FREE ESSAY ON MERTON AND GANDI

MERTON AND GANDI

The Beliefs of 
Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi
David Wardwell
Religion and Personal Experience
. Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi both speak of God in a personal way. They both speak
of God as truth. Famous Thomas Merton, Trappist American monk, was a traditional
Christian. Born in France in 1915 and died in Asia in 1968 Merton was greatly influenced
by the complexities of the twentieth century. His writings served as a personal may in
his search for God.. He pursued the ascending path towards the eternal kingdom of truth,
towards heaven, while leaving the world of shadowy existence behind. Truth would be a
passion of his life. He also took it upon himself to speak on behalf of the
disenfranchised of the word. 
Thomas Merton was a dynamic, modern man who committed himself to a lifelong search for a
meaningful and authentic way of life. He had only one desire and that was the desire for
solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in his peace, to be lost in the secret of
his face. This singular passion and boundless energy led him to combine in one life a
unique variety of roles, prolific spiritual writer and poet, monk and hermit, social
activist, all while living at the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. Merton, a
monk under a vow of silence, found fame by not seeking it, by speaking the truth. Much
can be said with the praise "the truth will set your free" Merton provided a path that is
still setting people free. Freedom from silence. 
Many feel that a monastery is a sanctuary to escape from the realities of the real world.
Merton saw it as helping rescue the world from the new dark ages. "In the night of our
technological barbarism, monks must be as trees which exist silently in the dark and by
their vital presence purify the air." Some believe Merton's world was the monastery
grounds, the whole world was. He believed that all men and women are to be seen and
treated as Christ. Failure to do this, involves condemnation for disloyalty to the most
fundamental of revealed truths. Encounters with Christ must be followed by the encounters
and both must be experienced with the same love. It's a love that frees, not a love that
wants to possess or manipulate. The great Indian teacher, Mahatma Gandhi, philosophy was
very similar.
Merton loved people, but he also loved nature. He told us to begin "by learning how to
see and respect the visible creation which mirrors the glory and the perfection of the
invisible God". Everything that surrounds us, the trees, the ocean, the waves, the sky,
the sun, the birds, it is in all this that we will find our answers. God is omnipresent;
we do not see this because we are not contemplative.
Merton believed a Christian society is one in which men give their share of labor and
intelligence and in return receive their share of the fruits of the labor, which is seen
in the Kingdom of God, a society centered upon the divine truth and the divine mercy. In
such a society the prophetic role of the monk would be fulfilled, in the sense that his
renunciation of the right of ownership was an affirmation of God's ownership of
everything and of man's right to be a possessor only in so far as he was willing to share
with others what he did not need. 
Merton did not feel impelled to become involved in political deeds. He believed the
monk's duty was to cultivate consciousness and awareness however, truth and God demanded
he speak out loudly and often against all forms of war. He stated that the Vietnam war
was an example of Americans seeing their country as the center of the world, imposing
their will, in the name of freedom, on weaker nations that might stand in their way. It
was a needless destruction of human life, a rape of a culture which could only lead to
the death of the spirit of an exhausted people. 
He saw men striving to negotiate for peace, and failing because their fear overbalanced
their true good will. "The root of all war is fear." He taught that we must fearlessly
love even the men we cannot trust, for the enemy was war itself, and peace could not be
brought about by hatred. "Peace does not consist in one man, one party, one nation,
crushing and dominating everyone else. Peace exists where men who have the power to be
enemies are, instead, friends by reason of the sacrifices that they have made in order to
meet one another on a higher level, where the differences between them are no longer a
source of conflict. By such reasoning, Merton brought himself very near to Gandhi's
position on war as well as that of the struggle for civil rights. He saw nonviolence as
not merely the only just means but also the only practicable one of resisting evil and
injustice. Merton believed the Gandhian teachings on civil disobedience were of urgent
importance to the world and especially to Americians. The Christian does not need to
fight and indeed it is better that he should not fight, for insofar as he imitates his
Lord and Master. 
His writings on racial justice and peace were strong and influential. They were changing
the thoughts on Christians. Many people in the private sector and government officials
were upset that an obscure Monk would speak out like this. Fanatics of all stripes
stepped forward with treats against Thomas Merton. It was in the same way, Gandhi set out
to show that the problems of a subjugated India were those of the conquerors and not of
the conquered.
Merton's view of non-violent protests of US involvement in Vietnam is similar to that of
Martin Luther Kings ideas of non-violence in Civil Rights issues. King said "The purpose
of non-violent protest, in its deepest and most spiritual dimensions is to awaken the
conscience of the white man to the awful reality of his injustice and of his sin, so that
he will be able to see that the black man problem is really a white problem: the cancer
of injustice is rooted in the heart of the white man himself.
Merton admired Gandhi for preparing for publication a selection of his sayings on
non-violence, and here was perhaps the most striking example in history of the
combination of a spiritual life with the liberal politics which it irradiated; it was
other men's lack of inner light that made Gandhi's achievement seem in the end a failure.
Mahatma Gandhi was one of the foremost political leaders of the 20th century. He
dedicated his life to peace. He was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in India. He learned
from his mother and neighbors the Indian maxim, "There is nothing higher than Truth". He
also learned that harmlessness or nonviolence was the highest virtue. In 1888, his family
sent him to London to study law and in 1891 he was admitted to the bar. He moved to
southern Africa and spent 20 years improving the rights of the immigrant Indians. South
Africa abounded in color prejudices, even Gandhi with his professional standing and
British education was often subjected to all kinds of humiliation against which he
revolted and protested only to provoke more insult and sometimes physical assault. It was
then he developed his creed of nonviolent resistance against injustice, satyagraha,
meaning truth and firmness. He was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that he
led, but before he returned to his homeland, he drastically changed the lives of the
Indians living in South Africa.
Returning to India, he witnessed discriminatory legislation being proposed by the British
rulers that would take away the rights of citizenship from Indians. This continued his
nonviolent civil disobedience movement in order to gain independence from British rule.
He hoped that the rulers would ultimately would realize their mistakes and rectify the
wrongs. The masses took up Gandhi's call and his movement spread throughout India. He
applied the method of truthfulness and love to organize the people to make them
nonviolent to win their righteous struggle against the British Government. Gandhi had
taken a vow of poverty and lived as the people did, even though he had a choice, because
of this Gandhi became a trusted leader. He became the international symbol of free India.
He believed wholeheartedly that if he was to serve society, he had to give up his greed
for money, hankering pleasures and lead a life of utter simplicity and self-control and
teach others by his own example. Refusing earthly possessions, he wore a loincloth and
shawl like that of the lowliest Indians and survived on vegetables, fruit juices, and
goat's milk. He lived a spiritual and abstemious life of prayer, fasting and mediation.
He was quite sensitive to the charms of nature. He wanted to understand nature as an
expression of God and tried to see life in everything breaking down even the customary
distinction between the animate and the inanimate. 
During the long struggle for independence, he never wavered in his unshakable belief in
nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. When the Muslim and Hindu countrymen
committed acts of violence, whether against the British or against each other, he would
fast until the fighting ceased. Finally in 1947, India won its freedom, however to
Gandhi's despair the country was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Violence
broke out and he was disheartened. The feeling that all he had done was useless because
of his countrymen fighting each other over religion. Nonetheless he plunged himself into
helping repair the riot razed areas and fasted for peace in those places where the
fighting continued over religion until it ceased. However, Gandhi did not celebrate
freedom for very long. He was shot to death by a Hindu fanatic on January 30, 1948 as he
was going to evening prayer. He died with freedom, peace and love within his heart. He
lived a simple life in a world of mounting complexity and practiced nonviolence in a
country that seen brutality on the part of the governing powers. 
Religion to Gandhi meant participating in politics, people oriented politics. Gandhi
believed that in order to be truly religious you needed to take an active part in
politics. Religion involves all forms of human life, while at the same time it provides a
moral foundation of human nature and human society. Human progress can be assured only if
the life of an individual, society or country is based on the fundamental moral principle
of truth To Gandhi truth was God. Politics dedicated to serve the needs of humanity leads
inevitably to a better understanding of Truth. 
Gandhi believed that everyone should be free to choose his own religion. "Religion is a
very personal matter. We should try by living the life according to our lights to share
the best with one another, thus adding to the sum total of human effort to reach God."
The aim of fellowship should be to help man to become a better Christian. "God did not
bear the cross only 1900 years ago, but he bears it today, and he dies and is resurrected
from day to day. If would be poor comfort to the world if it had to depend upon a
historical God who died 2000 years ago. Do not them preach the God of history, but show
him as he lives today through you. Thomas Merton had the same philosophy, "What we are
asked to do people may find God by feeling how he lives within us. Gandhi was endeavoring
to see God through service of humanity, for he knew that God was neither in heaven, nor
down below, but in everyone and everything.
In todays society, competitive economic progress is the root of most rivalries-greed for
possession. When large headlines of cruelty, corruption and greed are plastered in the
news media it usually announces moral chaos, but our system chooses to overcome the
sickness of it. Making excuses by rationalizing and justifying on the basis of some
half-mixed theories of abnormal psychology and the progress of science and technology.
Both Merton and Gandhi tried to make us realize the discipline in order to improve the
quality of our own life. It was by faith and determination that Gandhi made himself so
great and became the moral leader of millions, and achieved by the methods of truth and
love things which looked like miracles in modern age. He surrounded himself with his
brothers and sisters and lived like they did. Merton surrounded himself with his
community only. Through his prayers and writings he reached the outside world and showed
that God was neither in heaven, nor down below, he is in everyone and everything.
They both realized that the world's condition made it more important than ever for the
great religions to reach the level of mutual understanding and mutual enrichment. They
publicly made it know that the present of war is something we have made entirely for and
by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war. They fought
for the abolition of war and to use a nonviolent means to settle conflicts. 
Religions are different roads converging to the same point. Why does it matter that we
take different roads? As long as we all have the same ultimate goal-God. Without love,
especially love of our opponents and enemies, Gandhi and Merton both insisted that
neither profound personal nor social transformation could occur. It is when we love the
other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is and
who we are. Instead of pushing our enemy down and trying to climb out by using him as a
stepping stone we help ourselves to rise by extending our hand to help him rise. They
both taught us to open our eyes to the truth and to direct our actions to others that are
blinded so they may see the truth. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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