Some time ago, Thomas Merton became interested in Zen; and some
time ago, Thomas Merton stopped writing books. The present
publication combines those two facts into one tangible result,
yelept Zen and the Birds of Appetite, which is a collection of
previously published pieces from the Merton scrapbook on various
aspects of Zen. Zen is essentially an experience rather than a
philosophy, and Merton approaches that experience here through the
medium of Japanese philosophy and Japanese art, as well as by
analysis of the classic masters of Zen. The total message is that a
Westerner can hardly expect to understand Zen, but he should study
it because there is something of Zen in every creative human act -
which is very like saying that there is something human in every
human act. A very minor bit of Mertoniana, illustrating perhaps
what the Chinese Zen masters called wu-wei ("non-action") of a
talented author. (Kirkus Reviews)
"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, 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
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