Thomas Merton And Mahatma Gandhi Essay Research free essay sample

Thomas Merton And Mahatma Gandhi Essay, Research Paper Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi both speak of God in a personal manner. They both speak of God as truth. Celebrated Thomas Merton, Trappist American monastic, was a traditional Christian. Born in France in 1915 and died in Asia in 1968 Merton was greatly influenced by the complexnesss of the 20th century. His Hagiographas served as a personal may in his hunt for God.. He pursued the go uping way towards the ageless land of truth, towards heaven, while go forthing the universe of shadowy being behind. Truth would be a passion of his life. He besides took it upon himself to talk on behalf of the disenfranchised of the word. Thomas Merton was a dynamic, modern adult male who committed himself to a womb-to-tomb hunt for a meaningful and reliable manner of life. He had merely one desire and that was the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in his peace, to be lost in the secret of his face. This remarkable passion and boundless energy led him to unite in one life a alone assortment of functions, fecund religious author and poet, monastic and anchorite, societal militant, all while life at the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. Merton, a monastic under a vow of silence, found celebrity by non seeking it, by talking the truth. Much can be said with the congratulations? the truth will put your free? Merton provided a way that is still puting people free. Freedom from silence. Many feel that a monastery is a sanctuary to get away from the worlds of the existent universe. Merton saw it as assisting deliver the universe from the new dark ages. ? In the dark of our technological brutality, monastics must be as trees which exist mutely in the dark and by their critical presence purify the air. ? Some believe Merton? s universe was the monastery evidences, the whole universe was. He believed that all work forces and adult females are to be seen and treated as Christ. Failure to make this, involves disapprobation for disloyalty to the most cardinal of revealed truths. Brushs with Christ must be followed by the brushs and both must be experienced with the same love. It? s a love that frees, non a love that wants to possess or pull strings. The great Indian instructor, Mahatma Gandhi, doctrine was really similar. Merton loved people, but he besides loved nature. He told us to get down? by larning how to see and esteem the seeable creative activity which mirrors the glorification and the flawlessness of the unseeable God? . Everything that environments us, the trees, the ocean, the moving ridges, the sky, the Sun, the birds, it is in all this that we will happen our replies. God is ubiquitous ; we do non see this because we are non brooding. Merton believed a Christian society is one in which work forces give their portion of labour and intelligence and in return receive their portion of the fruits of the labour, which is seen in the Kingdom of God, a society centered upon the Godhead truth and the Godhead clemency. In such a society the prophetic function of the monastic would be fulfilled, in the sense that his repudiation of the right of ownership was an avowal of God? s ownership of everything and of adult male? s right to be a owner merely in so far as he was willing to portion with others what he did non necessitate. Merton did non experience driven to go involved in political workss. He believed the monastic? s responsibility was to cultivate consciousness and consciousness nevertheless, truth and God demanded he talk out aloud and frequently against all signifiers of war. He stated that the Vietnam war was an illustration of Americans seeing their state as the centre of the universe, enforcing their will, in the name of freedom, on weaker states that might stand in their manner. It was a gratuitous devastation of human life, a colza of a civilization which could merely take to the decease of the spirit of an dog-tired people. He saw work forces endeavoring to negociate for peace, and neglecting because their fright overbalanced their true good will. ? The root of all war is fear. ? He taught that we must dauntlessly love even the work forces we can non swear, for the enemy was war itself, and peace could non be brought about by hate. ? Peace does non dwell in one adult male, one party, one state, oppressing and ruling everyone else. Peace exists where work forces who have the power to be enemies are, alternatively, friends by ground of the forfeits that they have made in order to run into one another on a higher degree, where the differences between them are no longer a beginning of struggle. By such logical thinking, Merton brought himself really near to Gandhi? s place on war every bit good as that of the battle for civil rights. He saw nonviolence as non simply the lone merely agencies but besides the merely operable one of defying immorality and unfairness. Merton believed the Gandhian instructions on civil noncompliance were of pressing importance to the universe and particularly to Americians. The Christian does non necessitate to contend and so it is better that he should non contend, for in so far as he imitates his Lord and Master. His Hagiographas on racial justness and peace were strong and influential. They were altering the ideas on Christians. Many people in the private sector and authorities functionaries were disturbance that an vague Monk would talk out like this. Fanatics of all chevrons stepped frontward with dainties against Thomas Merton. It was in the same manner, Gandhi set out to demo that the jobs of a subjugated India were those of the vanquishers and non of the conquered. Merton? s position of non-violent protests of US engagement in Vietnam is similar to that of Martin Luther Kings thoughts of non-violence in Civil Rights issues. King said? The intent of non-violent protest, in its deepest and most religious dimensions is to rouse the scruples of the white adult male to the atrocious world of his unfairness and of his wickedness, so that he will be able to see that the black adult male job is truly a white job: the malignant neoplastic disease of unfairness is rooted in the bosom of the white adult male himself. Merton admired Gandhi for fixing for publication a choice of his expressions on non-violence, and here was possibly the most dramatic illustration in history of the combination of a religious life with the broad political relations which it irradiated ; it was other work forces? s deficiency of inner visible radiation that made Gandhi? s accomplishment seem in the terminal a failure. Mahatma Gandhi was one of the foremost political leaders of the twentieth century. He dedicated his life to peace. He was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in India. He learned from his female parent and neighbours the Indian axiom, ? There is nil higher than Truth? . He besides learned that harmlessness or passive resistance was the highest virtuousness. In 1888, his household sent him to London to analyze jurisprudence and in 1891 he was admitted to the saloon. He moved to southern Africa and spent 20 old ages bettering the rights of the immigrant Indians. South Africa abounded in colour biass, even Gandhi with his professional standing and British instruction was frequently subjected to all sorts of humiliation against which he revolted and protested merely to arouse more abuse and sometimes physical assault. It was so he developed his credo of nonviolent opposition against unfairness, Satyagraha, intending truth and soundness. He was often jailed as a consequence of the protests that he led, but before he returned to his fatherland, he drastically changed the lives of the Indians life in South Africa. Returning to India, he witnessed prejudiced statute law being proposed by the British swayers that would take away the rights of citizenship from Indians. This continued his nonviolent civil noncompliance motion in order to derive independency from British regulation. He hoped that the swayers would finally would recognize their errors and rectify the wrongs. The multitudes took up Gandhi? s call and his motion spread throughout India. He applied the method of truthfulness and love to form the people to do them nonviolent to win their righteous battle against the British Government. Gandhi had taken a vow of poorness and lived as the people d Idaho, even though he had a pick, because of this Gandhi became a sure leader. He became the international symbol of free India. He believed wholeheartedly that if he was to service society, he had to give up his greed for money, longing pleasances and take a life of arrant simpleness and self-denial and Teach others by his ain illustration. Refusing earthly ownerships, he wore a breechcloth and shawl like that of the lowliest Indians and survived on veggies, fruit juices, and caprine animal? s milk. He lived a religious and abstemious life of supplication, fasting and mediation. He was rather sensitive to the appeals of nature. He wanted to understand nature as an look of God and tried to see life in everything interrupting down even the customary differentiation between the animate and the inanimate. During the long battle for independency, he neer wavered in his firm belief in nonviolent protest and spiritual tolerance. When the Muslim and Hindu countrymen committed Acts of the Apostless of force, whether against the British or against each other, he would fast until the combat ceased. Finally in 1947, India won its freedom, nevertheless to Gandhi? s desperation the state was divided into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Violence broke out and he was disheartened. The feeling that all he had done was useless because of his countrymen contending each other over faith. Nonetheless he plunged himself into assisting mend the public violence razed countries and fasted for peace in those topographic points where the contending continued over faith until it ceased. However, Gandhi did non observe freedom for really long. He was shot to decease by a Hindu fiend on January 30, 1948 as he was traveling to flushing supplication. He died with freedom, peace and love within his bosom. He lived a simple life in a universe of mounting complexness and practiced passive resistance in a state that seen ferociousness on the portion of the regulating powers. Religion to Gandhi meant take parting in political relations, people oriented political relations. Gandhi believed that in order to be genuinely spiritual you needed to take an active portion in political relations. Religion involves all signifiers of human life, while at the same clip it provides a moral foundation of human nature and human society. Human advancement can be assured merely if the life of an person, society or state is based on the cardinal moral rule of truth To Gandhi truth was God. Politicss dedicated to function the demands of humanity leads necessarily to a better apprehension of Truth. Gandhi believed that everyone should be free to take his ain faith. ? Religion is a really personal affair. We should seek by populating the life harmonizing to our visible radiations to portion the best with one another, therefore adding to the sum sum of human attempt to make God. ? The purpose of family should be to assist adult male to go a better Christian. ? God did non bear the cross merely 1900 old ages ago, but he bears it today, and he dies and is resurrected from twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours. If would be hapless comfort to the universe if it had to depend upon a historical God who died 2000 old ages ago. Make non them preach the God of history, but show him as he lives today through you. Thomas Merton had the same doctrine, ? What we are asked to make people may happen God by experiencing how he lives within us. Gandhi was endeavouring to see God through service of humanity, for he knew that God was neither in Eden, nor down below, but in everyone and everything. In todays society, competitory economic advancement is the root of most rivalries-greed for ownership. When big headlines of inhuman treatment, corruptness and greed are plastered in the intelligence media it normally announces moral pandemonium, but our system chooses to get the better of the illness of it. Making alibis by apologizing and warranting on the footing of some half-mixed theories of unnatural psychological science and the advancement of scientific discipline and engineering. Both Merton and Gandhi tried to do us realize the subject in order to better the quality of our ain life. It was by religion and finding that Gandhi made himself so great and became the moral leader of 1000000s, and achieved by the methods of truth and love things which looked like miracles in modern age. He surrounded himself with his brothers and sisters and lived like they did. Merton surrounded himself with his community merely. Through his supplications and Hagiographas he reached the outside universe and showed that God was neither in Eden, nor down below, he is in everyone and everything. They both realized that the universe? s status made it more of import than of all time for the great faiths to make the degree of common apprehension and common enrichment. They publically made it cognize that the present of war is something we have made wholly for and by ourselves. There is in world non the slightest logical ground for war. They fought for the abolishment of war and to utilize a nonviolent means to settle struggles. Religions are different roads meeting to the same point. Why does it count that we take different roads? Equally long as we all have the same ultimate goal-God. Without love, particularly love of our oppositions and enemies, Gandhi and Merton both insisted that neither profound personal nor societal transmutation could happen. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an apprehension of who he is and who we are. Alternatively of forcing our enemy down and seeking to mount out by utilizing him as a stepping rock we help ourselves to lift by widening our manus to assist him lift. They both taught us to open our eyes to the truth and to direct our actions to others that are blinded so they may see the truth. d30 Forest, Jim, Populating With Wisdom A Life of Thomas Merton. Orbis Books, 1991 P . Altany, Alan, ? Thomas Merton: The Rediscovered Geography of An American Mystic, ? Vol 2, Research on Contemplative Life: An Electronic Quarterly, December 1995. . Altany, Alan, ? Thomas Merton: The Rediscovered Geography of An American Mystic, ? 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Datta, Dhirendra Mohaan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, 1953 P 14. . Altany, Alan, ? Thomas Merton: The Rediscovered Geography of An American Mystic, ? Vol 2, Research on Contemplative Live: An Electronic Quarterly, December 1995. . Datta. Dhirendra Mohaan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, 1953 P 51. . Kripalani, Krishna, All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told in His Own Wordss, 1958, p 96. . Berlin, Lopa, ? Mahatma Gandhi ( 1869-1948 ) ? , Online Internet, June 1998 P 4. . Shanker, Rajkumari, The Story of Gandhi, Children? s Book Trust, 1969 P 6. . Kripalani, Krishna, All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told in His Own Wordss, 1958, p 103. . Datta. Dhirendra Mohaan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, 1953 P 44. . Datta. Dhirendra Mohaan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, 1953 P 46. . Datta. Dhirendra Mohaan, The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, 1953 P 59. . De Wall, Esther, A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton, Servant Publications, 1992 P 29. . Woodcock, George, Thomas Merton, Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1978 P 153.