The Inner Experience: Thomas Merton's Unfinished Masterpiece on Contemplation, Bridging Catholic Monasticism and Eastern Meditation Traditions

by Thomas Merton

Instead of seeing the external world in its bewildering complexity, separateness, and multiplicity; instead of seeing objects as things to be manipulated for pleasure or profit; instead of placing ourselves over against objects in a posture of desire, defiance, suspicion, greed, or fear, the inner self sees the world from a deeper and more spiritual viewpoint. In the language of Zen, it sees things “without affirmation or denial,” that is to say, from a higher vantage point which is intuitive and concrete and which has no need to manipulate or distort reality by means of slanted concepts and judgments. It simply “sees” what it sees and does not take refuge behind a screen of conceptual prejudices and verbalistic distortions.