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The Journals of Thomas Merton #7
The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey
With the election of a new Abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton enters a period of unprecedented freedom, culminating in the opportunity to travel to California, Alaska, and finally the Far East – journeys that offer him new possibilities and causes for contemplation. In his last days at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton continues to follow the tumultuous events of the sixties, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. In Southeast Asia, he meets the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist and Catholic monks and discovers a rare and rewarding kinship with each. The final year is full of excitement and great potential for Merton, making his accidental death in Bangkok, at the age of fifth-three, all the more tragic.
368 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1998
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About the author
Thomas Merton
559 books1,901 followersThomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani and in May 1949 he was ordained to priesthood. He was a member of the convent of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
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February 18, 2024
A Final Walk with an Old Friend
One of the spiritual sages I wish I could have met was Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who startled the post-World War II world with his 1948 classic The Seven Storey Mountain. After my own father returned from service with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater of WWII, my father read that vocational memoir by Merton and my father credited it with helping him to discern his own vocation to ministry. His choice was Methodism, not Merton's Catholicism, but Merton's books accumulated on my father's library shelves as I was growing up. I read my father's copy of The Seven Story Mountain as a teenager and was fascinated by ballpoint check marks my father made in the margins when he was especially struck by a certain passage.
Years later, my wife and I, when we were in our 20s, became deeply interested in Shaker history and culture. I wrote more about that in my November 2023 review of a collection of Merton's letters with Shaker historians. My spiritual connection with Merton, who had died while attending a conference in Thailand in 1968, grew stronger when I discovered that Merton loved the site of the Shaker community in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. I learned that Merton sat and meditated in some of the same places I liked to sit in that historical site.
So, throughout my life, I have collected a good number of Merton books and, just recently, felt moved to read the final volume of his journals. A major portion of this volume is comprised of entries he wrote during the final two months of his life, while he was traveling in Asia. Once again, I was surprised to discover that he had sat and meditated in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok. In one of my visits to Asia as a journalist, I found my way to that same landmark temple and was so impressed by my experience there that, for a long time, my online social media photo showed me sitting in that temple. As I read the pages in Merton's journal that he wrote just a few days before his death—I was struck by his description of sitting at that place.
Haunting. I stopped reading for a long moment. Emotion welled up as I read that description.
This volume ends with Merton's last journal entry and does not include an appendix about his death. That's for the best, because—to date—no one is quite sure how he died. One often-repeated version is that he was accidentally electrocuted by a faulty fan in his room—and that always made sense to me given the state of some electrical appliances I encountered myself in some Asian accommodations decades ago. But there also are theories about Merton's "enemies" perhaps arranging his death. After all, he had become a well-known critic of the Vietnam War.
I do want to point out that there is nothing in his journals about possible "enemies" trailing him in Asia. There's no sense that he feared anything except for the occasional bad water or bad food. As a result of that, he experienced a couple of bouts of illness in Asia.
What really touched my heart was his spiritual openness in these final journal entries. At this point in his life, he was celebrated around the world as a best-selling author and a great religious mentor to many people. He was in Asia to appear at two major conferences, an earlier one in Calcutta and then the one in Bangkok where his life was cut short at age 53.
One thing I had not realized, until reading this collection of final journal entries, was that he was contemplating moving to Asia. His trip, in part, was to investigate whether he could move from his monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, to some new site in Asia. Within those two months, in addition to the two major conferences, he also traveled to the Himalayan region to meet three times with the then-young Dalai Lama, who was 20 years younger than Merton at the time.
In fact, less than a week before his death, Merton was writing about additional Asian countries he wanted to visit and holy sites he hoped to experience. "The journey is only begun," he wrote. He was especially wanting to visit Indonesia, where I also have spent time, in my case as a journalist. He had even booked his ticket to Jakarta before his death. Had he made that leg of his trip, I'm certain he would have sat in meditation at a couple of holy sites where I have spent time in Jakarta.
The morning of the day he died was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and he celebrated Mass that morning before moving on to the center where he would deliver a talk, then return to his room to relax—and wind up dead.
The spiritual restlessness that runs through these journal passages feels so familiar to me, having traveled around the world as a journalist covering religious diversity. One day, not long before he died, Merton was infuriated by a frustrating snafu with his luggage at an airport. I know the feeling. One day, he noted that he was sick of airplanes and hotels. I know the feeling.
And yet he woke up each morning and greeted the spiritual renewal of each day. It moves me that his final day began with Mass. The bedrock beneath his journey was a faithful daily discipline. And, once again, I can say: I know the feeling.
This collection of journal entries may seem disjointed and perhaps even confusing to other readers, but for me they were a chance to walk with an old friend, even though we have been separated in this life by his untimely death. No, I never met Merton, but he is as alive to me as anyone today.
One of the spiritual sages I wish I could have met was Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who startled the post-World War II world with his 1948 classic The Seven Storey Mountain. After my own father returned from service with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater of WWII, my father read that vocational memoir by Merton and my father credited it with helping him to discern his own vocation to ministry. His choice was Methodism, not Merton's Catholicism, but Merton's books accumulated on my father's library shelves as I was growing up. I read my father's copy of The Seven Story Mountain as a teenager and was fascinated by ballpoint check marks my father made in the margins when he was especially struck by a certain passage.
Years later, my wife and I, when we were in our 20s, became deeply interested in Shaker history and culture. I wrote more about that in my November 2023 review of a collection of Merton's letters with Shaker historians. My spiritual connection with Merton, who had died while attending a conference in Thailand in 1968, grew stronger when I discovered that Merton loved the site of the Shaker community in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. I learned that Merton sat and meditated in some of the same places I liked to sit in that historical site.
So, throughout my life, I have collected a good number of Merton books and, just recently, felt moved to read the final volume of his journals. A major portion of this volume is comprised of entries he wrote during the final two months of his life, while he was traveling in Asia. Once again, I was surprised to discover that he had sat and meditated in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok. In one of my visits to Asia as a journalist, I found my way to that same landmark temple and was so impressed by my experience there that, for a long time, my online social media photo showed me sitting in that temple. As I read the pages in Merton's journal that he wrote just a few days before his death—I was struck by his description of sitting at that place.
Haunting. I stopped reading for a long moment. Emotion welled up as I read that description.
This volume ends with Merton's last journal entry and does not include an appendix about his death. That's for the best, because—to date—no one is quite sure how he died. One often-repeated version is that he was accidentally electrocuted by a faulty fan in his room—and that always made sense to me given the state of some electrical appliances I encountered myself in some Asian accommodations decades ago. But there also are theories about Merton's "enemies" perhaps arranging his death. After all, he had become a well-known critic of the Vietnam War.
I do want to point out that there is nothing in his journals about possible "enemies" trailing him in Asia. There's no sense that he feared anything except for the occasional bad water or bad food. As a result of that, he experienced a couple of bouts of illness in Asia.
What really touched my heart was his spiritual openness in these final journal entries. At this point in his life, he was celebrated around the world as a best-selling author and a great religious mentor to many people. He was in Asia to appear at two major conferences, an earlier one in Calcutta and then the one in Bangkok where his life was cut short at age 53.
One thing I had not realized, until reading this collection of final journal entries, was that he was contemplating moving to Asia. His trip, in part, was to investigate whether he could move from his monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, to some new site in Asia. Within those two months, in addition to the two major conferences, he also traveled to the Himalayan region to meet three times with the then-young Dalai Lama, who was 20 years younger than Merton at the time.
In fact, less than a week before his death, Merton was writing about additional Asian countries he wanted to visit and holy sites he hoped to experience. "The journey is only begun," he wrote. He was especially wanting to visit Indonesia, where I also have spent time, in my case as a journalist. He had even booked his ticket to Jakarta before his death. Had he made that leg of his trip, I'm certain he would have sat in meditation at a couple of holy sites where I have spent time in Jakarta.
The morning of the day he died was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and he celebrated Mass that morning before moving on to the center where he would deliver a talk, then return to his room to relax—and wind up dead.
The spiritual restlessness that runs through these journal passages feels so familiar to me, having traveled around the world as a journalist covering religious diversity. One day, not long before he died, Merton was infuriated by a frustrating snafu with his luggage at an airport. I know the feeling. One day, he noted that he was sick of airplanes and hotels. I know the feeling.
And yet he woke up each morning and greeted the spiritual renewal of each day. It moves me that his final day began with Mass. The bedrock beneath his journey was a faithful daily discipline. And, once again, I can say: I know the feeling.
This collection of journal entries may seem disjointed and perhaps even confusing to other readers, but for me they were a chance to walk with an old friend, even though we have been separated in this life by his untimely death. No, I never met Merton, but he is as alive to me as anyone today.
September 9, 2010
This is Thomas Merton's last journal before he died of electrocution in Asia. He has blown apart my idea of a monk in a hermitage. He had visitors from near and far, he went out to fine restuarants for social meals, he wrote to women romantically, he enjoyed fine wine frequently, he took his dog walking, he edited a poetry magazine, he harshly criticized personally his superiors. He read profusely and was my idea of an erudite. So much for isolation, humility and poverty. But a brilliant man who had a great effect on those around him and the on the readers of his many books.
March 9, 2019
The Most Complex of Merton’s Journals
Merton’s trajectory towards his death in Thailand is filled with golden nuggets, but one must mine them. Merton is a scholar of Eastern religion, especially Buddhism. This overwhelms the reader who is not so well-versed.
Merton’s trajectory towards his death in Thailand is filled with golden nuggets, but one must mine them. Merton is a scholar of Eastern religion, especially Buddhism. This overwhelms the reader who is not so well-versed.
April 14, 2021
A decent spiritual writer and an execrable poet, Thomas Merton was without doubt one of the great diarists. His writings made Catholicism respectable for many thinking people who were attracted to the Church but not entirely at home with the traditional pieties. So it matters, a lot, whether as some claim Merton lost his faith at the end of his life and if so why.
Certainly there is an unfamiliar note of bitterness at the start of this volume, deep disillusionment with the monastery and cynicism about the Church, desire to be off again and find something else. But – one has to ask – was Merton not sick above all of himself? He had had the opportunity to fulfil his supposed vocation as hermit – the Bestseller Hermit! – and had not found it to his liking.
But Merton had always been susceptible (as most of us are) to the pressure of outside events. His conversion to Catholicism came with the outbreak of WWII, and – although I don’t think he was consciously dodging it – his decision to become a monk immediately followed the introduction of the Draft in America. In this case it looks as though his bout of revulsion from Gethsemani was probably the result of his fear at the time that he would be made abbot. He was absolutely against that – indeed he threatens to refuse it if appointed – probably because it would have meant his options were finally closed off.
In any case, once he has persuaded himself that he needs to go off on a spiritual tour of Asia he seems to recover his equilibrium; he starts to reconsider his relationship with Gethsemani more positively, and to make plans about its future. And there is certainly no sign that he has actually lost faith in God. If he has become a humanist – as one writer claimed – it is only in the sense that we are all humanists, a sense which does not entail atheism.
It’s sobering to read the last page of the diary, with – of course – no hint of the accidental death awaiting him, and you wonder what his last thought (if he had time for any) were. I think the one definite conclusion we can come to about his life is that the spiritual complacency evident in his early work had turned out to be an illusion, or at any rate only temporary. He had not succeeded in submitting himself in obedience to his Order. He had not been content with seclusion from the world. He had not overcome the ‘shadow’ he mentions in Seven Storey Mountain, ‘this other fellow’ who ‘wants to drink my blood’ – the Merton who wanted to be a celebrated writer, intellectual and all-round bighead. Merton had not overcome himself, but he had not stopped trying; and maybe that is the most that can be said of any of us.
Certainly there is an unfamiliar note of bitterness at the start of this volume, deep disillusionment with the monastery and cynicism about the Church, desire to be off again and find something else. But – one has to ask – was Merton not sick above all of himself? He had had the opportunity to fulfil his supposed vocation as hermit – the Bestseller Hermit! – and had not found it to his liking.
But Merton had always been susceptible (as most of us are) to the pressure of outside events. His conversion to Catholicism came with the outbreak of WWII, and – although I don’t think he was consciously dodging it – his decision to become a monk immediately followed the introduction of the Draft in America. In this case it looks as though his bout of revulsion from Gethsemani was probably the result of his fear at the time that he would be made abbot. He was absolutely against that – indeed he threatens to refuse it if appointed – probably because it would have meant his options were finally closed off.
In any case, once he has persuaded himself that he needs to go off on a spiritual tour of Asia he seems to recover his equilibrium; he starts to reconsider his relationship with Gethsemani more positively, and to make plans about its future. And there is certainly no sign that he has actually lost faith in God. If he has become a humanist – as one writer claimed – it is only in the sense that we are all humanists, a sense which does not entail atheism.
It’s sobering to read the last page of the diary, with – of course – no hint of the accidental death awaiting him, and you wonder what his last thought (if he had time for any) were. I think the one definite conclusion we can come to about his life is that the spiritual complacency evident in his early work had turned out to be an illusion, or at any rate only temporary. He had not succeeded in submitting himself in obedience to his Order. He had not been content with seclusion from the world. He had not overcome the ‘shadow’ he mentions in Seven Storey Mountain, ‘this other fellow’ who ‘wants to drink my blood’ – the Merton who wanted to be a celebrated writer, intellectual and all-round bighead. Merton had not overcome himself, but he had not stopped trying; and maybe that is the most that can be said of any of us.
October 29, 2018
I wondered if I should actually rate someone's journal. Guess so, because I did really like it. Merton's writing has influenced me directly, but probably even more indirectly through others who knew him and taught me in person or in writing. This book is his journal during his last year or so of life. He is open about his thoughts and feelings during that time. Some of it is notes from things he was reading from Eastern religions. It obviously meant something to him, but was not understandable to me. A lot is notes about his travel in Asia in the last few months of life. And there is a lot about how it was for him trying to live a hermit's life. At this point he was already very well known and solitude was not easily found. Still he had a lot more time in solitude than most and it is interesting to hear about his days from his lips. He's basically talking to himself and not making it all pretty and cogent for the public. I recommend this book for someone who already loves Thomas Merton. For one who hasn't read much of his work, it would be good to do that first.
I especially enjoyed his thoughts about the upcoming election of a new abbot and how he insisted that he would not take that job. Another highlight was an experience of enlightenment that happened a few days before he died when he was at a Buddhist shrine in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). I found what he was looking for on that trip to Asia.
There are apparently other journals that were published, but for me this last one is probably all I'll be reading.
I especially enjoyed his thoughts about the upcoming election of a new abbot and how he insisted that he would not take that job. Another highlight was an experience of enlightenment that happened a few days before he died when he was at a Buddhist shrine in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). I found what he was looking for on that trip to Asia.
There are apparently other journals that were published, but for me this last one is probably all I'll be reading.
July 12, 2020
Exceptional journal. Best I've ever read and conclusion of his life.
April 22, 2010
For a monk devoted to contemplation and solitude Merton had a busy social life, but his contradictions make him all the more interesting. I thought there was a lot of material here that should have been edited, but that is to be expected in a posthumous publication. There is, however, plenty of first rate material here.
There is this strange and disturbing foreshadowing throughout the book and he contemplates whether or not to go to the conference in Bangkok, wonders if he can obtain permission to go and ponders the logistics of the trip.
This is the first of his journals that I have read and after reading this I would like to read more of them.
Riddle: What do Thomas Merton and John Lennon have in common?
They were both killed by fans.
There is this strange and disturbing foreshadowing throughout the book and he contemplates whether or not to go to the conference in Bangkok, wonders if he can obtain permission to go and ponders the logistics of the trip.
This is the first of his journals that I have read and after reading this I would like to read more of them.
Riddle: What do Thomas Merton and John Lennon have in common?
They were both killed by fans.
October 16, 2011
This diary from the final two years of Merton’s life is uneven, as I suspect any personal journal must be. Part travel notes, part mundane record of the schedule of a semi-hermit, part spiritual searching; every reader will find some areas intriguing and others a bit dull, depending on the interest the reader brings.
April 15, 2013
It's very sad that the journey is over, that his unique mostly unedited voice is silent. Though he died the fall that my first child was born, there was such freshness in his observations, so much change in his thinking that he seems contemporary. Yes, lots of books and I've read many. But nothing like the journals. Not even the poetry is quite as touching.
Want to read
July 2, 2012I wish I could know if this is a different book than The Asian Journal.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews