 12 marks. They include living at the margins of society, sharing economic resources, hospitality, just reconciliation, submission to the church, formative process like a novitiate, nurturing common life, support for both celibate singles as well as married couples and children, communal geographical proximity of members, care of the local environment and support of local economies, peacemaking and conflict resolution, and commitment to a contemplative life. Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove believes the work of a new monastic community “…is to tend to a culture of grace and truth in the world”.(NM 135-136) Doing this requires a reliance on the church, where the “the church is called to be a people who love one another and make a life together, tending to a culture of grace in a world broken by sin.”(NM 145)

The New Friars

Another expression may be the “New Friars”. Scott Bessenecker believes
“…we are at the front edge of another missional, monastic-like order made up of men and women, many of whom are in their twenties and thirties, burning with a passion to serve the destitute in slum communities of the developing world—not from a position of power but from alongside them, living in the same makeshift housing breathing the same sewage-tainted air, subject to the same government bulldozers that threaten to raze their communities. They are new friars, flying just below our radar because they have not come under any single denominational or suprachurch banner.”
Like their historic counterparts, he views this movement as having the same roots and reflects the same qualities which he describes as incarnational, devotional, communal, missional, and marginal. Bessenecker thinks, “Slum communities are kinds of chapels in which one can meet face to face with Christ in the dispossessed.” (NF 87) The new friars spirituality revolves around Christ’s pledge, “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”(Mt. 25:40) Their vocation is lived out over months or years alongside the destitute, those who are garbage scavengers, prostitutes, homeless, abused children, and those who are dying.

Brother Wayne Teasdale, the New Monastics, and the New Friars appear to be heroic individuals who stand on their own feet, open to grace. They have responded to the invitation of Christ’s Spirit to “Follow Me” as they serve Christ in their work with the poor and the marginalized. Although their numbers may be small, their hearts are large and their efforts like mustard seeds will have their fruition in the kingdom of God. These individuals are very visible monks in the world. But there are more invisible ones who without vows or walls live outwardly a very ordinary life.

Invisible Non-Traditional Monks

Invisible monks, called to contemplation and solitude, live and work in all strata of society. Their external circumstances appear like those of their neighbors. They work, marry, have children, and socialize while nourishing a hidden vocation to live a life of prayer and to dwell in God’s presence. The paths of their work in the world and their interior life may appear in conflict early in their spiritual journey with time set aside for solitude and contemplation stolen from time set aside for family or work. Ideally at some point, the inner and outer paths join so that in both being and doing their whole life becomes a living prayer.

The hidden vocation of this invisible monk is the same as that of the professed; it is to dwell in God’s presence through a life of prayer. All monks quest to see the face of the Living God and this steadfast pursuit either inside or outside the walls of a monastery, either with or without vows characterizes this individual as a monk. The quest of the invisible monk is that of all monks who desire to be transformed into a new creation in which the old man becomes a new one dwelling in the presence of God.

The monastic monk assisted by vows, monastic practices, the office, the liturgy and the support of his brothers, seeks God alone. However even with monastic support, a monk faces doubt, interior struggles, and obstacles to his pursuit. Just as all of the activities in a monastery is directed or should be directed to facilitate a monk’s union with God, a monk in the world is surrounded by those elemental forces which seek to separate him from God. How then can such a person in the world be a monk? It would appear impossible because of all of the world’s distractions, its temptations, and necessary preoccupations. For the invisible monk without walls or vows or a rule guaranteeing time set aside for prayer, much of his life may be consumed by an occupation or worldly concerns. However such a person discovers that the Spirit which calls one to contemplation also arranges time for silence and solitude. This individual with his whole life surrounded by the obstacles of a secular life may find the core of his existence wound around the pursuit of the presence of God.

What sets both the visible and invisible monks apart is their focused response to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to pursue the beatitude, “Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God.”(Mt. 5:8) The means to this end is contemplation, a flight of the will and mind and heart towards God. This lifetime journey begins with an assent to an invitation from the Holy Spirit to allow the divine fire of contemplation to burn them. Like fire burning a log, this spiritual fire described by St. John of the Cross is oppressive to the soul as it burns away the grime and habits of sin. This solitary work digs at the roots of sin and gives rise to self-knowledge of the interior division and strife and the self-hatred which results from sin. It uncovers the boundaries separating one from one’s true self and from others and from God. As the Spirit breaks down these boundaries, the monk opens himself more fully to the presence of God, particularly as expressed in the presence of others. This presence of God may be discerned not only in those like him but in those who differ, not only in Christians but in Buddhists, and Muslins as well as agnostics and atheists--in all of creation and the family of man. With a mature discernment, one can say with Merton that "we are already one and we have to recover what we are.”(AJ 308)

Of course, the journey to this awareness may be turbulent as monks falter and soar. They appear caught up in the liturgical cycle of the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ as He comes to be born, dies, and rises in them as they live out their lives interpenetrated by sin and grace. Yet this spiritual work wrought in them by God's grace and His Spirit remains hidden from them. They see it dimly but do not know its fruits. In fact, their way of living in the world does not make sense even to themselves. They question their sitting, their meditation, their contemplation, their leisurely gazing, and their dim awareness of the realization of the presence of God. They wonder about the futility of their existence as measured by the productivity of their more active brethren. Days, months, years, decades past and it seems like they have not even made a beginning in the spiritual life. However they are at peace living this marginal life which appears to them to be not only marginal to the world but seemingly even marginal to God. They live in a no man's land in the boundary between Eden where they witness to the light emanating there and a redeemed world darkened by sin. Somehow through the merits flowing from Christ's great sacrifice, they hope to participate in His mediation.

Christian monks participate in that mediation by their interior exploration in which they encounter not only their own heart, but the heart of mankind in which both grace and sin abound. Although, they may be aware of the presence of God and the light of grace, they are also in contact with the darkness of sin and its destructive power in themselves, the world, and others. In some small measure, it is their mission to bring this darkness to the light of Christ. In all hiddeness and solitude, it is their task to allow through them this heart of darkness be filled with the light of Him who is the light of the world. It may well be that they cannot distinguish the darkness within others or the world from that within themselves. It may seem that it is their own darkness, their own sins, that must be exposed to the light of Christ. Perhaps monks share in the sins of mankind as well as share in the redemptive work of He who took upon himself the sins of the world. They may be a conscious meeting point of the light and darkness. As a consequence of this interior struggle, monks seek reconciliation for themselves. In doing so, they become an instrument of reconciliation for others and for the world. Theirs is a never ending task. The solitary journey into the center of their own heart becomes a journey into the center of mankind's darkened heart as they seek to discover the center of their true self where they find God. In their journey, every arrival becomes another departure.

Stand on Your Own Feet

With each arrival and departure, the monk increasingly learns to stand on his own
feet. He does this by withdrawing from an active external identity and concentrates on exploring an inner realm which seeks God through solitude. He stands on his own feet through his faith in God and dependence on Him and through his faith in his community and dependence on them. He stands on his own feet by accepting the responsibility of his freedom and the necessity for obedience.

A monk stands on his own feet by his journey in faith through which he realizes that God is the supporting ground of his existence. He also discovers this support is often expressed through others. God stands such a person on his own feet by allowing him to lean on the backs of others drawn from family, friends, workplace, community, church, society and even the world family. However, the cement holding him in relationships may dissolve as the monk surrenders his group identity for his individual unique identity in God. Later, he may recover these relationships at a more profound level as they become more centered on God. He may even realize St. John of the Cross's pronouncement, “…the soul knows creatures through God and not God through creatures”.”(JC 645) In exchange for his dependence, the monk shares the gift of presence, not only his own but that of the risen Lord. By his fidelity to the quest of seeking the face of the living God, his union with God, however limited, allows him to become a transparent bearer of God to others. The notion that God became man that man may participate in the divine (so often expressed in the liturgy of orthodox and eastern rites) is viewed by the monk as a promise. His whole life revolves around this notion. It forms the core of the "work of God" which has been traditionally expressed through the office, liturgy, choir, the vows, and monastic stability. The monk without walls or vows may use some of these (but also other) means to solitude seeking the same result. All of these ways exist to provide the individual time, silence, and focus, to seek God, be transformed by God through grace, and through union with God participate in some mysterious way in his divinity.

A monk stands on his own feet when he accepts the reality of his freedom and its consequent responsibilities. Of course, this assumes that one is free and not in a state of denial, projection, or evasion of one's situation in life. Accepting one’s mental hang-ups and foibles, one must at least be aware of one’s freedom to decide, to choose, to act. This is not the freedom of the shopping mall, a choice of one material object over another, which may only represent a bondage to consumerism. This notion of freedom involves one's whole orientation to life and creation, to oneself and one's relationship to others. It is a conscious awareness of the freedom of one’s existing in relationship to the world, to others, to God. However, in accepting one’s freedom, one experiences dread. There is much anxiety associated with the acceptance of one's responsibility for one's own life, one's own decisions, and one’s own allocation of resources without others upon which to project blame. This dread arises from the root fear that one is living an inauthentic and illusionary life as situated in the context of the fear of one's death. The very ground of who one perceives oneself to be as determined by relationships, work, wealth, place in the world, dissolves as one realizes the reality of one’s own extinction. One's instinct is to flee this dread and to attempt to fill this void with distractions which is a flight into unreality. Instead, if one opts to live at the center of this dead, the dread itself becomes a school of faith. At its secret roots, dread opens into faith for in this barren desert faith blossoms into the obscure and opaque boundary between the ground of ourselves and the ground of our being, the interface between us and God.

Through faith, a monk encounters God and recovers his freedom. One who stands on his own feet accepts this freedom realizing that he lacks perfection and that his choices may be flawed. He is also aware that his choices may have consequences beyond himself, to others, to creation and to one’s relationship with God. The recovery of one’s freedom requires growth in purity of heart which unties the knots of attachments that limit one’s freedom. The recovery of this freedom also requires obedience to the Spirit of God who heals the wound that estranges one from one’s true self. This wound has primitive roots extending back to the Garden of Eden:

The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. But Yahweh God called to the man. "Where are you? " he asked. "I heard the sound of you in the garden;" he replied "I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. "Who told you that you are naked?" He asked? "Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?" (Genesis 3:8-13)

Like Adam, a monk is afraid and his fear is linked to his disobedience to be a true son or daughter of God. This disobedience makes him afraid and he hides. He hides from God, he hides from his true self, and he hides from others. He fears that he will be discovered, unmasked, unclothed, and be naked before the truth of God which is God’s truth in him. This refusal is not merely a refusal to live authentically in one's vocation, but a much more profound refusal to be the image and likeness of God.

God created man in the image of himself:
in the image of God he created him,
male and female he created them.(Genesis 1:27)

The restoration of this image and likeness is the primary defining task of the monk whether living in the monastery or within the world. The monk’s task is to return to Eden, to return to the presence of God.

The monk accomplishes this by recovering his true self through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. For those in monasteries as well as those in world, the monk’s journey entails a life of prayer, grace, silence and solitude. Prayer exposes their interior through self knowledge, allows the mercy of God to heal their interior wounds, leads them to union with God, and communion with others. Grace liberates them from the false self through the actions of the Holy Spirit who prompts them to seek the truth of themselves as they seek the Truth that is God. Grace restores the lost innocence of Eden through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, their source of grace, their guide and their destination. Silence guides them to the solitude of their true self and the ground of their being where they encounter God and peace.

With the recovery of their true self, they stand on their own feet by discovering their real but hidden identity in Christ in which their spirit and God’s spirit become one. As they awaken to the mystery of the presence of God and increasingly live in this presence, they accelerate their maturity as sons or daughters of the Father. They have not attained to final integration but they are awake and aware of their shortcomings and strive to overcome them. They seek wholeness by pursuing integration of their bodies, minds, and spirits subject to the Spirit of God which enables openness to all persons of cultural and religious diversity, the family of man. They hope for a final and complete integration through full union with the Divine…conscious within Consciousness… realized within Reality… Heaven… where they will experience the deepest aspiration of a monk, to stand on his or her own feet before God and see Him, face to Face.