Thomas Merton: 76 books

An intensely personal devotional book from Thomas Merton, the ultimate spiritual writer of our time, showing his contemplative and religious side through his prayers and rarely-seen drawings. The only Merton gift book available. Dialogues with Silence contains a selection of prayers from throughout...

A great introduction to the religions of the East by a monk from the West. Merton’s biographer, George Woodcock, once wrote that “almost from the beginning of his monastic career, Thomas Merton tentatively began to discover the great Asian religions of Buddhism and Taoism.” Merton, a...

From the author of The Seven Storey Mountain, this book looks at an order of Catholic monks dating back to eleventh-century France. “The word ‘Trappist’ has become synonymous with ‘ascetic’ and definitely indicates a monk who leads a very hard life. But . . . Penance and asceticism...

The New Man shows Thomas Merton at the height of his powers and has as its theme the question of spiritual identity. What must we do to recover possession of our true selves? By way of an answer, Merton discusses how we have become strangers to ourselves by our depence on outward identity and success,...

Classic writings from the great Zen master in exquisite versions by Thomas Merton, in a new edition with a preface by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual...

Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite--one of the last books...

Having embraced a life of solitude in his own hermitage, Thomas Merton finds his faith tested beyond his imagination when a visit to the hospital leads to a clandestine affair of the heart. Jolted out of his comfortable routine, Merton is forced to reassess his need for love and his commitment to...

This early work by Anglo-American Catholic writer Thomas Merton is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It contains a wealth of information on spiritual direction and how to learn the art of meditation. This fascinating work is thoroughly recommended for anyone with an interest in...

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton's last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life. Never before published except...

As novice master of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton presented weekly conferences to familiarize his charges with the meaning and purpose of the vows they aspired to undertake. In this setting, he offered a thorough exposition of the theological, canonical,...

As master of novices for ten years (1955–1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton’s conferences on ancient and contemporary...

As the third volume in the series including The Hidden Ground of Love (1985) and The Road to Joy (1989), this collection features Thomas Merton's letters to members of religious communities around the world. Merton's questions about the monastic life, sometimes radical and disturbing, either arose...

Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of...

The third volume of Thomas Merton's journals chronicles Merton's attempts to reconcile his desire for solitude and contemplation with the demands of his new-found celebrity status within the strictures of conventional monastic life.