Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh: Engaged Spirituality in an Age of Globalization

Christian Century, April 24, 2002 by Richard A. Kauffman

By Robert H. King. Continuum, 202 pp., $24.95.

Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh met once before Merton's untimely death in 1968. After this encounter, the Catholic Merton referred to the Buddhist Nhat Hanh as "my brother." Vocationally, their lives were on similar paths: both were contemplative monks; both were also social activists opposed to the Vietnam War. Robert H. King argues that they were both also exemplars of an emerging paradigm which he calls "engaged spirituality," a spirituality which transcends particular religious traditions and weds activism with contemplation. Three elements characterize such a spirituality, according to King: contemplative practice, social action and interreligious dialogue, none of which is necessarily religion-specific. King's argument, especially as it bears upon Merton's contribution to this "globalization of spirituality," rests partly on conjecture about the direction Merton's spirituality was going in his later years, given his increased interest in Eastern spirituality. Moreover, near the book's conclusion King acknowledges that he and his wife have become practicing Buddhists--they meet with a Zen meditation group twice a week--without giving up their identity as Christians. King's book, if not also his life, is an ecumenism of practice or form, but in this book he doesn't wrestle with the alternative worldviews of Christianity and Buddhism.