A Year With Thomas Merton - November 6

My Zen

Praying this morning during meditation to learn to read the meaning of events.

First of all, the meaning of what I myself do and bring upon myself and then the meaning of what all mankind does and brings upon itself. In the middle is this monastery--what it does and brings upon itself.

Before one knows the meaning of what happens, he must be able to see what happens. Most men do not even do that--they trust the newspapers to tell them.

My Zen is the slow swinging tops of sixteen pine trees.

One long thin pole of a tree fifty feet high swings in a wider arc than all the others and swings even when they are still.

Hundreds of little elms springing up out of the dry ground under the pines.

My watch lies among the oak leaves. My tee shirt hangs on a barbed wire fence, and the wind sings in the bare wood.

November 21 and 25, 1958, III.231-32