1968 was year of great change in the United States and the wider world: the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the counterculture, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy. In December of that year, Thomas Merton flew to Bangkok, Thailand, and gave a talk about Marxism and monastic life. He recognized that the world was at a crisis point and many monastics of various religious traditions were finding themselves having an identity crisis.
To name the moment, he tells the story of a Tibetan Buddhist monk anxiously deciding whether to stay or flee in the face of the invading Communist army of China. The monk asked his abbot for guidance and the abbot replied: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own two feet.”
Read Full Article »