The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

“Drop by drop is the water pot filled.

Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, 

fills himself with good.”

~Dhammapada, v. 122

Lomography / Holga 120mm / WNC / around 2015

T. Adams / social media post / SEP 2026:

The most influential contact Thomas Merton made was with the Buddhist teacher, Chatral Rinpoche, a monk who had spent more than thirty years in the solitary contemplation that was Merton's only real home in this world.

It was Chatral Rinpoche who identified Merton as a pratyekabhudda, and with whom Merton would take a variant of the Bodhisatva's vows, in which he dedicated himself to do all he could to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, in this lifetime or the next.

Merton was already far along that path, as the following entry written in his journal several months before he set out to Asia demonstrates:

"I am the utter poverty of God," he wrote.

"I am His emptiness, littleness, nothingness, lostness. When this is understood, my light in His freedom, the self-emptying God of me, is the fullness of grace. Love for all, hatred of none, is the fruit and manifestation of love of God, peace and satisfaction."

Thomas Merton on meeting Chatral Rinpoche, Interview

In 1968 in Darjeeling, Chatral Rinpoche had a famous meeting with the Trappist Monk, Father Thomas Merton.
Merton wrote of the encounter:

“.... And there was Chatral, the greatest Rinpoche that I have met so far and a very impressive person. Chatral looked like a vigorous old peasant in a Bhutanese jacket tied at the neck with thongs and a red woolen cap on his head.

He had a weeks growth of beard, bright eyes, a strong voice and was very articulate. We started talking about Dzogchen and Nyingma meditation and direct realisation and soon saw that we agreed very well. We must have talked for two hours or more, covering all sorts of ground, mostly around the idea of Dzogchen but also taking in some points of Christian doctrine compared with Buddhist Dharmakaya, the Risen Christ, suffering, compassion for all creatures, motives for " helping others" but all leading back to Dzogchen, the ultimate emptiness, the unity of Shunyata and Compassion, going " beyond the Dharmakaya" and "Beyond God" to the ultimate perfect emptiness.

He said he had meditated in solitude for thirty years or more and had not attained perfect emptiness and I said I hadn't either. The unspoken or half spoken message of the talk was our complete understanding of each other as people who were somehow on the edge of great realisation and knew it and were trying, somehow or other, to go out and get lost in it, and that it was a grace for us to meet one another.

I wish I could see more of Chatral. He burst out and called me a Rangjung Sangay (which apparently means a natural Buddha) and said that he had been named a Sangay Dorje. He wrote "Rangjung Sangay" for me in Tibetan and said that when I entered the " great kingdom" and " the Palace", then America and all that was in it would seem like nothing.

He told me seriously, that perhaps he and I would attain complete Buddhahood in our next lives, perhaps even in this life, and the parting note was a kind of compact that we would both do our best to make it in this life.
I was profoundly moved, because he is so obviously a great man, the true practitioner of Dzogchen, the best of the Nyingma Lamas, marked by complete simplicity and freedom..... If I were going to settle down with a Tibetan guru, I think Chatral would be the one I'd choose.”

- The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton.

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The One Zen Thinker of the West

social media post SEP 2026 (E. Jensen)

        

In 1958, when DT Suzuki and Merton had their dialogue on Buddhism and Christianity, at the end, Suzuki threw up his hands and said, “I can’t help you, Tom. You’re a typical Western dualist. The only outside chance you have of getting Buddhism is to read that one Zen thinker of the West, Meister Eckhart.” And Merton said, “But he’s been condemned by the Church.” Suzuki said, “Well, I can’t help that, can I?”

Merton thought it over, and started to read Zen poetry and Eckhart. And he totally shifted. Merton up to 1958 was a very dualistic, guilt-ridden, Augustinian monk. Merton from 1958 on is confident, he’s Buddhist, and he’s prophetic. And in his journal that he wrote on his last trip to Asia - his only trip to Asia, but his last trip in this lifetime because he died there - he was writing in his journal, “Eckhart is my lifeboat. Eckhart is my lifeboat.” So Eckhart was profound; he brought on the shift in Merton’s whole consciousness.

~  Reverend Matthew Fox

From: "The Lotus and the Rose. A Conversation Between Tibetan Buddhism & Mystical Christianity"

By Reverend Matthew Fox and Lama Tsomo

Namchak Publishing

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki 1870 – 1966, was a Japanese essayist, philosopher, religious scholar, and translator. He was an authority on Buddhism, especially Zen and Shin, and was instrumental in spreading interest in these (and in Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. He was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Sanskrit literature.

Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities and devoted many years to a professorship at Ōtani University, a Japanese university of the Ōtani School of Jōdo Shinshū. Suzuki was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963.

Excerpt from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._T._Suzuki

 

Carlisle, Ontario, CA / Summer 2026

“I stand before you tonight to represent the people who do not count: The poor, the poets, and monks.  As long as there are people who are trying to realize the divine in themselves, there shall be hope in the world.”

Thomas Merton, 1968; quoted in Tales of Wonder by Huston Smith

~

A little over 60 years ago, on July 12, 1966, Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki died. Merton drew much of his study of Buddhism, Zen, and Japanese culture from the writings of Suzuki. He received permission in 1964 to travel to New York for Suzuki's last visit to the United States. (social media post / 2026)

Photo of Merton and Suzuki taken by Mihoko Okamura, June 1964

 

        Zen Dancing Monoprints

There I was in Sausalito, on a houseboat drinking wine with my main man, Alan Watts.  Cool music was playing.  I looked up as Kazuaki Tanahashi and Morihei Ueshiba walked in, deep in conversation. Wow, I thought, this is a perfect situation for zen dancing!  So I got up and started to whirl around.  After a few minutes Alan Watts gets up and starts to move, too  Then Kaz and O-sensei get into the action.  Suddenly, someone picks up a glass of wine and hurls it at the white wall.  As we started to leave, Kaz reached into his robe, pulled out some gold paint, and threw it around.  Quite an experience - a koan waiting to be painted.

Gary Miller, monoprint artist:  “Inspired by Zen teachings and a lifetime of spiritual inquiry, I use sumi-e ink, black walnut wash, acrylic paint and gel plate printing techniques to render unique images hoping to inspire the imagination.”

New York, 2026

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May All Beings be Safe

May All Beings be Healthy

May All Beings be Happy

May All Beings know Love

Helen

Baba Center / South Carolina / digital / 2012

"Back in 1951 , when I prepared to leave the Ryutaku-ji monastery, Soen Roshi gave me a pottery tea bowl, one of a set of three of differing forms but similar glaze and pattern, made by the Tokyo potter Guro.  

The Roshi had already given one of the bowls to G. Ray Jordan during his first visit to the United States in 1949.  Whenever two of us meet, we bring our bowls and have ceremonial tea with them, as an expression of our brotherhood: the three bowls are known as the Brother Bowls.  

Only once in the over twenty-five years since the bowls were dispersed have all three brothers met together for such a ceremony, at the Ojai sesshin in 1968.  At that time, the three of us exchanged the bowls, so now I have a renewed symbol of our little sangha."

- Robert Aitken in A Zen Wave, circa 1978

 

 

As It Flows

spring in WNC / digital

Zen is not a belief system. 

It’s not a ritual, or a set of rules.

It’s a way of living, simple, natural, awake.

It means showing up for life exactly as it is, 

with all its beauty and brokenness, 

its stillness and storms.

Living Zen is Living Life totally, intimately, 

as it flows.

- Roberto Borrebach Klaui

(FB Post May 2026)

 

Two Arrows Zen

(social media post June2026)

“Outside the window, the bright red of ripe persimmons was bathed in the evening sun.  It seemed to send out a red glow even to the bamboo of the pothook over the hearth.”  -  Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata

~

On June 14, 1899, Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan.

Today, Kawabata is remembered as one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century and as the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1968. His achievement marked a significant moment in the global recognition of Japanese literature and culture.

Although not a Zen teacher or Buddhist scholar, Kawabata’s work is often associated with qualities that have long been linked to Japanese Buddhist aesthetics: simplicity, impermanence, restraint, attentiveness, and an appreciation for the subtle beauty of ordinary experience.

His novels emerged from a cultural landscape shaped by centuries of Buddhist thought, classical poetry, tea ceremony, landscape painting, and contemplative practice. Rather than presenting philosophical arguments, Kawabata explored themes of transience, memory, solitude, and beauty through carefully observed moments and spare, evocative prose.

In his Nobel Prize lecture, Japan, the Beautiful and Myself, Kawabata reflected extensively on the influence of Zen monks, Buddhist poetry, and traditional Japanese arts. The address remains one of the most important statements by a modern Japanese writer on the relationship between culture, spirituality, and artistic expression.

Works such as Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and The Old Capital introduced generations of Western readers to a sensibility in which beauty is often inseparable from impermanence. The changing seasons, a fleeting encounter, a tea bowl, a snowfall, or a passing glance become occasions for reflection on the ephemeral nature of human experience.

Kawabata’s contribution to the transmission of Asian contemplative traditions is therefore subtle but significant. Alongside figures such as D.T. Suzuki, who introduced Zen through scholarship and translation, Kawabata helped acquaint Western audiences with the aesthetic and cultural world from which many Buddhist traditions emerged.

More than a century after his birth, his work continues to remind readers that attention itself can become a form of contemplation, and that the ordinary moments of life often reveal their deepest significance precisely because they do not last.

In this sense, Kawabata’s literature remains a quiet invitation to encounter impermanence not as a problem to be solved, but as one of the conditions that makes beauty possible.

~