Mystics and Zen Masters

by Thomas Merton

Overview

Thomas Merton was recognized as one of those rare Western minds that are entirely at home with the Zen experience. In this collection, he discusses diverse religious concepts-early monasticism, Russian Orthodox spirituality, the Shakers, and Zen Buddhism-with characteristic Western directness. Merton not only studied these religions from the outside but grasped them by empathy and living participation from within. "All these studies," wrote Merton, "are united by one central concern: to understand various ways in which men of different traditions have conceived the meaning and method of the 'way' which leads to the highest levels of religious or of metaphysical awareness."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374520014
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/29/1999
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	511,831
Product dimensions:	5.62(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentiethcentury. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968.