The Way
of Chuang Tzu,
by Thomas Merton
Is
there a sense in which we may safely forget even the greatest words?
Do words contain inherent limitations that somehow keep us from
the reality they may move us toward? Thomas Merton examines the
nature of words in The Way of Chuang Tzu, his paraphrase
of works by the fourth century BC Chinese philosopher who is credited
with helping to transform Indian Buddhism into what we now call
Zen.
Merton
sees Chuang Tzu as his kindred spirit. Merton and Chuang Tzu both
were hermits to some extent, and both spiritual philosophers of
sorts, perhaps with Merton heavier on the spiritual side and Chuang
Tzu more the philosopher. The content of their philosophies is similar,
too. Merton assures us that his book "is not a new apologetic
subtlety (or indeed a work of jesuitical sleight of hand) in which
Christian rabbits will suddenly appear by magic out of a Taoist
hat." Yet Merton's paraphrase demonstrates how Chuang Tzu's
writings closely resemble the apophatic thought of some Christian
theologians and mystics that Merton writes about elsewhere.
Merton
points out that Chuang Tzu's Taoism is not "the popular, degenerate
amalgam of superstition, alchemy, magic, and health-culture which
Taoism later became." Instead, Chuang Tzu's Taoism values an
inner unity, a hiddenness of the true man, and a practical asceticism
that Merton also finds in Christian mysticism.
Merton
believes that Chuang Tzu's gift of "unknowing" is similar
to Christian contemplation. A Chuang Tzu disciple loses his self-conscious
"knowledge" and gains an inner "unknowing" by
which he lives through Tao. The disciple in one Chuang Tzu story,
for instance, prepares for the gift of unknowing through a patient
emptying of desires, otherwise known as a "fasting of the heart,"
much as Merton's contemplative must go through John of the Cross'
Night of Sense, when the will grows tired of desire and reasoning. 1
Because
the themes and points in The Way of Chuang Tzu are found
in Merton's other writings, we may fairly ask if the book amounts
to Chuang Tzu's words or Merton's. Of course, any paraphrase takes
a certain degree of liberty with the original wording. The Way
of Chuang Tzu may be even more about the translator than is
the average paraphrase, however, since Merton admits to knowing
almost no Chinese and instead puts his "readings" together
by comparing four of his favorite western language translations.
As a result, Merton says, his readings are "not attempts at
faithful reproduction but ventures in personal and spiritual interpretation."
Merton,
then, has made Chuang Tzu his own, and it is not as if Chuang Tzu
would care. Chuang Tzu saw words as constituting only a ladder to
reality. When one climbs onto reality, one may push away the words
he used to get there. To internalize great words is to climb the
ladder.
To
internalize great words is also the first step towards forgetting
them. As Merton states in his book's essay on Chuang Tzu preceding
his paraphrase, "Chuang Tzu is not concerned with words and
formulas about reality, but with the direct existential grasp of
reality in itself." Indeed, at the end of one reading, Chuang
Tzu exclaims:
Where
can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would
like to talk to.
Merton's
relationship with words and formulas is a bit more ambivalent than
Chuang Tzu's. Merton writes within, and struggles against, a Western
philosophical tradition that is still largely foundational and analytical.
A true grasp of reality, though, "is necessarily obscure and
does not lend itself to abstract analysis," Merton writes in
the book's essay. Chuang Tzu's more anecdotal and meditative style
seems to do a better job at approaching truth, Merton believes.
Merton
is bound also to Christian theology, which, like Western philosophy
in general, insists on expressing the ineffable. Because individual
Christian experience is part of the broader experience of the Church,
Merton says that individual Christian experience "must always
be in some way reducible to a theological form that can be shared
by the rest of the Church or that shows that it is a sharing of
what the rest of the Church experiences." 2 Zen, on the other hand, resists straightforward communication. 3
Merton's
ambivalent relationship to words, however, goes beyond his attempts
to explain the ineffable in terms of Western philosophy, or even
in terms of Roman Catholic theology. Merton's ambivalence comes
chiefly from his dual calling as a priest as well as a reporter
in God's contemplative temple. Merton's reporting duties enhance
but sometimes conflict with his priestly duties. Words sometimes
just get in the way.
Writing
is a self-conscious act, while the gift of contemplation involves
a love freed from self-consciousness. Merton's priest must give
up words, even words to be used for the most altruistic purposes,
in order to experience God in intimate contemplation:
But
before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkable, the
spirit hovers on the frontiers of language, wondering whether
or not to stay on its own side of the border, in order to have
something to bring back to other men. This is the test of those
who wish to cross the frontier. If they are not ready to leave
their own ideas and their own words behind them, they cannot travel
further. 4
Merton's
priest loses his words and his self-consciousness, but he slowly
becomes everything the words point to anyway.
Chuang
Tzu finds irony in the limited role words have in communicating
Tao's unknowing. In one story, Chuang Tzu compares a true Tao man
to an old toothless disciple who falls asleep during his Tao lesson.
The instructor's unheard words concerning Tao are accurate and well
reasoned. Yet the instructor could not have been happier with his
sleeping student: "His body is dry...[h]is mind is dead...
[h]is knowledge is solid, [h]is wisdom true!" Free of desire,
the old man has no hint of self-consciousness, and no use for analysis.
Chuang
Tzu's unknowing leaves no place for written history or even written
philosophy, ironically the two disciplines that have preserved Chuang
Tzu's words for our use today. In one story, a wheelwright calls
his prince's philosophy readings "the dirt [the philosophers]
left behind." Pressed by the prince for an explanation, the
wheelwright compares the philosophers' learning to his own expertise
at fitting wheels. The wheelwright cuts short his brief explanation
of his skills by saying:
You
cannot put it into words.
You just have to know how it is.
Everything
the philosophers really knew went with them to the grave, the wheelwright
concludes. What they really knew, then, was "unknowing."
Their words end up as no substitute for what they knew.
"Tao
cannot be communicated," Merton says, "Yet it communicates
itself in its own way." The irony is that we're reading the
dirt Merton left behind, which includes, as a sort of play within
a play, the dirt Chuang Tzu left behind. What does Merton hope to
communicate, if Tao -- and Christian contemplation -- cannot be
communicated?
Merton's
choices of his favorite and least favorite writings may help us
with this riddle. Merton said that he enjoyed writing The Way
of Chuang Tzu more than anything else he wrote. Perhaps he could
sympathize with Chuang Tzu, who admired Confucius but pointed out
the hollowness of his followers' self-conscious efforts to obtain
virtue. Some of Merton's books address the hollowness of a pre-Vatican
II Catholic Church, which professed to follow Christ but was largely
preoccupied with exterior forms and rationalism.
More
likely, Merton enjoyed writing The Way of Chuang Tzu because
it represented something like a surrender of his attempts to communicate
the path to contemplation directly. By using another philosopher
as his own multifaceted anecdote, Merton comes as close to "unconsciousness"
(that is, unselfconsciousness) as he ever does in communicating
contemplation. In writing Chuang Tzu, Merton seems to stay
protected within "the tower of his spirit":
The
unconsciousness
And entire sincerity of Tao
Are disturbed by any effort
At self-conscious demonstration.
In
contrast, Merton's least favorite of his books is The Ascent
to Truth, a systematic (for Merton) defense of John of the Cross'
mystical theology. By writing theology, Merton opened himself up
to the criticism of theologians, and at least twice in his journals
he expressed his regret for writing the book. While Merton values
theology -- especially good mystical theology -- highly, his attempt
at writing theology was, for him, a "self-conscious demonstration"
that took him away from the protection of his spirit's tower.
In The Way of Chuang Tzu, Merton is communicating his own joy
from his spirit's tower. He has found a new friend who has taught
him the irony of words as well as the value of irony. Like the best
of Merton's words, The Way of Chuang Tzu points to an experience
of contemplation, while it reverently and wisely backs away from
providing or insisting upon such an experience. Just as Merton kicks
away Chuang Tzu like a ladder after experiencing the unknowing Chuang
Tzu describes, Merton invites us to climb his own words and to forget
them as well.
Footnotes:
1. Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1951), 189.
2. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York:
New Directions 1968), 46.
3. Id. at 46, 47.
4. Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1955), 255. |