| Date | Author | Title | Source | Quotation by Merton |
| 1959/03/03 | | I ching : or book of changes / the Richard Wilhelm transl. ; rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes ; foreword by C.G. Jung |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 266
| A most significant event. After much thought, prayer, and debate, consulted the I Ching as, I think a valid experiment. Not a question of sorti-legium [divination], but a consultation in the same spirit as that of Jung in the preface. To learn something of my own deeper moral self and to see more clearly, perhaps, into my most hidden motives and problems. Much as one might take a Rorshach test, for instance. That was the spirit of the experiment. |
| 1959/05/05 | | I ching : or book of changes / the Richard Wilhelm transl. ; rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes ; foreword by C.G. Jung |
Ltrs: HGL p. 389
| The other thing that has kept me waiting is the need for time to digest the superb letter of Pasternak. Things have been in a rush here since Easter, and I have hardly had time to settle down to it until now. It is a tremendously important document, as I need not tell you. One of the things that please me most about it is that it confirms an intuition of my own. You compare him to Donne: I saw a very interesting analogy with an ancient Chinese book which P. probably does not know at all. It is the Book of Oracles called the I Ching. This consists of a series of symbolic configurations of events, or "changes" which one arrives at by drawing lots or tossing coins; but that is not the important thing. What is fascinating is the fact that each change is exactly that sort of fluid "style of movement" "¦ "arrangement of groups" "¦ which constitutes Pasternak's inclinations. Jung has written a fascinating preface to the I Ching, bringing in his archetypes. The I Ching had a tremendous influence on both Confucius and Lao Tzu, and what amazes me is that it is exactly the Pasternak approach. |
| 1959/10/04 | Tung-pin Lü | Secret of the golden flower : a Chinese book of life. / Tung-pin Lü ; transl. and expl. by Richard Wilhelm ; with a forew. and comment. by C.G. Jung ; and a part of the Chinese meditation text The book of consciousness and life |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 335
| The last month has been too wild. Seeing too many people-but they came. God brought them. Distraction. I am very aware of my lack of inner discipline especially since, in the last week, I have been reading the Secret of the Golden Flower [Tung Pin Lu]. |
| 1959/10/25 | Tung-pin Lü | Secret of the golden flower : a Chinese book of life. / Tung-pin Lü ; transl. and expl. by Richard Wilhelm ; with a forew. and comment. by C.G. Jung ; and a part of the Chinese meditation text The book of consciousness and life |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 336-37
| I have been in St. Anthony's Hospital, Louisville, for the removal of a rectal fistula. Went on the 14th. and got back Friday.... Mostly, it was a very good retreat. I had several quiet days with plenty of time to read and think. (Heschel-Man Is Not Alone, Pieper, on Prudence, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and Villages in the Sun (Chandon)-to get some ideas about everyday life in Mexico.) |
| 1959/11/16 | Tung-pin Lü | Secret of the golden flower : a Chinese book of life. / Tung-pin Lü ; transl. and expl. by Richard Wilhelm ; with a forew. and comment. by C.G. Jung ; and a part of the Chinese meditation text The book of consciousness and life |
Ltrs: CforT p. 99
| How is the Jung biography coming along? I was in the hospital lately and read there The Secret of the Golden Flower [eighth-century Chinese work for which Jung had written a foreword and commentary], which is a beautiful and wise book, and highly civilized. |
| 1960/07/10 | Ivor Armstrong Richards | Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 19
| I have been able to take a little time for reading in the woods, but have been trying to do too much especially with Richards' Mencius (getting excited about the ideograms and literal translations in the Appendix). [D. H.] Lawrence's Etruscan Places [London, 1932] is a book with which I am in harmony-I remember the day I discovered the Etruscans in the Villa Giulia. Of course L. has his axe to grind. |
| 1960/12/26 | | I ching : or book of changes / the Richard Wilhelm transl. ; rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes ; foreword by C.G. Jung |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 79
| I read a thing of Kierkegaard with a lovely paragraph on solitude-a bit of Henry Miller on Big Sur (in another place), much Suzuki, Vinoba Bhave. It is an oriental wood. I taught Nels Richardson a little yoga there, walked and planned with Dom Gregorio anxiously there. There walked one winter afternoon after discovering some lyrics in the I Ching. Read The Leopard and Ungaretti there. Above all prayed and meditated there and will again. |
| 1961/04/01 | James Legge | Texts of Taoism |
Ltrs: HGL p. 614
| Now as to the practical details. I have not seen the Giles translation and would be very glad to have it at hand while going through Legge. We do not have anything but Legge here. My edition of Legge may well be a reprint of the one you have. It too is very big, called the Texts of Taoism, but it was printed quite recently by the Julian Press with a preface by Dr. Suzuki. Hence the pagination may be different, that is the only problem "¦ What I can do is tentatively send you a list of passages that interest me in the first four books, and see if you can locate them without difficulty "¦ If I have the Giles book here I can give further references which will help you to locate the texts, but anyway with the subdivisions in Legge it should not be at all hard to give precise indications. |
| 1961/04/21 | John C.H. Wu | Beyond East and West |
Ltrs: HGL p. 615-16
| I am very glad the Mencius finally arrived and I knew you would like it. I am glad you approved of the "night spirit." It seems to me that Chinese is full of wonderful things that the West does not suspect"”like your observation on the lunar month which deeply touched me in Beyond East and West. There are so many fine things in your book. I especially enjoy the notations from your diary that are being read now. The community was in a state of near riot when you described your marriage. I am in love with your parents. The book is most enjoyable and moving. |
| 1961/05/19 | Lao Tzu | Tao Te Ching / Translated by John C.H. Wu |
Ltrs: HGL p. 617
| Paul Sih sent me your translation of Lao Tzu, and this I like very much. I am hoping to write an article on this and the Hsien Ching, which is a beautiful little book. Your translation of the Tao Te Ching seems to me to be the best I know. I have two questions about it. In #23 the word "loss""”is it loss in a good sense, or in a bad sense? Would you enlighten me? And in #12, "The sage takes care of the belly not the eye." What is meant by "belly"? Does it by any chance correspond to the "bowels" in Scripture, i.e., the inmost heart? I enjoyed very much your last etymologies. It is very important to me to get the wonderful differences of nuance and meaning, which have tremendous importance. It is so easy for the English reader to slur over "Superior Man" and "Heavenly Man" as if they were synonymous"”especially in Taoism!! |
| 1961/05/29 | Lao Tzu | Tao Te Ching / Translated by John C.H. Wu |
Ltrs: HGL p. 618
| I have carefully gone through your fine translation of the Tao Te Ching, and it is all superb. I really mean to get down to the article. I loved the Hsiao Ching too. It is so completely in tune with reality. The Zen books you speak of interest me, but my German is slow. I shall be eager to see if they appear in English translation. If I once reached Buddhahood and redescended to my present state, all I can say is that I made a really heroic sacrifice. But I don't regret it, as the other Buddhas seem to have done the same. Yourself for instance. Thus we go along gaily with littleness for our Mother and our Nurse, and we return to the root by having no answers to questions. Whatever I may have been in previous lives, I think more than half of them were Chinese and eremitical. |
| 1961/08/12 | Chuang-tzu | Dschuang Dsi : das wahre buch vom südlichen Blütenland : Nan hua dschen ging / Chuang-tzu ; aus dem chinesischen verdeutscht und erläutert von Richard Wilhelm |
Ltrs: HGL p. 619
| The [Leon] Wieger [French translation of Chuang Tzu] is good to have. He is breezy and to some extent helpful, but above all it is fine to have the Chinese text. [Richard] Wilhelm [German translator of Chuang Tzu] has also arrived and I agree with you, he strikes one as very very solid and trustworthy. I like his work, and am glad to have this. With these translations I ought to be able to do something eventually. It will necessarily be slow and awkward, however. |
| 1961/08/12 | Zhuang Ze | Oeuvre de Tchoang-tzeu / translated into French by Leon Wieger |
Ltrs: HGL p. 619
| The [Leon] Wieger [French translation of Chuang Tzu] is good to have. He is breezy and to some extent helpful, but above all it is fine to have the Chinese text. [Richard] Wilhelm [German translator of Chuang Tzu] has also arrived and I agree with you, he strikes one as very very solid and trustworthy. I like his work, and am glad to have this. With these translations I ought to be able to do something eventually. It will necessarily be slow and awkward, however. |
| 1963/00/00 | Lao Tzu | Tao Te Ching / Translated by John C.H. Wu |
Ltrs: CforT p. 141
| I am sending you John Wu's translation of the Tao Te Ching. The same place has published a translation of an important Chinese Zen work, the Platform Sutra of Hui Neng, but unfortunately the translation, though probably good in its own right, uses terminology that misses the real Zen meaning and does not correspond to the kind of language used by the best Zen men, like Suzuki. At least there should be some agreement on terms. |
| 1964/01/01 | Rudolf Bultmann | Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 52-53
| Sense of God all day. Now Bultmann's idea of God (evening, before Night Watch). Our care meets Him at the end of its capacity. He limits our care and cuts it short. Our love of beauty, our need for love, our desire to work, etc. Bultmann's God is the power who limits, who "sets a terminus" to all this. "It is God who makes man finite, who makes a comedy of man's care, who allows his longing to miscarry, who casts him into solitude, who sets a terminus to his knowing"¦etc. Yet at the same time it is God who forces man into life and drives him into care, etc." Curious? But it is a Biblical notion of God, and very real! (Essays [Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, 1962], p. 5). Not Christian yet! It could equally well be the devil! Yet belief is a "Nevertheless" embracing this power and the limits it imposes, with love and confidence. And it is not a weltanschauung [general idea]! "Real belief in God always grows out of the realization that being is an unknown quantity, which cannot be learned and retained in the form of a proposition but of which one is always becoming conscious in the ‘moment' of ‘loving'" (Essays, p. 7). "Real belief in God is not a general truth at my disposal which I perceive and apply; on the contrary it is what it is only as something continually perceived afresh and developing afresh"¦Not a general cosmic purpose, etc." (p. 7). This will lead him back to say that there is no valid knowledge of God outside of Christian revelation (all other knowledge of Him is weltanschauung). But is this true? Are they merely "general ideas"? (We can see in the longing for a weltanschauung, an escape from the enigma and from the decisive question of the moment"¦etc. But he has apparently not learned the religious and existentialist quality of Buddhism, Taoism, etc.) |
| 1964/12/05 | Wu Wei Wei | All else is bondage : "non-volitional living" / by Wei Wu Wei. pseud. of Terrence Gray |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 174
| Meanwhile a little book [All Else Is Bondage: Non-Volitional Living, 1964] by Terence Gray (Wei Wu Wei) is in the hermitage and I find it clear and right on target. Using a jumble of western terms, but o.k. One must improvise! |
| 1964/12/12 | Wu Wei Wei | All else is bondage : "non-volitional living" / by Wei Wu Wei. pseud. of Terrence Gray |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 167-68
| It was very kind of you to think of sending me the little book of Terrence Gray. It is most valuable and full of very accurate insights. I appreciate very much having such a book at my side and I have been reading it often and thoughtfully in the hermitage, where I am fortunately able to spend quite a lot of time, day and night. It is a good book to keep one spiritually alert. I have no hesitation in saying that the "Buddhist" view of reality and of life is one which I find extremely practical and acceptable, and indeed, I think it is one of the very great contributions to the universal spiritual heritage of man. It is by no means foreign or hostile to the spirit of Christianity, provided that the Christian outlook does not become bogged down in a slough of pseudo-objective formalities, as I am afraid it sometimes tends to do. But I am very grateful for this book, and will be looking for a way to get some of the others. Perhaps the simplest thing would be for me to write to Mr. Gray and propose an exchange of some of my books for his. |
| 1965/05/13 | Mai-Mai Sze | Tao of Painting |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 217
| I have very much enjoyed the Tao of Painting [note 191: Mai-mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 2nd ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1963), which Merton borrowed on his June 6 visit.], which I will send back soon. Duveen is priceless. But I am afraid it has almost fallen apart. Could I borrow your copy of Eric Gill on Clothes? [note 192: Erik Gill, Clothes: An Essay upon the Nature and Significance of the Natural and Artificial Integuments Worn by Men and Women (London: J.Cape, 1931). For Merton's negative comments on this work see his journal entry for Oktober 13, 1965.] Carolyn, I have here a copy of Giles "Confucianism and its rivals" which you sent me. I have never been clear if this was a loan or an extra that you wanted to get rid of. Could you please let me know? |
| 1965/06/06 | Mai-Mai Sze | Tao of Painting |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 253
| On Friday I went to Lexington for some examinations at the clinic (Dr. Fortune) and was supposed to return that afternoon but stayed overnight in the hospital for more tests yesterday morning. What with enemas, proctoscopes, barium enemas, etc. I had a miserable time. When I began these examinations ten or fifteen years ago they were unpleasant but bearable. Since then, my insides have become so sensitive that they are a real torment. However, there is no cancer, there are no ulcers, just a great deal of inflammation and sensitivity, etc. The results of all the tests are not yet in. However, on Friday I had lunch with the Hammers, and borrowed from them the Tao of Painting [by Mai Mai Sze, 1963] to take to the hospital. I had some very enjoyable moments reading it. A very exciting first chapter. Also read [Samuel Nathaniel] Behrman's life of "Duveen" which is very funny [A Biography of Joseph Duveen, Baron Duveen, 1869-1939, 1952]. |
| 1965/06/11 | Mai-Mai Sze | Tao of Painting |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 255
| I take delight in Mai Mai Sze's Tao of Painting, a deep and contemplative book. I am reading it slowly with great profit. She is becoming (with Nora Chadwick, Eleanor Duckett) one of my secret loves. Nora Chadwick writes charming letters and Eleanor Duckett sent me a beautiful spontaneous note written in the Cambridge library on Ascension Day, with a splendid quote on the monastic life from a ninth-century text. |
| 1965/06/23 | Eric Gill | Clothes: An Essay upon the Nature and Significance of the Natural and Artificial Integuments Worn by Men and Women |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 12
| I have very much enjoyed The Tao of Painting, which I will send back soon. Duveen is priceless. But I am afraid it has almost fallen apart. Could I borrow your copy of Eric Gill on Clothes? Carolyn, I have here a copy of Giles's Confucianism and Its Rivals, which you sent me. I have never been clear if this was a loan or an extra that you wanted to get rid of. Could you please let me know. |
| 1965/06/23 | Mai-Mai Sze | Tao of Painting |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 12
| I have very much enjoyed The Tao of Painting, which I will send back soon. Duveen is priceless. But I am afraid it has almost fallen apart. Could I borrow your copy of Eric Gill on Clothes? Carolyn, I have here a copy of Giles's Confucianism and Its Rivals, which you sent me. I have never been clear if this was a loan or an extra that you wanted to get rid of. Could you please let me know. |
| 1966/03/05 | Chung-Yuan Chang | Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry |
Jnl 6 ('66-'67) p. 24
| A fine book on Creativity and Tao by Chang Chung-Yuan from McGill. (Took so long to get here it is already due back!) |
| 1967/05/12 | Toshihiko Izutsu | Comparative Study of the Key Philosopical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 332
| I am at present reading a most revealing book by a Japanese scholar, Toshihiko Izutsu, comparing the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi with Taoists. The first volume only, on Ibn Arabi, is available, I believe. Others will follow which will show the resemblances. This is very important. If you do not know it already I recommend it to you, and it is easily accessible to you, being published by Keio University. Now, you may have received my new book, Mystics and Zen Masters. It is very sketchy and imperfect, but it may perhaps have some useful material in it. If you do not know the treatise on the "Cloud of Unknowing" I think the remarks in my book will indicate that it would interest you. A friend of mine [William Johnston] has written a study of it with some reference to Zen [The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing, 1967]. It ought to appear soon. I wrote a preface to it. I will send you a copy of the book if and when I get one. |