Published in book form for the first time, Thomas Merton's

A selection of Merton's finest writing in which he discusses solitude, St John of the Cross, the primitive Carmelite ideal, Christianity and totalitarianism, and the power and meaning of love. The ideas and insight in this book reflect light on contemporary spiritual life.

The spiritual and psychological insights of these essays were nurtured in a monastic milieu, but their issues are universally human. Thomas Merton lays a foundation for personal growth and transformation through fidelity to "our own truth and inner being." His main focus is our desire and need to attain "a fully human and personal identity." This classic is a newly restored and corrected edition and the inaugural volume of Gethsemani Studies in Psychological and Religious Anthropology, a series of books that explores, through the twin perspectives of psychology and religion, the dynamics and depths of being fully human. "When I speak of the contemplative life I do not mean the institutional, cloistered life, . . . I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development . . . . Discovering the contemplative life is a new self-discovery. One might say it is the flowering of a deeper identity on an entirely different plane . . ." --Thomas Merton, from the book

The complete and unedited edition of Thomas Merton's famous autobiography, one of the greatest works of spiritual pilgrimage ever written. 'The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one's own.' Graham Greene 'A remarkable book, a classic of its kind, written in a vivid, rich and alert style which ranges from crisp vernacular to passionate eloquence, full of picturesque incident and passing at times into religious ecstasy.' The Times Literary Supplement 'A book which may well prove to be of permanent interest in the history of religious experience.' Evelyn Waugh

The first collection of Thomas Merton's nature writings serves as a primer on eco-spirituality. Thomas Merton: millions know him as the author of The Seven Storey Mountain, the international bestseller and a modern spiritual classic. Now, in the first collection of his writings on nature, Merton is revealed as a man whose spirituality is rooted in nature, an environmentalist ahead of his time. These writings reveal Merton's approach to ecology as a spiritual issue that exposes the degree of human alienation from the sacredness of the planet. Kathleen Deignan, has skillfully grouped over 300 of Merton's nature writings into thematic sections on the seasons, elements, creatures and other topics and has added an informative introduction. A foreword by renowned environmental and spiritual mentor Thomas Berry and art by John Giuliani complete this important compilation.

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton's last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life.

Never before published except as a series of articles (one per chapter) in an academic journal, this book on contemplation was revised by Merton shortly before his untimely death. The material bridges Merton's early work on Catholic monasticism, mysticism, and contemplation with his later writing on Eastern, especially Buddhist, traditions of meditation and spirituality. This book thus provides a comprehensive understanding of contemplation that draws on the best of Western and Eastern traditions.

Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; it was the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now the Merton Legacy Trust and experts have determined that the book makes such a valuable contribution as his major comprehensive presentation of contemplation that they have allowed its publication.

In this time-honored manifesto, Arnold and Merton add their voices to the vital discussion of what real community is all about: love, joy, unity, and the great adventure of faith shared with others along the way. Neither writer describes (or prescribes) community here, but they do provide a vision to guide our search."

With the election of a new Abbot at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton enters a period of unprecedented freedom, culminating in the opportunity to travel to California, Alaska, and finally the Far East – journeys that offer him new possibilities and causes for contemplation. In his last days at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton continues to follow the tumultuous events of the sixties, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. In Southeast Asia, he meets the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist and Catholic monks and discovers a rare and rewarding kinship with each. The final year is full of excitement and great potential for Merton, making his accidental death in Bangkok, at the age of fifth-three, all the more tragic.

In this day of mindless distraction, we're desperate for reasons to put down our phones and reconnect with our spiritual selves. In time for the 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death in 1968, Silence, Joy is an invitation to slow down, take a breath, make a space for silence, and open up to joy. Poet, monk, spiritual advisor, and social critic, Thomas Merton is a unique-and uniquely beloved-figure of the twentieth century, and this little rosary brings together his best-loved poems and prose. Drawn from classics like New Seeds Of Contemplation and The Way Of Chuang Tzu as well as less famous books, the writings in Silence, Joy offer the reader deep, calming stillness, flights of ecstatic praise, steadying words of wisdom, and openhearted laughter. Manna for Merton lovers and a warm embrace for novices, this slim collection is a delightful gift.

The second volume of Thomas Merton's "gusty, passionate journals" (Thomas Moore) chronicles Merton's advancements to priesthood and emergence as a bestselling author with the surprise success of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Spanning an eleven-year period, Entering the Silence reflects Merton's struggle to balance his vocation to solitude with the budding literary career that would soon established him as one of the most important spiritual writers of our century.

Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu s writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name Zen. The Chinese sage abounds in wit and paradox and shattering insights into the true ground of being. Thomas Merton, no stranger to Asian thought, brings a vivid, modern idiom to the timeless wisdom of Tao."

Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social critic: the late Thomas Merton was all these things. This classic selection from his great body of poetry affords a comprehensive view of his varied and progressively innovative work. Selected by Mark Van Doren and James Laughlin, this slim volume is now available again as a wonderful showcase of Thomas Merton's splendid poetry.

The sixties were a time of restlessness, inner turmoil, and exuberance for Merton during which he closely followed the careening development of political and social activism – Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, the Vietnam war, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Volume 5 chronicles the approach of Merton’s fiftieth birthday and marks his move to Mount Olivet, his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he was finally able to fully embrace the joys and challenges of solitary life: ‘In the hermitage, one must pray of go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice…Solitude puts you with your back to the wall (or your face to it!), and this is good’ (13 October, 1964).

The fourth volume of Thomas Merton's complete journals, one of his final literary legacies, springs from three hundred handwritten pages that capture - in candid, lively, deeply revealing passages -- the growing unrest of the 1960s, which Merton witnessed within himself as plainly as in the changing culture around him.

In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and the irresistible pull of social concerns. Precisely when he longs for more solitude, and convinces himself he could not cut back on his writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about the contemporary culture ("the 'world' with its funny pants, of which I do not know the name, its sandals and sunglasses"), war, and the churches role in society.

Thus despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his celebrity and growing concerns for social issues fuel his writings on civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with those who urge him to leave the moral issues to bishops and theologians.

This pivotal volume in the Merton journals reveals a man at the height of a brilliant writing career, marking the fourteenth anniversary of his priesthood but yearning still for the key to true happiness and grace. Here, in his most private diaries, Merton is as intellectually curious, critical, and insightful as in his best-known public writings while he documents his movement from the cloister toward the world, from Novice Master to hermit, from ironic critic to joyous witness to the mystery of God's plan.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, writer and peace activist. His spiritual classics include New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sign of Jonas, Mystics and Zen Masters and The Seven Story Mountain

The third volume of Thomas Merton's journals chronicles Merton's attempts to reconcile his desire for solitude and contemplation with the demands of his new-found celebrity status within the strictures of conventional monastic life.

"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