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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN

THE JOURNALS OF THOMAS MERTON, VOL. VII: 1967-1968

This last volume in the series of Merton’s published journals, edited by his secretary and friend, Brother Patrick Hart, records the far-flung thoughts and travels of the intrepid Trappist monk during the final 14 months of his unexpectedly shortened life. By the opening date of these journal entries, Oct. 18, 1967, Merton had been living for several years as a hermit, though still part of the monastic community of Gethsemani, in Kentucky. The paradoxical outcome of Merton’s interdependent talents for writing and spirituality was a nagging tension between the fame that befell him for his books and the solitude he needed for his spiritual nurture. After some opening reflections on monastic politics, Merton’s entries turn to what would become his final quest for optimal solitude, in trips to New Mexico, northern California, Alaska, and finally, courtesy of an invitation to attend a meeting of monastic superiors in Bangkok, to Asia, where he enjoyed three memorable interviews with the Dalai Lama. The form and content of the entries varies as much as the travels, including newly written poems by Merton himself, references to books he was reading—by Kierkegaard, Hesse, George Steiner, Foucault, Anaãs Nin, among many others—discussion of current events, from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the remarriage of Jackie Kennedy, and, toward the end, extensive quotes from Hindu and Buddhist spiritual masters. Many of the entries show the hand of the accomplished writer, such as one, a month before Merton’s death, on Calcutta, whose “massive poverty and exhaustion” revealed “the innocence of despair.” Merton saw Asia through the idea of its spirituality and found there, at life’s end, what he in turn left as part of his own legacy: an opening onto a vast spiritual expanse that, beyond all self-expressive need, “can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered.”

Pub Date: July 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-06-065486-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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