“The Heart is the Common Ground: Thomas Merton and Chogyam Trungpa in Dialogue”
Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown, Ph.D.
As a practicing Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition, and as a scholar of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, I have taken on the task of speculating about the Tibetan Buddhist lamas who met Merton in India—what they saw in him. Much has been written about Thomas Merton’s encounter with the most famous Tibetan Buddhist in the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but His Holiness was only one of the Tibetans with whom Merton spoke in his illustrious journey east in 1968.
While Merton had tremendous resistance to meeting His Holiness, saying he had met enough “pontiffs,” the conversations went rather well. In his diaries, Merton writes more enthusiastically of meeting a luminary list of Dzogchen teachers, well-known in the Tibetan world, most from the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, best known for depth of meditation. Dzogchen masters are not known for debate, as we find in the Gelukpa traditions of His Holiness.1 Of course, it is difficult to know exactly what these great masters thought of Merton. Most of his Tibetan contacts are now dead, though I have had the great
privilege to practice with several of them, including Kalu (not Karlu) Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, and the son of Neten Chokling Rinpoche, whose name is Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche. I did not discuss Merton with most of them, but have researched what I could find about their meetings with the Trappist yogi.
For this article, I would like to take the opportunity to look explore Merton through the eyes of the Tibetan I know the best, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche2 (19391987), founder of Naropa University, my mentor in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and my root spiritual teacher. (As a scholar of Buddhism, I have rarely written personally about Rinpoche—but in an environment such as this, a more personal perspective seems most appropriate. This seems especially
true as it seems many of the readers of the Journal have taken Merton as their guru.) Until his death in 1987, Rinpoche spoke often and warmly about his meetings with Merton, and these meetings have indirectly impacted my own spiritual journey, the shape of my Buddhist community, and the mission of my home institution, Naropa University.
For a detailed study of Merton’s encounter with Tibetan Buddhist lamas, see Simmer-Brown, “The Liberty That Nobody Can Touch: Thomas Merton Meets Tibetan Buddhism,” in Merton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2007), 31-51. 2 Rinpoche is a title meaning “precious
jewel” given to reincarnate lamas (tulkus) of Tibetan Buddhist lineages. Trungpa was Rinpoche’s lineage name, referring to the geographical region from which he came. Chogyam, meaning “dharma ocean” was his Buddhist name.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche met Merton at a critical time in his own life. He was twenty-eight years old, had been a Tibetan Buddhist monk for twenty-one years. As a toddler, he was “discovered” as a tulku, the descendant of a line of eleven generations of Trungpas, and he was taken to Surmang monastery,
where he was raised. At age seven, he became a monk, and was rigorously trained in Buddhist philosophy, scripture and meditation, and in Buddhist ritual arts, including lama dancing, painting, calligraphy, and sculpture. He was trained in the Ri-me “nonsectarian” school of Buddhism that values meditation practice over philosophy, realization over scholasticism. Most of all, he was trained to be a meditation master. Another purpose of his training was to prepare him to become the abbot of Surmang monastery in Kham in East Tibet, which he did at age sixteen. When Rinpoche was nineteen, the Chinese invaded
his province of Tibet, arresting monks and murdering or imprisoning anyone who resisted. Barely escaping Chinese invaders, he and a small party of monks and lay followers made the perilous journey over the Himalayas to India on horseback and on foot. From 1959-1963, by appointment of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Chögyam Trungpa served as the spiritual advisor for the Young Lamas’ Home School in Dalhousie, India. In 1963, Chögyam Trungpa was selected for a competitive Spalding Fellowship at Oxford University, in England, where he studied comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts. During this time, he
also studied Japanese flower arranging and received an instructor’s degree from the Sogetsu school. During this time, he quickly learned English, one of the first Tibetan lamas in the world to do so. During this time, with the help of an elderly Englishwoman, he wrote the account of his escape from Tibet
called Born in Tibet, the first such Tibetan refugee account to be widely distributed. (Merton had already read this book before going to India.) After completing his Oxford degree in 1967, he moved to Scotland, where he founded the Samye Ling Meditation Centre, the first Tibetan Buddhist practice centre
in the West. In 1968, Rinpoche had been in England for five years. He had become increasingly discouraged and depressed by the prevalence of the materialistic orientation that he discovered so central in western culture, accompanied by disregard for the committed spiritual life. He saw these
tendencies also at work in his own lost homeland of Tibet, where the living practice traditions were being lost even before the Chinese occupation in the 1950’s and Tibetan monks had become absorbed in fame, wealth, and power rather than spiritual awakening. He wondered how he himself could make a spiritual
contribution either in Asia, Tibet, or the West. Because he served as the English tutor for the prince of Bhutan, the Bhutanese royal family invited him to come for a visit. The timing was perfect. Within eight years, everything in his life had changed—he had no monastery, no spiritual elders, no
community, no country, no sacred texts or traditions. He was a refugee. He jumped at the chance to return to Asia, so that he could do a retreat in Taktsang or “tiger’s nest,” the most sacred cave in the Himalayas for Tibetan Buddhism. He yearned for a traditional retreat in order to ponder what
direction his life might take. Receiving permission from the Queen of Bhutan, he was given provisions, a royal guard, and a precious month at Taktsang—and the retreat was monumental for his life, changing the direction and focus of his teaching and manifestation—but more about that later in this talk. He met Merton in Calcutta just after this retreat—and this is what Tibetans call auspicious, or “tashi
tendrel.” In my research on Merton in India, I have found it odd that so little work has been done on Merton’s relationship with Trungpa Rinpoche. Rinpoche was the only lama Merton met who spoke fluent English. He was the only tulku who was already a renowned poet, painter, and English-published
author. He was the youngest tulku Merton described meeting, and the only one who lived in the West and was familiar with Christianity and world religions. At that time, most exiled Tibetan lamas were focusing only on how to return to Tibet, and were just biding their time until that could happen. Most were not very interested in Christianity and world religions, even the Dalai Lama (his interest came much later). Most of the Tibetan lamas with whom Merton
met were not prepared to meet a Trappist yogi on his own ground, for they had no frame of reference for such a meeting. Above all, Merton and Rinpoche spoke warmly of each other and saw a destiny for their relationship, as we will see. ************* Merton and Rinpoche first met “quite by chance”3 at the Central Hotel in Calcutta on October 19, 1968, on Merton’s very first day in India (though Merton had already read Rinpoche’s account of his escape from
his country, called Born in Tibet 4). Over gin and tonics they discovered a mutual passion for vibrant spirituality, effective response to secularism and materialism, and a committed contemplative life. They also spent several days together, celebrating the Divali holiday, driving a Bhutanese jeep, shopping the markets, setting off firecrackers. On that first day, Merton wrote in his journal:
Chogyam Trungpa is a completely marvelous person. Young, natural, without front or artifice, deep, awake, wise. I am sure we will be seeing a lot more of each other, whether around northern Indian and Sikkim or in Scotland, where I am now determined to go to see his Tibetan monastery if I can. He is a
promising poet. His stuff in Tibetan is probably excellent; in English it is a little flat, but full of substance. He is also a genuine spiritual master….His own meditation and talks, from what I have seen, are extraordinary.5 And later, in a November circular to friends, Merton wrote:
One of the most interesting people I have met is a young Tibetan abbot who, since escaping from Tibet, has been trained at Oxford and has started a small monastery in Scotland. He is very successful there, apparently, and is a talented man. He has written a book called Born in Tibet about his experiences in escaping. I recommend it. (His name is Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche.)6
This meeting had a tremendous impact on Rinpoche as well. He spoke warmly of Merton, and said, "Meeting Thomas Merton was wonderful; he was like a child, and at
Merton 1975, 30. 4 Merton had already read Rinpoche’s autobiography, Born in Tibet, that had been given to him by Marco Pallis, according to Bonnie Thurston, “Unfolding a New World,” in Merton and Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2007), 18. 5 Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions Press, 1975), 30-31. 6 Merton 1975, 323-324. the same time, he was full of energy and life."7 In the 1971 edition of his autobiography, he wrote:
Father Merton himself was an open, unguarded, and deep person. During these few days, we spent much time together and grew to like one another immensely. He proposed that we should collaborate on a book bringing together sacred writings of the Catholic and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions.8
They met several more times in India in the following months, continuing their conversations and deepening their friendship. That fall, when Rinpoche returned from India to Samye Ling, his monastery in Scotland, he is reported to have “waxed very poetic about meeting Merton in Calcutta.” 9 Several years
later, Rinpoche wrote: “Father Merton’s sudden death shortly [after I met him] was a tremendous loss, to me personally and to the world of genuine spirituality.”10 This sadness stayed with him for the decades to follow. Shortly after his meeting with Merton, a variety of experiences in 1969--
including a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body--led Chögyam Trungpa to the pivotal decision to give up his monastic vows and work as a lay Buddhist teacher. He felt he must abandon attachment to his home country and more fully immerse himself in his new
environment in the west, and he could no longer do this as a monk. In 1970, Rinpoche married an Englishwoman and moved to the United States. The ancient teachings and practical instructions that Chögyam Trungpa brought with him found an eager audience in the America of the 1970s, and Rinpoche joined some of
the alternative lifestyles (of wine, women and song—but definitely not drugs) he found here in order to find a way to more completely benefit his students. During the 70’s he traveled nearly constantly throughout North America, published six books, established three meditation centres, and founded a Buddhist-
inspired contemplative university, Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado in 1974. By the time of his death in 1987, Rinpoche had five thousand students and had become recognized as a “spiritual innovator,” adapting Tibetan Buddhist teachings for western lay students without sacrificing the integrity of his
ancestral lineages, utilizing sometimes unorthodox methods to awaken them.11 (Of course, Merton has been recognized as another such “spiritual innovator.”) When Rinpoche founded Naropa University, inspired by those special conversations with Merton, he began a series of conferences on Buddhist and Christian meditation that he dedicated to the memory of Merton. I was the director of those conferences through the 1980’s, and I received from Rinpoche his enduring legacy of respect, affection, and inspiration from those meetings with Merton in India.
Trungpa, 1980 Hinayana-Mahayana Seminary Transcripts (Halifax: Vajradhatu Press, 1981), 33. 8 Trungpa, Collected Works Volume I (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001), 263. 9 Tendzin Parsons, a monk friend of Gene Smith’s from TBRC, letter correspondence, spring 2009. 10 Trungpa, “Epilogue to the 1977
Edition,” Born in Tibet, from The Collected Works Volume I (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003), 263. 11 Rifkin, Ira, Spiritual Innovators: Seventy-five Extraordinary People Who Changed the World in the Last Century (Skylight Paths, 2002). Rinpoche heads the list “They Shook Things Up,” while Merton appears in “They Spoke From the Power of Silence.”
What did Rinpoche see in Merton? First, Rinpoche met a different breed of Christian who gave him a sense of depth about Christian spirituality that he had only glimpsed previously. Rinpoche’s first encounters with Christianity came in Kalimpong, India, when as a tattered and penniless Tibetan refugee he was
given “giant-sized cartons of milk powder and Spam”12 along with rough Tibetan translations of the Bible and missionary tracts by a local Christian relief organization. The tracts’ messages were that Buddhists just meditate in caves and think only of themselves, while Christians really help others, so he
should convert. At Oxford, Rinpoche had extensive exposure to Christianity, where his tutor was a Jesuit named Fr. Bernard deGive.13 According to Fr. Bernard, Rinpoche was earnestly interested in Christianity, and upon first meeting asked,
“Now you will explain to me the history of the monastic orders of the Christian Church.” It goes without saying that I did not need pleading. Beginning with the Fathers of the Desert, then Cenobitism, we covered Saint Benoît, the Cistercians, the Franciscans…and let’s not forget the Society of Jesus and the congregations of the present day.14 Fr. Bernard reported that Rinpoche was a diligent student in spite of his imperfect English, and had special interest in Christian rituals like the Eucharist, and in the symbolic meanings of the vestments.
As a good lama he was sensible to this beauty that reminded him of the splendour of his own country. There was between us a true friendship, regardless of age difference: I was fifty, he was twenty- four. But I felt a respect for him. He had an extraordinary maturity and wisdom, with a quality that spoils nothing: he was modest….He was curious about everything within reason; intellectually he was always trying to go deeper. He was reserved, meditative, and a great wisdom emitted from him, regardless of his young age.15
Rinpoche later remembered: “My education in Christianity was also philosophical, as well as being a real magical demonstration of how Christianity is manifested in the world, and I was very thankful to my teachers.”16 Throughout his life, he spoke
Trungpa, 1979 Hinayana-Mahayana Seminary Transcripts (Halifax: Vajradhatu Publications, 1980), 20-21. 13 Fr. Bernard has since become a Trappist monk, at the age of 59, at the Belgian Abbey of Scourmont. He has written several accounts of his work with Trungpa Rinpoche in the early 60’s, and has kindly
answered my queries about his memories of tutoring Trungpa Rinpoche. He has published his experience in A Trappist Meeting Monks from Tibet (Herfordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2010). 14“Father Bernard deGive: A Trappist Among Monks,” Interview with Fr. Bernard, p. 4. Francesca Troiani, tr. 15 Ibid., 5. 16 Trungpa, 1980 Vajrayana Seminary Transcripts (Halifax: Vajradhatu Publications, 1981), 28.
appreciatively of his relationship with Fr. Bernard, though he felt that his tutor was too quick to assume that Christianity and Buddhism were the same.17
Often Rinpoche remarked that when he met Merton, he came to understand the depth and power of Christianity, because of the quality of presence Merton had. Later he summed up the power of meeting Merton:
I had the feeling that I was meeting an old friend, a genuine friend. In fact, we planned to work on a book containing selections from the sacred writings of Christianity and Buddhism. We planned to meet either in Great Britain or in North America. He was the first genuine person I met from the West.18
One of the reasons he developed such collegiality and affection for Merton is that Merton did not try to convert him. Instead, he felt that Merton treated him as a brother and fellow traveler on the spiritual path. He also appreciated that Merton understood that Christianity and Buddhism have many resonances, but are distinct traditions with unique practices, rituals, and expressions. He continued to view contemplative Christianity, especially the
Cistercian and other monastic orders, as a precious heritage that must be preserved, and he wished to contribute to its preservation. When he initiated interreligious dialogue at Naropa, he chose the Christian participants carefully: Cistercian and Carmelite monastics, Quakers, and Eastern Orthodox priests—those he felt had contemplative practice traditions with integrity and power.
Second, Rinpoche met a monastic dialogue partner—a fellow monk, a genuine and profound person, deeply committed spiritually, with similar questions about how to best benefit the world through the contemplative life. Both were intelligent and critical of their respective monastic and institutional
traditions. Their first conversations were about the corruption of monastic life due to pressures from secularization and consumerism. Merton’s struggles at Gethsemani were well-known. As Fr. Merton wrote, “He has the same problems we have with 'progressive' monks whose idea of modernization is to go
noncontemplative, to be 'productive' and academic.”19 Rinpoche described the conversations in this way: Father Merton “was in Calcutta attending some kind of collective religious conference, and he was appalled at the cheapness of the spiritual values that various of the conference participants were
advocating.”20 And later, Rinpoche explained, “He was invited by a group that had a philosophy of spiritual shopping, and he was the only person who felt that it was full of confusion. He felt there
17 Trungpa, 1980 Vajrayana Seminary Transcripts, 29. “If I thought that certain things were strange or unacceptable, [Fr. deGive] always came up with Pali or Sanskrit terms, telling me that they were saying the same thing. I somewhat understood and appreciated that, but at the same time I resented it,
because they were no exactly the same." Fr. deGive remembers: “What did he think of me? I thought I understood that he considered me too quick in believing the proximity of our two religions, but those who read me will be able to notice that I also took heed of their differences. I hold a moving and admiring memory of him.” 18 Trungpa, 1991, 213. 19 Merton, 1975, 30-31. 20 Trungpa, Collected Works Volume I, 2001, 263.
was a sense of ignorance there, but nonetheless he joined them.”21 Rinpoche was impressed by the authenticity and integrity of Merton’s spiritual vocation, something that he found rarely even among Tibetan Buddhist lamas as well as among the spiritual leaders he had met in the West. This perspective had great impact on Rinpoche’s later initiatives in interreligious dialogue. Early in his years at Naropa University, Rinpoche launched a series of seven annual conferences on Buddhist and Christian meditation. He envisioned these conferences as opportunities for dialogue between fellow travelers on
different spiritual paths, characterized by mutual respect, shared contemplative practice, and deep conversation. From the beginning, Rinpoche dedicated these gatherings to Merton, saying that he sought to cultivate the kind of conversations between genuine contemplatives that he had discovered with Father
Merton. These conferences introduced a new kind of interreligious communication into the dialogue world. Sister Pascaline Coff, the Benedictine nun from Monastic Interfaith Dialogue, wrote that the inaugural conference was "a major breakthrough in the Christian-Buddhist dialogues." 22 These conferences
had a tremendous impact on Naropa University’s approach to contemplative education. Rinpoche’s vision for Naropa was that we would found an interreligious practice community, a “yogi school,” where contemplatives of different traditions could live in small groups dedicated to preserving their practice traditions, coming together for mutual support and dialogue. In the decades since, Naropa University has cultivated a diverse community dedicated to fostering respect for contemplative practice, while honoring the differences between practice traditions through interreligious dialogue. *************
Lastly, Rinpoche saw Merton as a yogi, or a committed spiritual practitioner. For the Buddhist, a yogi(ni) is someone for whom spiritual transformation is the goal, and the means to that goal is contemplative practice in the form of meditation or contemplation. Of course, acts of compassion are very
important aspects of this journey, for in Buddhism there is no individual transformation--true transformation involves working for the benefit of others. Certainly Tibet has a strong tradition of monasticism, and there may be monastics who are also yogis. But it has long been recognized in Tibetan and
Buddhist studies23 that monasteries often become engrossed in purposes and activities that are institutionally driven, making a truly contemplative life difficult. For this reason, Tibet has had a long tradition of the eremitic yogi(ni) who lives in solitude, separate from the monastery, where the visions of transformative contemplative practice could take precedence,
21 Trungpa, Collected Works Volume III, 2001, 477. 22 Sister Pascaline was a founding member of Monastic Interfaith Dialogue, founded in 1977, a Benedictine-Cistercian initiative to foster contemplative dialogue of the sort described here. This quote is taken from the NABEWD Newsletter, September
1981. See also her description of this conference in Mitchell and Wiseman 1997, 6. 23 See the work of Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, that speaks of three “orientations” for religious figures and institutions in Tibet: “folk,” “clerical or institutional,” and “shamanic or yogic.” (Washington: Smithsonian, 1995).
unsullied by the preoccupations of monastic institutions. In some lineages, monks and nuns spend a period of time in solitary retreat, actively pursuing the yogic lifestyle. Rinpoche instantly saw that Merton was just such a yogi who did not want to lose the core inspiration of the contemplative life,
and he shared with him concern about the institutionally-driven monastery, and how it could subvert a genuinely contemplative life. For the yogi, the threefold division of religious phenomena--doctrine, institution, and practice—has a clear hierarchy. The yogi sees contemplative practice as primary and doctrine and institution as secondary or derivative. It is clear that Trungpa Rinpoche and Merton agreed on this. Each was keenly interested in monasticism, contemplative practice, and transformation. When Rinpoche met Merton, he had just completed the most important meditation retreat of his
life—a month-long session in the most sacred cave in Bhutan. After weeks of fruitless practice on retreat, he had a spiritual breakthrough and composed a powerful practice for overcoming these forces through renewed commitment to transformation, with the help of the lineages of enlightened ones. He gave a copy of this Sadhana of Mahamudra to Merton in India, describing with great enthusiasm the power of his retreat and his vision for a yogic solution to the
intractable problems of the world. In the words of the Sadhana, “the search for an external protector has met with no success. The idea of a deity as an external being has deceived us, led us astray.”24 Rinpoche explained: “I wrote the Sadhana because such problems exist both within and outside of
Buddhist traditions, because the spiritual scene all over the world is going through that kind of corruption.”25 When we become one with our practice, our lineage, and even our understanding of deity, we can develop the inspiration to overcome even the greatest of obstacles and to completely transform. It is
essential that we ask our teachers and lineage to help us, but transformation can take place only if we work directly with our own minds and experience. Then we have something to give an ailing world. Rinpoche ended with,” one must try to expose spiritual materialism and all its trappings, otherwise true
spirituality could not develop. I began to realize that I would have to take daring steps in my life."26 Within a year, Trungpa Rinpoche had given up his monastic vows. Merton’s final presentation at the Bangkok conference, the last morning of his life, expresses his yogic vision. He spoke of his conversations with Tibetan lamas, and first spoke of his discussion with the Dalai Lama, who asked a yogic question: Do your vows oblige you to just
“stick around for a life in the monastery,” or do they “imply a commitment to a life of progress up certain mystical stages?”27 To his monastic colleagues, Merton reflected:
When you stop and think a little bit about St. Benedict’s concept of conversio morum, that most mysterious of our vows, which is actually the most essential, I believe, it can be interpreted as a commitment to total inner transformation of one sort or another—a commitment to become a completely new man.28
24 Sadhana sourcebook, p. 27. 25 Ibid., 29. 26 VCTR, Epilogue from Born in Tibet. 27 Merton, Asian Journal, 337. 28 Ibid.
Merton then spoke of Trungpa Rinpoche, and told the story of Rinpoche’s escape from Tibet in 1959. As he was preparing to escape, Rinpoche sent a message to another abbot from a nearby monastery, asking “What do we do?” The message came back: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.”29 Hearing this, Trungpa Rinpoche departed for India leading a large party of refugees.
The gist of the message that Merton shared with his monastic community was a yogic one: we cannot rely any longer on institutional structures to support us. Institutional structures are subject to social and political forces, forcing them to crumble and dissipate. For this reason, Merton urged his
monastic brothers and sisters, “From now on, everybody stands on his own feet.”30 The spiritual life must not depend on the institution; instead, it must rely upon its central mission—“the business of total inner transformation. All other things serve that end.”31 When true yogis and yoginis meet, they do not get stuck in doctrinal or institutional matters; instead, they meet at a heart level of personal insight, respect and mutual care. Contemplatives can respect the differences between their traditions while meeting on a heart level of deep communion. In that final address, Merton observed:
There is no longer Asian or European for the Christian. So while being open to Asian cultural things of value and using them, I think we also have to keep in mind the fact that Christianity and Buddhism, too, in their original purity point beyond all divisions between this and that. So you respect the plurality of these things, but you do not make them ends in themselves.32
The remainder of his address proclaimed the power and timelessness of the monastic vocation, one’s ability to “penetrate by detachment and purity of heart to the inner secret of the ground of your ordinary experience.”33 As a Buddhist, I hear this as a Lion’s Roar of the yogic path of contemplative practice.
Rinpoche spoke very similarly throughout his life, especially concerning interreligious dialogue. At one of the Naropa dialogue conferences in 1983, Rinpoche commented:
The only way to join the Christian tradition and the Buddhist tradition together would be by bringing together Christian contemplative practice with Buddhist contemplative practice….The contemplative traditions within both Judaism and Christianity, particularly the Jewish Chasidic tradition and also the Orthodox Christian Prayer of the heart, which I've studied a little bit, seem to be the ground for Eastern and Western philosophy to join together. It is not so much a question of dogma, but it is a question of heart; that is where the common ground lies.34
29 Ibid. 30 Merton 1975, 338. 31 Merton 1975, 340. 32 Asian Journal, 340. 33 Ibid., 342. 34 Trungpa, “Manifesting Enlightenment,” Heart of the Buddha (Boston: Shambhala Publications, ) 214.
One final perspective from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition did not come from the insights of young Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, but instead came from his elders, the great lamas Khamtrul Rinpoche from the Kagyu tradition and from Chokling Rinpoche, a Nyingma teacher. Both of these great masters independently and unexpectedly presented an advanced meditation practice associated with dying and death to Merton.
First, Khamtrul Rinpoche introduced Merton to the possibility of direct realization through phowa, or ejection of consciousness, at the moment of death.
Several days later, Neten Chokling Rinpoche first asked him if he believed in reincarnation and then, without an explicit request, gave Merton actual phowa transmission.35 That two powerful meditation masters, known for their yogic clairvoyance, chose to introduce Merton to an esoteric practice associated
with realization of the ultimate nature at death was significant to Harold Talbott, who years later made this observation: “The reason Chokling Rinpoche taught Merton phowa practice—say I—is that he saw that Merton was going to be dead in a couple of weeks. He needed the teachings on death. He did not need teachings of karma and suffering, calming the mind, insight meditation. He needed to be taught how to dispose his consciousness at the time of death
because this was the time of death for him.” 36 This view was confirmed by Chokling Rinpoche’s son Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, who commented about this transmission, “Maybe Rinpoche saw what was coming and gave the transmission to help him.”37 Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are special opportunities for direct realization at the time of death, developed for the most part through specific practices. One of these practices is called phowa, or ejection of consciousness. At a strategic moment, the practitioner visualizes his consciousness as a white syllable “A” (in Tibetan form) and ejects it through the central channel out to merge with the realized mind of the Buddha, symbolized as a purified awareness realm. In Tibet, such a practice was viewed as a “method of attaining enlightenment without a lifelong experience of meditation practice.”38 While accomplished yogis can practice this alone, for most,
the presence of a qualified teacher at the moment of death is critical, even if one has received the transmission. It would be unusual for the transmission of this type of esoteric practice to be given to a non-Buddhist, especially one who did not directly request it. A month later while Merton
gazed at the magnificent huge sculptures of the peacefully dying, reclining Buddha at Polonnaruwa, one wonders at the power of his realization and premonition there:39 “Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner
35 Tworkov interview with Harold Talbott, 19. 36 Talbott’s comments are limited to the actions of Chokling Rinpoche, but Khamtrul Rinpoche also taught Merton phowa. Private communication, Harold Talbott. 37 Verbal communication, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, October 19, 2003, at Drupchu teaching. 38 Sogyal ,
p. 232. For more information on this practice and its Dzogchen context, see chapter fourteen of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. 39 Thurston. Talbott noted the powerful influence of the reclining Buddha on Merton, but observed that most likely Merton did not realize that this was Buddha on his deathbed.
clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious….The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no “mystery.” All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. 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 together in one aesthetic illumination.”40 As Harold Talbott has observed, probably Merton was not aware that these reclining Buddhas are on their deathbed. Within a short time, Merton died in the bathroom of his Bangkok hotel bungalow. Among native Tibetan communities in India and the west it is often whispered that Merton has, of course, reincarnated as a Tibetan monk. He could never, in his previous life, have left his beloved
order or tradition. His fidelity to his vows and his Trappist order was too strong. Yet, they say, he saw a vision of what he might do to continue his practice in Tibetan Buddhism. Some say they know he is at this monastery, or another, a promising monk practicing the essential teachings of the “great completion” tradition. Others say he is a yogi in solitary retreat in the caves of the Himalayas. Perhaps he is even on the lower slopes of Kanchenjungma, radiating the limitless vastness of pure awareness.
