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.
