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Monastic culture and aesthetics
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
Currently, I am reading and using Thomas Merton's last completed book, published just after his death, which his Order entitled The Climate of Monastic Prayer, and which has been republished as Contemplative Prayer (1996. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-09219-9) with a wonderful and touching Introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Some of the most important, productive and skillful conversations between Buddhist and Christians have taken place between monastics, monks and nuns, from the two traditions. Indeed, it has often seemed to me that it is in this long monastic tradition that we can find common ground, a shared experience. What is more, the task of authenticity and relevance in this 21st century world is made so much happier if we are labouring together in "the vineyard".
I have been very struck by the following passage and its attendant footnote:
The fact that Merton links the discussion about "monastic culture" with aesthetics is, in itself, significant. To many Westerners, encountering some forms of Buddhism, comment on the abundance of images and decorative motifs, the high colours and the rituals. There is a tendency to rush past these, to dismiss them as superfluous or, even, as obstacles to the more rarified forms of meditation.
Merton's point goes well beyond Christian mysticism or Buddhist one-pointed mind (cittasekagata). He could have pointed out that, before Picasso produced masterpieces of cubism and beyond, he demonstrated his skill in traditional draftsmanship. The great jazz players know the standards so intimately that they can improvise away from them without fear.
I have no doubt that there exists, in Buddhist monasticism, the same debates as continue to be held among Christian monastics, in a world which belittles their lives. Merton's book gives a clear-eyed view of the great riches that are available.
Some of the most important, productive and skillful conversations between Buddhist and Christians have taken place between monastics, monks and nuns, from the two traditions. Indeed, it has often seemed to me that it is in this long monastic tradition that we can find common ground, a shared experience. What is more, the task of authenticity and relevance in this 21st century world is made so much happier if we are labouring together in "the vineyard".
I have been very struck by the following passage and its attendant footnote:
The aesthetic aspect of the life of worship must not be neglected, especially today when we are barely recovering from an era of abomination and desolation in sacred art, due in part to a kind of manichaean attitude towards natural beauty on the one hand, and a rationalistic neglect of sensible things on the other. So, all that has been said above in quotations from St John of the Cross and other doctors of Christian mysticism about "dark contemplation" and "the night of sense" must not be misinterpreted to mean that the normal culture of the senses, of artistic taste, of imagination, and of intelligence should be formally renounced by anyone interested in a life of meditation and prayer. On the contrary, such culture is presupposed. One cannot go beyond what one has not yet attained, and normally the realization that God is "beyond images, symbols and ideas" dawns only on one who has previously made good use of all these things, who has a thorough and mature "monastic culture"*, and having reached the limit of symbol and idea goes on a further stage in which he does without them, at least temporarily. For even if these human and symbolic helps to prayer lose their usefulness in the higher forma of contemplative union with God, they still have theirnplace in the ordinary everyday life even of the contemplative. They form part of the environment and cultural atmosphere in which he usually lives.
*[Merton adds a footnote at this point:]
The term "monastic culture" is beginning to be seriously discussed today. It implies the development of a set of tastes and skills, of openness to certain specifically monastic values in all the arts and disciplines that have relation to the monastic life in all its fulness. One could say for example, that for the twentieth century Christian monk, "monastic culture" would imply not only an education in all that is living and relevant to monastic theology, tradition, and literature, as weell as art, architecture, poetry, etc., but also in other religious cultures. Hence a certain knowledge of Zen, of Sufism, of Hinduism can rightly claim a place in thye monastic cultureof the modern monk of the West.
The fact that Merton links the discussion about "monastic culture" with aesthetics is, in itself, significant. To many Westerners, encountering some forms of Buddhism, comment on the abundance of images and decorative motifs, the high colours and the rituals. There is a tendency to rush past these, to dismiss them as superfluous or, even, as obstacles to the more rarified forms of meditation.
Merton's point goes well beyond Christian mysticism or Buddhist one-pointed mind (cittasekagata). He could have pointed out that, before Picasso produced masterpieces of cubism and beyond, he demonstrated his skill in traditional draftsmanship. The great jazz players know the standards so intimately that they can improvise away from them without fear.
I have no doubt that there exists, in Buddhist monasticism, the same debates as continue to be held among Christian monastics, in a world which belittles their lives. Merton's book gives a clear-eyed view of the great riches that are available.
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