Thomas Merton: Clinging to One’s Own Tradition

Paul writes – An interesting excerpt from an Easter 1965 letter by Thomas Merton to Marco Pallis (b. in Liverpool in 1895). A student of Tibetan art, religion, and culture). Merton seems pretty adamant about “clinging to” or remaining within one’s own tradition as it is, and as it unfolds and develops rather than adopting the more contemporary (21^st century) pick n’ mix approach to religion and spirituality. That said, and given the witness of his own life (cf. his Asian Journal), he is not adverse to respectfully engaging with and learning from other traditions from within one’s own tradition. He and others testify to the way that other traditions offer perspective and therefore potentially enrich and deepen ones engagement with one’s own tradition. His comment is not a reflection on conversion, i.e. of leaving one’s own tradition for another.  

“... One must cling to ones tradition and to its orthodoxy, at the risk of not understanding any tradition. One cannot supplement his/her own tradition with little borrowings here and there from other traditions. On the other hand, if one is genuinely living his/her own tradition, he is capable of seeing where other traditions say and attain the same thing, and where they are different. The differences must be respected, not brushed aside, even and especially where they are irreconcilable with one’s own view...

... There is every solid reason even within the framework of Catholic orthodoxy to say that all the genuine living religious traditions can and must be said to originate in God and to be revelations of Him, some more, some less. And it makes no sense to classify some of them as “natural.” There is no merely natural “revelation” of God, and there is no merely natural mysticism (a contradiction in terms). However, this whole business of natural and supernatural requires a great deal of study...”

The letter is published in the fascinating Thomas Merton: a Life in Letters – the Essential Collection (2008) selected by William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen and dedicated to Brother Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O and in “fond memory” of Robert E. Daggy.