Thomas Merton is perhaps. in my opinion, one of the most underrated writers today. Christian or not, religious or not, he has much to say that we can benefit from in our currently hectic world. What follows is a selection of passages from his works that I find meaningful. His interest in interfaith dialogue would do us all some good if we learned from it.

"St. Paul is without a doubt one of the greatest attackers of religious alienation. Alienation is the theme of the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle to the Galatians, and it is something worth knowing about… When you stop and think a little bit about St. Benedict’s concept of conversio morum [a conversion of life], that most mysterious of our vows, which is actually the most essential, I believe, it can be interpreted as a commitment to total inner transformation of one sort or another—a commitment to become a completely new man.” - Last talk given in Bangkok titled Marxism from a Monastic Perspective

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.” - New Seeds of Contemplation

“To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. Every form of intuition and experience die to be born again on a higher level of life.” - New Seeds of Contemplation

“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial 'doubt.' This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious 'faith' of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false 'faith' which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our 'religion' is subjected to inexorable questioning… Hence, is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe – for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia.” - New Seeds of Contemplation

“Be poor, go down into the far end of society, take the last place among men, live with those who are despised, love other men and serve them instead of making them serve you. Do not fight them when they push you around, but pray for those that hurt you. Do not look for pleasure, but turn away from things that satisfy your senses and your mind and look for God in hunger and thirst and darkness, through deserts of the spirit in which it seems to be madness to travel. Take upon yourself the burden of Christ’s Cross, that is, Christ’s humility and poverty and obedience and renunciation, and you will find peace for your souls.” - New Seeds of Contemplation

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“The sin of bad theology has been precisely this - to set Christ up against man, and to regard all flesh and blood men as 'not-Christ.' Indeed to assume that many men, whole classes of men, nations, races, are in fact 'anti-Christ.' To divide men arbitrarily according to their conformity to our own limited disincarnate mental Christ, and to decide on this basis that most men are 'anti-Christ' - this shows up our theology. At such a moment, we have to question not mankind, but our theology. A theology that ends in lovelessness cannot be Christian.” - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.” - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

"We all die alone, yet we are all united by the mystery of death. Likewise, the aloneness itself which is where we discover our true self, unites us in the solitude of all." - Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude

"Such men, out of pity for the universe, out of loyalty to mankind, and without a spirit of bitterness or of resentment, withdraw into the healing silence of the wilderness, or of poverty, or of obscurity, not in order to preach to to others but to heal in themselves the wounds of the entire world." - Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude

"The solitary life is full of paradoxes: the solitary is at peace, but no as the world understands peace, happy but not in the worldly sense of a good time, going but unsure of the way, not knowing the way but arriving, arriving but likewise departing. The solitary possess all riches but of emptiness, embracing interior poverty but not of any possession. The solitary has so many riches he cannot see God, so close to God that there is no perspective or object, so swallowed up in God that there is nothing left to see." - Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude

“In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth." - Contemplative Prayer

“Existential dread is the profound awareness that one is capable of ultimate bad faith with himself and with others: that one is living a lie.” - Contemplative Prayer

“Man is the image of God, and his inner self is a kind of mirror in which God not only sees Himself, but reveals Himself to the mirror' in which He is reflected.” - The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

"Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.” - The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

“They went into the desert not to study speculative truth, but to wrestle with practical evil; not to perfect their analytical intelligence, but to purify their hearts.” - The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

“Eckhart goes on to develop this idea of dynamic unity in a marvelous image which is distinctly Western and yet has a deeply Zen-like quality about it. This divine likeness in us which is the core of our being and is 'in God' even more than it is 'in us,' is the focus of God’s inexhaustible creative delight. In this likeness or identity God takes such delight that he pours his whole nature and being into it. His pleasure is as great, to take a simile, as that of a horse, let loose over a green heath, where the ground is level and smooth, to gallop as a horse will, as fast as he can over the greensward—for this is a horse’s pleasure and nature. It is so with God. It is his pleasure and rapture to discover identity, because he can always put his whole nature into it—for he is this identity itself.” - Zen and the Birds of Appetite

“Buddhist philosophy is an interpretation of ordinary human experience, but an interpretation which is not revealed by God nor discovered in the access of inspiration nor seen in a mystical light. Basically, Buddhist metaphysics is a very simple and natural elaboration of the implications of Buddha’s own experience of enlightenment. Buddhism does not seek primarily to understand or to 'believe in' the enlightenment of Buddha as the solution to all human problems, but seeks an existential and empirical participation in that enlightenment experience. It is conceivable that one might have the 'enlightenment' without being aware of any discursive philosophical implications at all.” - Zen and the Birds of Appetite