Some Careful and Dispassionate Ado About Nothing

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	• Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Thomas Merton New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1968 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Some Careful and Dispassionate Ado About Nothing

This is one of Merton's best but most difficult books, one of his most misunderstood by both his devotees and his critics. It is usually either too enthusiastically embraced for the wrong reasons, or glibly dismissed for superficial and ignorant ones.

First of all, Zen is not a religion, it is a way of thinking and seeing, in key ways much like an aesthetic, except that it is an aesthetic toward all of life and not just individual tastes in the plastic arts. The whole concept of a faith in a Western sense is alien to its spokesman here, Suzuki, and Merton is not out to convince he or you otherwise. But Zen can have consequences for faith and belief.

Merton and Suzuki are both old pros and well seasoned in their respective traditions before they get here. Similarities and affinities between Christian monasticism and Zen monasticism are explored, yes, and they are mainly outward. But it is the inner and intrinsic differences which one will remember afterwards. There is no attempt on either side of trying to "bridge" them or paste them over with verbal formulas. True, Merton sometimes picks a poetic statement to explain something basically untranslateable. These statements are pleasing to a Western poetic sense, sound a little mysterious, and apparently constitute "wow" moments for certain Western readers which they assume are appropriately "Zenlike." The title metaphor is a key case in point. But the fact is Zen is absolutely unsentimental and not even "sympathetic" in the Western sense. And to the extent certain Zen sayings or "koans" sound like poetry, this is not their intent but, at best, a secondary effect. Zen is really "nothing" in an absolute sense -- a way so uniquely Oriental that it is really grasped by few Western seekers. It is arguably not even graspable by someone raised, say, to about age 6 in totally Western surroundings. Indeed it is arguably ungraspable even by its most ardent devotees and practicioners. One might call it a sort of cosmic joke except that it is deadly serious. Here is where the consequences for the muddle headed Westerner come in. Whatever Zen "is" or "isn't", it can be overwhelming and, yes, potentially destructive (not just to faith but also to basic sanity) for one not properly mature, seasoned, sane, grounded in a full and deep Christianity. It is worth knowing about and this book is a big aid, but it is not a plaything. As indeed Christianity is not, although unfortunately as now practiced in the West it has been heavily sentimentalized. Zen, if properly pursued, will indeed expose and probably shatter such a weakness -- without really having that aim. Its serious accounting of the void it posits will have such an effect on anything in its path.

Merton and Suzuki approach their dialogue fairly dispassionately, and what proceeds is something of a dissection of the DMZ between these "two paths." Both men are honest enough not to mince or blur distinctions. The potential "equality" of the "two ways" is not explored or promoted; it is irrelevant to both men, not even an issue. While Merton was engaging in this partly in response to a contemporary call to ecumenical "dialogue," in no way does the discussion follow by now classical ecumenical approaches, ie. theological agreements, doctrinal differences, etcetera. Again, Zen is not a theology. Nor is it the difference, here, between apples and oranges -- more between apples and a perfect vacuum. The fact that the vacuum may elude perfect linquistic expression, as any "god" or specifically the Christian God is ultimately a mystery, is not set up as a similarity in other than the most superficial sense. And of course many modern philosophies, even in the West, explore the limits of language as to any subject or even any concrete thing conceivable.

If this all sounds somewhat dry, it is because it is. Frankly, I question how many supposed "readers" or "reviewers" have actually read this dialogue completely, or in any event not by "speed reading." I suspect about as many people have actually read it as claim to have read Finnegan's Wake. No, its no thriller. Its charm is its candid air and the human respect between the two men speaking, across a gulf mutually acknowledged as about as wide as the Grand Canyon. But it remains, after many years, about the most cogent and honest thing on its subject. It might even prove to be the last -- eventually it might be seen that the beginning was the end. And if that's not Zenlike enough, of course, it was really all for nothing anyway . . . .

Just don't capitalize it: ie. "Nothing." Then, no you didn't get it . . . To the extent of course it matters . . . .

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Paved With Good Intentions

Okay I love Thomas Merton, but this is one of his slower moving works. It's good; but as a below reviewer pointed out, it's certainly not for everyone. Thomas Merton had a tremendously open mind toward eastern traditions, and in Kentucky there is actually a Thomas Merton Zen center to this day. But as for a book on Zen goes, this was probably designed more for Christians than Buddhists. In fact, I am pretty sure that it was. Probably the most worthwhile and memorable section of this book was the dialogue between Merton and D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese Zen scholar at that time. Now I never liked Suzuki's style too much for my part, being a Zen practitioner I have always found his approach simply too scholarly for my blood. His Zen was that for the academic community, which is not really good or bad. It's one of the reasons Zen Buddhism has flourished here in the United States in the years since. Here Merton shines through. It's ironic, I find he defends his view on Christianity with much more veracity than Daisetz was probably hoping to convey for his part. The two tried to make it a pretty congruent, or harmonious event, but needless to say there were misconceptions on both sides of the aisle.

Anyway, in terms of Merton's literature concerning Eastern thought - I am much more drawn to his, "The Way of Chuang Tzu." Much more fluent and vibrant. Zen and the Birds of Appetite, on the other hand, sets out to do some remarkable things; but I think it might actually put you to sleep. I could be wrong. After all, this is solely coming from the Zen side of the book review. There may be a plethora of Christians who truly identify with what Merton was conveying here. And similarly, there might even be a good number of Zen practitioners who feel they can relate to it as well. You know, I'm just one small voice here. I wouldn't pay too much attention to me. Because it is, nevertheless, one of those books worth having sitting up somewhere on your bookshelf. I am simply giving one take. So, I hope this review was somehow helpful for you all. I hope you enjoy the book and take something out of it.

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A little book with lots of meaning.

There is something refreshing about this little book. The title will seem a bit misleading - if expecting to find an account of Zen per se - minus the Christian based reflections of the author. However, Merton is known well enough - and these essays show him at his best. The dialogue between D.T. Suzuki and Thomas Merton is fruitful. Christianity and Buddhism have often been presented as antithetical, working from bases too different - to afford dialogue. These essays challenge that perception, without falling into vague generalisations.

If anything, recent years have seen a 'hardening of the orthodoxies' - a retreat into numbingly conservative attitudes. Happily, the essays in this book evoke a more open-ended perspective. There is something arrogant and unspiritual about the wish to deny the value of dialogue between spiritual traditions. Where the 'birds of appetite' wheel and prey, the truth has fallen from sight - be it Christian 'innocence' or the 'fundamental face' of Zen.

We can't deny the merits of a Christian who endeavoured, with a whole heart, to take stock of what goes on in the other World religions. Similarly, we can't look badly upon a Buddhist, who was large-hearted enough to share the workings of the Christian mind and spirit. Merton's encounter with Buddhism exerted a seminal influence upon his whole life-thought. Suzuki's encounter with Christianity - chiefly, through Eckhart, exerted a similar influence (the Eckhartian equation 0=infinity -found its way into Suzuki's hand-written notes appended to the Mastsugaoka Zen Bunka ed of the Rinzai Roku). Let's hope that this new century of ours witnesses more dialogues in this vein.

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Ride your horse along the edge of the sword

This little set of essays on Zen Buddhism by one of the great Catholic thinkers of this century, a Trappist monk often associated with peace theology, is challenging and unique. It is clear the Merton is well-informed about Zen and approaches it from an open mind, seeking affinities between his faith and that of the Zen masters. I half expected a syncretic approach but, for all of his acceptance of ideas and concepts of Zen, Merton never compromises his essentially Christian view of the world. Rather, he embraces Zen mysticism; its apophatic approach to the universe and divinity; its rejection of the world and self; and he finds parallels in Christian life and thought down through the ages. He also describes his discussions with D.T. Suzuki in a way which clearly shows his delight with the man and his ideas. The dialogue between the two men shows the similarities as well as some of the differences in their thinking.

While most of the book elucidates Zen philosophy and relates it to western Christian thinking, a chapter on Zen and art rounds things out nicely. For anyone interested in Zen or Christianity this book will definitely be of interest. It has, in my opinion, the added benefit of pointing out the many parallels between Christian mystical and ascetic practices and Zen without confounding or conflating them.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

"Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite--one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the 'nothing,' the 'no-body' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton's discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki (included as part 2 of this volume), the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ. "It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it...." --Doug Thorpe

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