Some readers of Thomas Merton find it frustrating that he was so unspecific about methods or practicalities in prayer. Unlike other spiritual writers like his younger contemporary William Johnston, he gave no teaching about the 'how to' aspects of contemplative prayer. This was for a very good reason. He recognised the danger of focussing on technique when prayer is primarily a matter of faith and love. Technique might become an end in itself or become dissociated from the fundamental theological insights with which prayer belongs. Merton would have been aware of the risk of offering a 'Merton technique' that others might copy slavishly without recognising that prayer is one soul's response to the One who calls us in love. There is a further reason for his reticence, and it is to do with the insight that prayer is something precious and hidden, not for public parading or for peddling as a feel-good commodity.
He did, however, once give a picture of the character of his contemplative prayer, not exactly a practical guide, but more of an insight into his practice than he gave in his many books on the spiritual life. This insight comes in a letter to one of his many correspondents, Abdul Aziz. Merton never met Aziz, but conducted a long correspondence with him over a number of years from 1960-68, the year of Merton's untimely death. Aziz was a Pakistani government official with a keen interest in Sufism and he had been given Merton's contact details by a mutual friend, the orientalist Louis Massignon. In one of his later letters, Merton described his typical day, including this lovely description of his meditative practice, written with Sufi sensibilities in mind. It is worth quoting at length:
Now you ask me about my method of meditation. Strictly speaking I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centred entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and His love. That is to say that it is centred on faith by which alone we can know the presence of God. One might say this gives my meditation the character described by the Prophet as "being before God as if you saw Him." Yet it does not mean imagining anything or conceiving a precise image of God, for to my mind this would be a kind of idolatry. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring Him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing Him as all. My prayer tends very much towards what you call fana. There is in my heart this great thirst to recognise totally the nothigness of all that is not God. My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence. If I am present "myself" this I recognise as an obstacle about which I can do nothing unless He Himself removes the obstacle. If He wills then He can make the Nothingness into a total clarity. If He does not will, then the nothingess seems to itself to be an object and remains an obstacle. Such is my ordinary way of prayer, or meditation. It is not "thinking about" anything but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible, which cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is Invisible. I do not ordinarily write about such things and I ask you therefore to be discreet about it. But I write this as a testimony of confidence and friendship. [Letter of January 2 1966, The Hidden Ground of Love p.62]
Making such hidden things public is done only in the hope that it inspires others to make their own loving adventure into that Silence and Nothingness.
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