Merton

[Guest guest]

I was just today reading about Merton's Asian pilgrimage and I want to share

this excerpt..there he had 4 nice days with the Dalai Lama, and met several

other lamas..on his way to Bangkok, where he died. Here's a description of

a meeting with the Nyingma lama Chatral Rinpoche. (hint: dharmakaya = true,

ultimate reality, "truth-body of Buddha, for my fellow Americans:))

 

They were both monks of zero pretense and they saw eye to eye. Chatral was a

master of Dzogchen, and he lived in a little gompa high in the hills above

Ghoom. ... The two monks talked for two hours about all sorta of things -

"but all leading back to dzogchen, the ultimate emptiness, the unity of

shunyata and karuna, 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 to perfect emptiness," wrote Merton, and

I said I hadn't either."

 

A few days later, upon seeing the 3 figures at Polonnaruwa, Ceylon - the

Buddha reclining, Ananda, his closest disciple, and a buddha seated in

meditation..he wrote the following of this.

 

"Looking at these figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly jerked clean out

of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness,

clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and

obvious.... The rock, all matter, all life is charged with dharmakaya..

everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in

my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity

running toether in in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram

and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimmage has come clear and purified itself. I

mean I know and have seen what I was looking for. I don't know what else

remains but I have seen and have pierced through the surface and have got

beyond the shadow and the disguise. This is Asia in its purity.. and it is

clear, pure, and complete. It says everything; it needs nothing. And because

it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It

does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to

discover it."