Trungpa y Merton

Trungpa's Barbarians and Merton's Titan: Resuming a Dialogue on Spiritual Egotism
Author(s): Steven R. Shippee

Source: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 32 (2012), pp. 109-125
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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Trungpa's Barbarians
and Merton's Titan: Resuming
a Dialogue on Spiritual Egotism
Steven R. Shippee
Sacred Heart School of Theology
A DIALOGUE BEGUN: THE MEETING OF
CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA AND THOMAS MERTON
Much of the dialogue on the spiritual life between Buddhists and Christians has
centered on two locations in the United States. The first is Naropa Institute (now
University) in Boulder, Colorado. This institution was founded in 1974 by Chögyam
Trungpa, a Tibetan master and lineage holder of both the Nyingma and Kagyü tradi
tions, two of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Under Trungpa s guidance,
Naropa hosted an important series of Buddhist-Christian contemplative dialogues

in the 1980s.1 A second significant place is Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the
Trappist monastery that became home to Thomas Merton in 1941. Since 1996, and
through the efforts of several of the same people who had worked on the Naropa
dialogues, the abbey has hosted three interreligious "encounters" sponsored by the
Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.2
An important link between these dialogues, as well as the initial inspiration for
the first of them,' is the meeting of the two men most famously associated with each
of the hosting institutions, Trungpa and Merton. As many of their respective read
ers know, the two men met in Calcutta on 19 October 1968, and spent several days
together.1 This contact was very stimulating to them both and seemed the beginning
of a deep friendship. Merton was so impressed with Trungpa that he immediately
determined to visit Trungpa's new monastery in Scotland. Trungpa later said, "Meet
ing Thomas Mercon was wonderful," and that he felt he "was meeting an old friend,
a genuine friend."6 Despite the brevity of their relationship, during his last talk on 10
December, Merton said he likewise considered Trungpa "a good friend." Later that
same day, their friendship and dialogue were terminated by Merton's death. Not two
months had passed since the meeting in Calcutta. Trungpa called Merton's death "a
tremendous loss, to me personally and to the world of genuine spirituality."8
Judith Simmer-Brown has provided the fullest picture thus far of the relation
ship between Trungpa and Merton.9 One of the facts that most intrigues Trungpa's
Studies32 (2012) 109—125. © by Universityof Hawai'i Press. All rightsreserved.

Buddhist-Christian
110 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES
followers is his own recollection, shared with participants at the third Naropa dia
logue, that the two discussed what he called "spiritual materialism" (his most com
mon phrase for spirituality co-opted by ego) at some length over dinner and drinks.10
This article picks up where that recollection leaves off. While we do not know more
about the specific content of that discussion, we do have a body of writings from each
man on topics relating to the quest and pitfalls of authentic spirituality. A compara
tive analysis of these proves worthwhile, as further elucidation of what made pos
sible their meeting of the minds and the immediate affection they felt for each other,
and certainly as wisdom that still has the power to deepen our spiritual experience
today by exposing the manipulations and deceptions to which ego" subjects even our
noblest spiritual aspirations.

The challenges to authentic spiritual life were major concerns for both Trungpa
and Merton, a leitmotif that characterized almost all of their respective teachings
and written works.12 As an extensive examination of these is not possible here, I
have set side by side one symbol from each: Trungpa's modification of the traditional
Tibetan teachings on the Lalos (kla.klo, literally "barbarians"), which he translated as
the "Three Lords of Materialism," and Merton's reflections on the tragic Titan Pro
metheus, who stole fire from the gods. These two symbols, while certainly not exhaus
tive of their insights, nonetheless effectively crystallize their respective thoughts on
the matter, and thereby allow us to see that Trungpa and Merton shared very striking
insights both about the malady of spiritual egotism and about its necessary antidotes.
CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA ON SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM
In talks given from 1970 to 1973, Trungpa gave teachings to his students on "the
Three Lords of Materialism," symbolic personifications of the trap to which he referred
as spiritual materialism.13 Believing that most of his students were sincere about the
spiritual path, he nonetheless realized that they also "brought to it a great deal of
confusion, misunderstanding and expectation."14 Therefore, he gave these teachings

on spiritual materialism to enable them "to cut through" these obstacles to authentic
practice and realization.
Before any such cutting-through can occur, however, the student must begin with
the truth of his or her own confusion. The illusion of a solid self constitutes this con
fused state. "The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self which seems
to him to be continuous and solid [but which] is actually a transitory, discontinuous
event."15 This confusion, though ultimately evanescent, is nonetheless the source of
the immeasurable suffering of samsara. Upon it follows the entire project of self
enhancement and self-maintenance. "Experience continually threatens to reveal our
transitoriness to us, so we continually struggle to cover up any possibility of discover
ing our real condition" and this, in short, "is the action of ego."16
At this point Trungpa introduced the Three Lords of Materialism to describe this
functioning of ego. These correspond to the three gates of body, speech, and mind.
The first is the Lord of Form or body: the ego-filled pursuit of comfort, security, or
pleasure. Here ego protects itself from irritation, on the one hand, and boredom, on
TRUNGPA'S BARBARIANS AND MERTON'S TITAN
the other. Irritation and boredom, of course, are manifestations of duhkha, the First
Noble Truth, which may be variously translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, anxiety,

or irritation. It is the sharp, uncomfortable edge in our state of being, which we try
to soften and render comfortable or bearable by any number of means. Food, sex,
recreation, and entertainment all can be used this way. It is crucial to understand that
enjoying a meal or relaxing is not inherently antithetical to the spiritual life. Victory
over the Lord of Form is not had simply by rigorous abstinence; this would be to fall
into conceptual moralizing. The point is that these pleasures can be strategies used by
ego to create a nest or playground, a space in which we are shielded or distracted from
the discomfort that characterizes our moment-to-moment existence. What Trungpa

intended to help his students see was their own commitment to creating a manage
able, predictable, safe, or pleasurable world for themselves, and their tendency to
mistake this for spiritual practice. Interestingly, Trungpa used the word "neurotic" to
describe this activity.17
The second "barbarian" is the Lord of Speech: the use of intellect to manage our
world and experience. Interpretations, ideologies, identities, philosophies, religions,

rules, and so on all can be used to render the world intelligibly coherent and thus
manageable. They help one to know what's what, who's who, where one stands, and
what sort the other is. Thus, one can sift the world and other people into categories:
those one likes, or can befriend, or with whom one can identify (attachment); those
one must resist because they are wrong (aversion); and those who neither know nor
care enough about important matters to be bothered with (ignorance). Again, it is
important to see that the critique is not aimed at concepts themselves, but at the neu
rotic commitment to concepts, categories, and interpretive devices. What Trungpa
points out is that we often use our concepts for comfort and security against that
which we find unmanageable, confusing, or threatening. Conceptual labeling makes
possible ego's filtering of the world so that the welter of reality can be rendered man
ageable or knowable. Thus, the self can always know where it stands and can always
know that it stands in the truth, over and against error and ambiguity.
Third is the Lord of Mind, whereby ego adopts spiritual or psychological disci
plines, techniques, paths, or practices to solidify and hold on to itself. This is spiri
tuality as self-improvement or therapy. Yoga, drugs, prayer, meditation, trances, and
psychotherapies all can be used to advance ego's agenda of seeing itself as realized,
holy, spiritually advanced, and in the know. Especially, ego wants to get above the
rabble, beyond the human condition, and out of the muck and mire of everyday exis
tence. Spirituality seems the true way.
A "spiritualized ego" is, of course, an absolute impossibility, but an ego playing at
spirituality is a distinct possibility. Trungpa writes,
Ego is able to convert

everything to its own use, even spirituality. For example,
if you have learned
of a particularly beneficial meditation technique of spiritual
practice, then ego's attitude is, first, to regard it as an object of fascination and,
second, to examine it. Finally, since ego is seemingly solid and cannot really
absorb anything, it can only mimic. Thus ego tries to examine and imitate the
BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES
practice of meditation and the meditative way of life. When we have learned
all the tricks and answers of the spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate
spirituality, since real involvement would require the complete elimination of
ego, and actually the last thing we want to do is give up the ego completely.
However, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can
only find some areawithin the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing.
Ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent
qualities. It feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having

been able to create such a pattern. At last it has created a tangible accomplish
ment, a confirmation of its own individuality.18
As this passage shows, the subversion of spirituality is most powerful with the Lord
of Mind, for if ego succeeds in its play, if it convinces itself by its imitation, then a
sort of complete "egohood" can be achieved, in which real spirituality becomes most
unlikely. Nonetheless, Trungpa did not use the term "spiritual materialism" to refer
only to the Lord of Mind.
[T]he other two Lords can also rule the spiritual practice. Retreat to nature,
isolation, simple, quiet, high people ... all can be expressions of the Lord of
Form. Or perhaps religion may provide us with a rationalization for creating
a secure nest, a simple but
home, comfortable
for acquiring an amiable mate,
and a stable,
easy job. of The
Speech is Lord
involved in spiritual practice as
well. In following a spiritual path we may substitute a new religious ideology
for our former beliefs, but continue to use it in the old neurotic way. Regardless
how sublime our ideas may be, if we take them too seriously and use them to
maintain our ego, we are still being ruled by the Lord of Speech.19
Summarizing this complex project of the Three Lords, we see a great struggle
based on an acquisitive mentality, which is in turn founded upon hope. The struggle
to secure or build the nest or playground, the rule of the Lord of Form, is waged in
hope of inhabiting a Goldilocks zone beyond the general and myriad discomforts of
ordinary existence. Similarly, the struggle, driven by the Lord of Speech, to master
the confusing welter of the world by conceptualizing it down to a manageable size
and configuration is but an intellectual expression of the hope to acquire safe haven.
Beyond even these efforts to acquire security for the self, we hope above all for a
realized self, the ultimate selfhood of the spiritual adept, secure not only against the
anguish of physical and mental uncertainty, but secure above and beyond even the pos
sibility of such suffering.

Acquisitiveness and hope, however, are themselves rooted ultimately in a double
self-deception, the first of which is mistaking the discontinuity of experience for

a continuous self. This basic mistake is the real source of the problem, the root of
samsara. Here then is the second self-deception: given the shifty nature of our non
existence and our profound inability to accept it, we deceive ourselves through the
strategies of the Three Lords of Materialism into chasing a lasting and so impossible
security beyond our actual condition.
THOMAS MERTON ON SPIRITUALITY AS EXPLOIT
Merton first published Prometheus/A Meditation in 1958,20 enlisting Hesiod's Pro
metheus as a symbol of the distorted religious conceptions and spiritual strivings that
obstruct authentic Christian life.21 The most fundamental conviction of Christian

faith is that the God who is Love wills in Christ to share Godself with human beings,
thus bringing them the fullness of life. In this light, Prometheus's first and fatal
perversion is idolatry, his imagining a false God. Merton's meditation on Prometheus

thus begins, "The false gods men have made for themselves are jealous fathers . . .
Immortal fathers, afraid of their mortal children, they are unjustly protected by a too
fortunate immortality. To fight them requires at once heroism and despair. And yet
one must fight them, because they are false. The man who does not know the Living
God is condemned, by his false gods, to this despair."22
Merton attributes this despair to Prometheus's terror when faced with the truth
about God and the self. It is "the terror of having to be someone ... of facing and
fully realizing his divine sonship in Christ, and in the Spirit of divine sonship Who
is given us from heaven. The terror of nothingness which has to accept eternal life as
a free gift—and live it forever in joy!"25
Becoming this someone, then, depends entirely upon the gift of God. The Chris
tian reception of eternal life as gift is the cornerstone upon which Prometheus stum
bles and that sets him upon his only alternative course: spirituality as theft. But,
Merton continues: "The fire Prometheus thought he had to steal from the gods is his
own identity in God, the affirmation and vindication of his own being as a sanctified
creature in the image of God. The fire Prometheus thought he had to steal is his own
spiritual freedom."24
This reading of Prometheus reveals three interdependent errors fatal to the spiri
tual life of Christians. The first is Prometheus's mistaken assumption of his original
spiritual poverty, the idea that be lach the fire. The second is the crime to which this
presumed poverty drives him, the theft of the fire. These two tragic elements reveal
the third: Prometheus's construal of the spiritual life as an exploit or conquest. By
taking each of these three elements in turn (poverty, vice, and exploit), the fuller lines
of Promethean spirituality become clear.
Prometheus's first mistake is his assumption of spiritual poverty. This is rooted in
his idolatry, for, Merton explains, those who do not know the Living God necessarily
generate a false god who, because it is a lie, can only manipulate them into the despair
of being alienated, from their own essence, the deepest truth about themselves that comes
freely from the Living God.25 In this way, the lie about God involves the lie about the
self. The lie about God is that God is a fire hoarder. The lie about the self is that it has
been cheated and impoverished, from above.
Second, this supposition of one's own poverty issues in vice: in this case, a guilty
desire. "The fire attracts him more than he can believe possible, because it is in reality
his own. But he hates himself for desiring what he has given to his gods."J6 Given
the mistaken assumption of his original poverty, then, the tragic plan to steal the fire
follows.
Finally, Merton characterizes this theft as an act of perverted liberty. Not realizing
the wealth of spiritual freedom that is his in Christ, the Titan must steal freedom: "in
order to have all that he needs, it is necessary to steal it back" from the gods.27 For
Prometheus, therefore, to become a person requires a great struggle with the gods;
self-realization can be had only "by an exploit, a tonr-de-force."28 He must conquer the
fire-hoarding deity in order to achieve his own spiritual freedom.
This Promethean heroism is of a radically self-involved sort, and it shows the
depth of spiritual perversion with which we must contend. The spiritual exploit of
the theft of fire is, of course, futile. Failure is the only possible outcome because the
gods, false though they be, are far stronger than Prometheus—immortal, in fact—
and intent upon depriving him of his fire. Given this "theological situation," if I
may call it that, Prometheus's mysticism contains just the sort of self-obsession that
"enables him to glory in defeat."29 This self-obsession is the real issue here, the spiri
tual perversion that lies at the root of all others: the Self, tragically impoverished;
the Self, in the dramatic throes of despair; the Self, afflicted with futile desire and so
the Self, condemned to self-hatred; the Self as the great self-mortifier who, as Merton
says, "becomes his own vulture and is satisfied at last. In consuming himself, he finds
self-realization. "30
Prometheus's spirituality, in short, is a thoroughly egocentric one, a spirituality of,
by, and for the Self. Perhaps there are moments of transcendence of a sort, but these
are all to the purpose of his mm great victory and never Wf-transcending. His gods are,
says Merton, "created in his own image [and] represent his own tyrannical demands
51
upon himself." This version of the spiritual life is like a one-actor play. Prometheus
plays the only role, while the Living God is nowhere to be found in the script. "The
great error of Promethean mysticism is that it takes no account of anyone but the Self.
For Prometheus, there is no 'other.' His spirit, his strivings, have no relation to any
other person. Everything converges upon himself. But the secret of Christian mysti
cism is that it fulfils the self by selfless love for other persons."32 This is Merton's
trenchant indictment of spirituality carried out completely within the confines of the
false self of ego.
TRUNGPA ON THE ANTIDOTE
Trungpa's teaching on the Three Lords was essentially a heuristic device exposing the
games ego plays to evade the confusing and paintul realities of our human condition.
As "discontinuous events," we are commonly frightened into pursuing a futile quest
to secure a self, and so we perpetuate our pain and get caught in a cyclic struggle of
acquisitiveness and hope. To express succinctly Trungpa's remedy for this confusion,
we may speak of two elements, the first of which is the importance of hopelessness
as the ground of the path. [HJope is one of the most prominent features of spiritual
materialism. ... So much hope is planted in your heart. This is playing on your
weakness. It creates further confusion with regard to pain. You forget about the pain
altogether and get involved in looking for something other than the pain. And that
itself is pain. . . . That is what we will go through unless we understand that the basic
requirement for treading the spiritual path is hopelessness.",1 Hope, he says, creates
confusion about pain. That is, in hope we wish to alleviate our pain, but it is precisely
by that hoping that we create more pain. Hope is an aversion or distraction from the
pain of the present and a guarantee of its increase in the future. "Hope is the source of
pain, and hope operates on the level of something other than what there is. We hope,
dwelling in the future, that things might turn out right. We do not experience the
present, do not face the pain or neurosis as it is."34
No matter how ardent, however, the simple decision to opt out of hope avails lit
tle. Hopelessness requires a path, a way of practicing beyond the lifestyle and habit of
hope. Meditation is the practice of hopelessness. Trungpa says plainly, "the first point
in destroying ego's game is the strict discipline of sitting meditation practice."35 The
word "strict" may serve as reminder that the effective remedy here is not, of course,
just any meditation, but correct meditation (samyak-samâdhi). We recall from our
discussion of the Lord of Mind that meditation is just one of the many strategies
ego can use in hope of self-improvement. Correct meditation, in contrast, offers the
opportunity "to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego's
constant desire [or hope] for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of
knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular
ego is seeking."'6 Trungpa explains meditation as simply looking at or noticing the
state of being that one has, without any agenda for change. "The practice of medita
tion does not involve discontinuing one's relationship with oneselt and looking for a
better person or searching for possibilities of reforming oneself and becoming a better
person. The practice of meditation is a way of continuing one s confusion, chaos, aggression,
and passion—but working with it, seeing it from the enlightened point of view. That
'7
is the basic purpose of meditation practice."
The meditation under consideration here is the well-known peaceful-abiding prac
tice (samatha). It is often called the development or cultivation of peace. But does
this not contradict the notion of meditation as "continuing one's confusion, chaos,
aggression, and passion"? Addressing this question directly, Trungpa specifies the
sort of peace cultivated by samatha. "Shamatha means 'development of peace.' In this
case, peace refers to the harmony connected with accuracy, rather than peace from the
point of view of pleasure rather than pain. . . . When we talk about peace we mean for
the first time we are able to see ourselves completely . . . absolutely as what we are."38
The peace of samatha, rightly understood, is not a special state of mind. It is, in
Trungpa's teaching, the peace of non-struggle, a matter of opting out of ego's game.
It is being at peace with oneself by clearly and simply seeing and accepting the truth
of one's life and mind.
To see this sometimes difficult truth requires a kind of intelligence that is inherent
and available to us, but that the spiritual materialist often bypasses in hopes of acquir
ing the truth and changing oneself. Thus, the second feature of Trungpa's remedy
is his teaching on intelligence expressed as cynicism or criticism. "The only way to
deal with spiritual materialism as such is to develop an ultimately cynical or critical
attitude toward the teachings and the teachers and the practices that we're involved
with. We shouldn't let ourselves be sucked in, but question twice, thrice, from the
point of view, 'Is this spiritual materialism to me, or isn't it?' Once we develop that
kind of paranoia, which is intelligence, or scientific mind, then we are in a situation
of resourcefulness, tremendous wealth." w
This critical intelligence is an awareness of the pervasiveness of ego's game and,
therefore, considers reflectively whether any factor of the spiritual life or path is
sought for security against pain or for self-aggrandizement. When questioned about
the nature of this cynicism, Trungpa replied, "cynicism is a self-critical attitude in
some sense, but it is not self-punishment. A self-critical attitude could be taken as an
intelligent measure."40 It is interesting that Trungpa, who was not a native English
speaker, called it a kind of paranoia, for that is almost literally what it is: a "mind"
(nous), in this case our wisdom mind, running "alongside of' (para) and scrutiniz
ing our mental activities for the baneful influence of "culprit mind" (Abhidharma's
seventh consciousness) upon our spiritual intentions.41 This must not be an act of
aggression, so Trungpa states, "being cynical or critical doesn't mean that you have to
punish yourself, but you just attack the areas of indulgence of ego."42 Criticism thus
goes hand in hand with the gentleness of the meditation practice, as "a way of making
friends with ourselves."43
As important as samatha and a healthy cynicism ate, they are only the necessary
foundation stones; there is much more to the defeat of spiritual materialism in Trung
pa's teachings, especially if one takes account of Trungpa as a teacher of the entire
Tibetan "three vehicle" (triyäna) system. Cynical self-critique could be seen as leaven
in the loaf of the entire spiritual life.44 The samatha discipline discussed here is the
center of the disciplines Trungpa urged upon his students. As can be seen in Cutting
through Spiritual Materialism and many other sources, èamatha discipline becomes the
foundation for the deeper surrender of spiritual materialism necessary when one takes
the Bodhisattva Vow and enters the Mahäyäna, and for the meeting of mind and guru
and for initiation (abhisheka) that occur in the Vajrayäna.
MERTON ON THE ANTIDOTE
Merton used the Prometheus myth to highlight central features of an egocentric

spirituality: the tendency to idolatry, the fear that too often seizes us when we are
faced with being utterly dependent upon grace, the dire mistake of assuming our
spiritual poverty, and, therefore, the vitiated plan to seize what can only be had as
gift. What does Merton offer as antidote for the completely egocentric spirituality of
Prometheus? I suggest three points: the corrective of Christ, grace, and reception; the
discovery of the true self; and the path of contemplation.

For the first of these we may begin where Merton's meditation on Prometheus
ends, namely with Christ, for "no one was ever less like Prometheus on Caucasus, than
Christ on his Cross."45 For Merton, Christ is the living reversal of the Promethean
impulse. While Prometheus ascends to heaven to steal the divine fire, Christ descends
from there to grant it. "Christ Who had in Himself all the riches of God and all the
poverty of Prometheus came down with the fire Prometheus needed hidden in His
Heart."46 Thus he reveals God's true character: "Far from killing the man who seeks
the divine fire, the Living God will Himself pass through death in order that man
may have what is destined for him."47 Further, if Christ is the anti-Prometheus, so
similarly "the union of the Christian with God is the exact opposite of a Promethean
exploit."48 It begins with correcting Prometheus's idolatry, that is, by rejecting the
projection of the fire-hoarding God and rejoicing in the truth of God as the giver of
9
life. While Prometheus was "incapable of understanding the liberality of God,
authentic Christian spirituality is built upon it.
In The New Man, Merton continues his reflections upon Prometheus, placing them
still more explicitly in the context of the theology of grace. Rehearsing in very broad
strokes the debates about free will and grace, he points out the Promethean premise
shared by "all these false approaches. . . . They all assume basic, jealous hostility
between man and God."50 Following the Patristic theology of divinization (theosis),
Merton insists that God created us in order to communicate to us "nothing else but
a participation in the life, wisdom, and joy and peace of God himself."51 This par
ticipation in the divine life is "the ultimate in man's self-realization, for when it is
perfected, man not only discovers his true self, but finds himself to be mystically
one with the God by Whom he has been elevated and transformed."5-' There is no
hostility between humanity and God, and so no contradiction between human self
realization and the reception of grace. Whence then, the perverted logic of hostility?
"All our strange ideas of conflict with God are born in the war that is within our
selves—the war between the 'two laws'—the law of sin in our lower self and the law
of God in our conscience. We are not fighting God, we are fighting ourselves. God,
in His mercy, seeks to bring us peace—to reconcile us with ourselves. When we are
reconciled with our true selves we find ourselves one with Him."53
If there is, then, no hostility, there can only be the logic of love, wherein God
Godself and human beings receive this love, both as utterly freely given and as
gives
freely received. "This modality, this sense of receiving is tremendously important.","1
both the naturalist and Prometheus, authentic spirituality is life
Against Pelagian
lived in the mode of reception of a gift freely given. But equally against those who
would deny the important role of human freedom, this reception is "at the same time
an exercise of man's fundamental freedom (of spontaneity)," for we "receive the full
ness of divine love" only by imitating the divine generosity through freely surrender
ing ourselves in return.'5
Thus, Prometheanism is undone through the dynamics of grace and active recep
tion. These also reveal the centrality of the recovery of the true self, the second point
of Merton's remedy for spirituality as exploit. This self already has been mentioned
in the discussion above on Christ and grace, because for Merton its recovery is always
simultaneous with Christ's work of grace in us. Indeed, the false self is that from
which Christ saves us. "[W]e must be saved above all from the abyss of confusion
and which is our own worldly self. The person must be rescued from the
absurdity
individual. The free son of God must be saved from the conformist slave of fantasy,
and convention. The creative and mysterious inner self must be delivered
passion
from the wasteful, hedonistic and destructive ego that seeks only to cover itself with
disguises."56
Here we see several ways Merton described the false self: the mere individual, a
conformist slave, the destructive ego.5' But to return closer to Merton's reflections
on Prometheus, we may speak of Adam's pride, which manifests in us precisely as "a
stubborn insistence on being what we are not ... a deep, insatiable need for unreal
ity."58 Merton explains, "If we are to recover our own identity, and return to God
by the way Adam came in his fall, we must learn to stop saying: 'I heard you in the
garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid' [Genesis 2:10]. We must
cast away the 'aprons of leaves' and the 'garments of skins' which the Fathers of the
Church variously interpret as passions, and attachments to earthly things, and fixation
in our own rigid determination to be someone other than our true selves."'''3
For Merton, again and again, the true self is both the condition and the fruition
of authentic encounter with God.6" But how does the Christian learn to stop hiding
in the fear, attachment, and fixation of the false self? As meditation is Trungpa's sug
gested path beyond the tyranny of spiritual materialism, so contemplation is Merton's
prescribed path for realizing the true self's gratuitous union with God/'1
In "The Inner Experience," Merton employs the standard Neo-Scholastic contem
plative categories of his day (active, passive/infused, etc.), categories that rest squarely
on a clear distinction between nature and grace.62 Since, according to that tradition,
the height of contemplation is entirely the work of grace,63 a sort of transition beyond
the self into the divine presence in its depths, we must acknowledge an irreduc
ible difference between the thought worlds of Trungpa and Merton. But Merton also
reflects deeply here on the natural side of the equation, as it were, for the preparation
for contemplation "is to try to recover your basic natural unity, to reintegrate your
compartmentalized being into a coordinated and simple whole, and to learn to live
as a unified human person."6q Without this recovery, chances are that the self is but
"a fictitious character occupied in very active self-impersonation."65 If such a self gets
ahold of the idea of contemplation,
he will perhaps set himself to "become a contemplative." That is, he will wish
to admire, in himself, something called contemplation. And in order to see it,
he will reflect on his alienated self. He will make contemplative faces at him
self like a child in front of a mirror. He will cultivate the contemplative look
that seems appropriate to him, and that he likes to see in himself. And the fact
that his busy narcissism is turned within and feeds upon itself in stillness and
secret love, will make him believe that his experience of himself is an experi
ence of God. . . . He will assume varied attitudes, and meditate on the inner
significance of his own postures, and try to fabricate for himself a contempla
tive identity; and all the while there is nobody there.66
Merton reflects further on a more unified human person in the section of "The
Inner Experience" subtitled "Sacred and Secular." Building upon the possible ety
mological derivation of the word secular from the Greek kuklon (wheel), he works
with the definition of secular existence as cyclical. "Life becomes secularized when it
commits itself completely to the 'cycles' of what appears to be new, but is in fact the
same thing over again. Secular life is a life of vain hopes, imprisoned in the illusion
of newness and change."67 Within this cycle, Merton locates the secular, false selfs
commitment to what Pascal called diversion, "that is, to movement which has, before
everything else, the anaesthetic function of quieting our anguish."6" In contrast, "the
truly sacred attitude toward life is in no sense an escape from the sense of nothing
ness that assails us when we are left alone with ourselves. . . . [It] is one [that] does
not recoil from our own inner emptiness, but rather penetrates into it with awe and
reverence, and with the awareness of mystery."69
Here, the similarity with Trungpa's antidote of samatha as seeing the truth of one's
being is striking. Merton affirms that for the Christian contemplative, the self is an
infinite depth and fullness where God is encountered, and he insists that this greater
depth remains "impossible as long as we are afraid of our own nothingness, as long
as we are afraid of fear, afraid of poverty, afraid of boredom—as long as we run away
from ourselves."70 There is "a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred"
1
attitude and the acceptance of one's inmost self." The condition of authentic spiri
tuality is the humility that dares "the full acceptance of all that we have tended to
reject and ignore in ourselves."72
conclusion: trungpa's and merton's accord on spiritual egotism
Considering the great differences in perspectives between Buddhism and Christianity,
it is remarkable that several significant points of convergence emerge as we imagine
resuming the dialogue of Trungpa and Merton on spiritual egotism. I submit that
these convergences are greater with regard to the malady of spiritual egotism than
with regard to its remedies. Diverse medical treatments offer an analogy: one illness
often admits of more than one effective treatment. Trungpa and Merton were, after
all, both responding to a shared human predicament, but doing so with the resources
of two distinct spiritual traditions.7'
As for the malady itself, at least three striking parallels are noteworthy, rirst, both
Trungpa and Merton took recourse to mythical figures to portray the spirituality of
ego: three Barbarian Lords and a Greek Titan. Whatever the reason for this coinci
dence, its effectiveness is clear enough. These personifications of ego render larger
than life the pervasive and habitual self-seeking that can permeate our spiritual life so
subtly that it easily can escape our notice.
Second, both thinkers have highlighted the profound misunderstanding of the self that
lies at the root of the human spiritual dilemma. For Trungpa, it is the illusion of a
solid self, while for Merton, it is the fashioning of an idol from a falsely impoverished
self. This convergence is clearly set within the broader context of the perhaps irreduc
ible differences between the Christian doctrine of the substantial reality of the ere
ated self and Buddhist convictions about non-self. It would be possible, however, to
make too much of this difference, for the Buddhist teaching of non-self is not at all a
denial of the empirical or historical person who encounters the teachings. Taking the
Buddhist philosophical distinction between relative and absolute truth into account,
there is indeed (even if we must also say "relatively") a person who is confused about
the true nature of existence.
Finally, and most importantly, Trungpa and Merton share an insight into the
role of fear as the dynamic that distorts the spiritual quest. For Trungpa, the Three
Lords of Materialism are but elaborate strategies of protection from fears and anxiet
ies of many kinds,74 while Merton's Prometheus is terrified by the task of becoming
a person, on the logic of self-forgetfulness. Moreover, this fear fuels pseudo-spiritual
behaviors that Trungpa and Merton described at times in ways that deeply resonate
with each other. The "spiritualized ego" indicted by Trungpa, which is fascinated
with meditative technique but can only mimic a meditative way of life by finding
something within the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing is, for all intents
and purposes, identical to Merton's "self-impersonator" who sets out "to become a
contemplative" but can only play at contemplation like a child making faces at itself
in a mirror.
Turning to the remedies each man offers, an utterly irreducible difference certainly
revolves around Christology and grace, specifically the role of Christ as savior who
brings down the fire Prometheus sought to steal, bestows it upon humanity as a gift,
and thus reveals and enacts the way to union with God. Of course, the non-theism
'1
of Buddhism stands at a far remove from such a vision. Nonetheless, we can note at
least one significant point of contact between Trungpa's and Merton's antidotes: their
respective paths of meditation and contemplation.76

For Trungpa, meditation is the only path for reversing our ingrained tendency to
avoid the truth about our existence. Spiritual aspirations bring one to the path, and
on that path one hopes to rise above the confusion, chaos, aggression, and passion
that characterize our human condition. This very hope, however, is itself a form of
aggression, that is, a rejection of what is, and thus a major obstacle to realizing the
First Noble Truth of suffering. Sitting meditation, rightly engaged, is the practice of
hopelessness, the slow, methodical surrender of the wish to be other than what we are,
the specific practice of seeing the simple truth of one's own mind.
Similarly, for Merton, the essential problem is our stubborn insistence on being
other than we are. The true self, who is paradoxically already and always one with
God, is a simple and unified human person. What Merton called "secular" life was not
a nonmonastic life, but any life imprisoned in the cycle of addiction to the illusion of
newness and change, caught in the myriad diversions for anaesthetizing our human
anguish. While he does not offer his readers as concrete a practice as Trungpa does
with his samatha, his contemplation is predicated upon an identical that is
bravery
willing "to sit" with one's own fear, boredom, and poverty, a courage to accept all the
discomfort in our being and experience that we tend and prefer to ignore.
Trungpa and Merton both taught that the path beyond egotism in the spiritual
life involves befriending one's own state of being without the intention of changing
or improving it. They agreed that all seeming progress on the spiritual is not so
path
much forward to a place one is not, as back to the simple of who and what we
reality
are. That two individuals so steeped in this and and
insight experience, yet so geo
graphically separated, should meet in a land foreign to them both is what Buddhists
might call an auspicious coincidence and what Christians might call providential, but
that two such authentic human beings should recognize each other immediately as
genuine friends is certainly no surprise.
NOTES
1. The fruit of the first five years of this dialogue can be found in Susan Szpakowski, ed.,
Speaking of Silence: Christians and Buddhists in Dialogue, 2nd ed. (Halifax: Vajradhatu Publica
tions, 2005).
2. Donald W. Mitchell and James Wiseman, OSB, eds., The Gethsemani Encounter: A
Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics (New York: Continuum,
1998). This is the book that came out of the first encounter in 1996. The second encounter,
"Gethsemani II" in 2002, was published as Donald W. Mitchell and James Wiseman, OSB,
eds., Transforming Suffering: Reflections on Finding Peace in Troubled Times (New York: Doubleday,
2003). "Gethsemane III" met in 2008 around the theme of monasticism and the environ
ment. Its presentations are available on the website of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue:
http://www.monasticdialog.com.
3. As Judith Simmer-Brown, a faculty member at Naropa who worked on the dialogue
meetings there, recalls in the preface to Szpakowski, Speaking of Silence, 4: "From the beginning,
[Trungpa] dedicated these gatherings to Father Merton, saying that he sought to cultivate the
kind of conversations between genuine contemplatives that he had discovered with Father
Merton."
4. Judith Simmer-Brown, "The Liberty That Nobody Can Touch: Thomas Merton Meets
Tibetan Buddhism," in Merton & Buddhism: Wisdom, Emptiness and Everyday Mind, ed. Bonnie
Bowman Thurston (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2007), 51—90. The meeting of Trungpa and
Merton is discussed at 55-57.
5. Quoted in Simmer-Brown, "The Liberty That Nobody Can Touch," 57.
6. Chögyam Trungpa, The Heart of the Buddha (Boston: Shambhala, 1991), 213.
7. Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, eds. Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart,
and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1975), 337.
8. Chögyam Trungpa, Born in Tibet, 4th ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 2000), from the epilogue
to the 1977 edition, 253.
9- Simmer-Brown, "The Liberty That Nobody Can Touch," 55—58. This article also provides
significant on Merton's meetings with several other important Tibetan lamas.

information
10. Now available as Trungpa, "Manifesting Enlightenment," in The Heart of the Buddha,
210—216. The recollection about dinner and drinks is on 213.
11. The word "ego" as I use it herein has no Freudian connotations at all, but rather is
connected with the "egotism" in my title, that is, with an excessive, distorting concern with
oneself. It is in this sense that both Trungpa and Merton use the term, at least in the writings
to which I refer here.
12. The centrality of this concern in Trungpa's life and work is attested by the event that
would become the turning point in his bringing the Dharma to the West, a retreat in Bhutan
in 1968, just before he met Merton. He wrote a crucial practice text there intended as a remedy
for spiritual materialism and called The Sadhana of Mahamudra Which Quells the Mighty War
ring of the Three Lords of Materialism and Brings Realization of the Ocean of Siddhas of the Practice
Lineage. See Simmer-Brown, "The Liberty That Nobody Can Touch," 58-60. For attestation of
this theme in Merton, see Anne E. Carr, preface to Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential
Writings, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 7: "[I]t may be help
ful to point to the center of Merton's continuing spiritual concern or the thread that connects
the disparate strands in his constantly changing symbolic vision. Throughout his reflections on
spirituality, from the earliest writings to the last, is the focus on authentic personal transforma
tion. He understood interior transformation as the meaning and goal of monastic life and of its
solitude and contemplation. Transformation of mind and heart is the issue [no matter what]
Merton writes about."
13. These teachings were collected most seminally in Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting through
Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala, 2002), and in the companion volume, Chögyam
Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom (Boston: Shambhala, 2002). For a particularly succinct descrip
tion of the Three Lords, see Chögyam Trungpa, "Transcending Materialism," in The Collected
Works of Chögyam Trungpa, vol. 3, ed. Carolyn Rose Gimian (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), 507—
510.
14. Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, 3.
15. Ibid., 5.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.: "In the discussion of the Three Lords which follows, the words 'materialism' and
'neurotic' refer to the action of ego."
18. Ibid., 7.
19. Ibid., 8.
20. This was published as a U.S. limited edition of only 150 copies as Thomas Merton,
Prometheus!A Meditation (Lexington: Margaret I. King Library Press/University of Kentucky,
1958). The symbol of Prometheus stayed with Merton for the last decade of his life, from at
least 1958 to his meeting with Trungpa and proximate death in 1968. Three years after the
first limited edition, the essay appeared, slightly reworked, as Thomas Merton, "Prometheus: A
Meditation," in The Behavior of Titans (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961), 11—23. That same
year saw published Thomas Merton, "Promethean Theology," in The New Man (New York: Far
rar, Straus, & Giroux, 1961), 23—48. Merton incorporated only a few paragraphs of the original
meditation; the bulk of the chapter is occupied with relating its central spiritual insights to the
theological themes of theosis, grace, and Christ. Five years later the same reworked version from
The Behavior of Titans was again published as Thomas Merton, "Prometheus: A Meditation" in
Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions, 1966), 79-88. Then, in October of 1967,
just one year before meeting Trungpa, he wrote a preface for the Japanese translation of The
New Man, and there mentioned Prometheus in connection with "a spiritual will-to-power." See
Robert E. Daggy, ed., Introductions East and West: The Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton (Greens
boro, NC: Unicorn Press, 1981), 116. Merton also completed an extensive rewriting of that
preface in April 1968 (just six months before meeting Trungpa), but maintained the paragraph
mentioning Prometheus almost word for word. This, Merton's last piece mentioning Pro
metheus, was eventually published in 1978 as Thomas Merton, "Rebirth and the New Man in
Christianity," Cistercian Studies 13:4 (1978): 289—296, and again the following year as Thomas
Merton, "Rebirth and the New Man in Christianity," in Love and Living, eds. Naomi Burton
Stone and Brother Patrick Hart (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), 173—182. See Daggy, Intro
ductions East and West, 109
21. The version of the meditation that appears in both Titans and Raids includes a prefa
tory note on "the Two Faces of Prometheus" wherein Merton distinguishes Hesiod's version of
Prometheus as a symbol of Cain and Aeschylus's Prometheus as Christ on the cross. He clarifies
that his own meditation on this Titan is a rejection of the former: "I have started from Hesiod's
view in order to argue against it" (Raids. 83).
22. Merton, Prometheus!A Meditation, 1. All references to the meditation on Prometheus are
to the 1958 original; since that was printed without page numbers, I provide the
paragraph
numbers. (For the later publications of this essay, Merton changed the opening words from "the
false gods" to "the small gods.")
23. Ibid., 2.
24. Ibid.
25. Of course, in the Christian view, the human person is indeed alienated both from God
and from one's truest self. This is what the category of original sin expresses. But
"original"
here does not in any way mean "as created by God." The original constitution of the human
being by God is in the divine image, who is Christ, or, in the terms of the Promethean myth,
with the divine fire. It needs only be accepted as gift. The "Fall," then, is the turning away
from the truth of gift to a lie.
26. Merton, Prometheus, 3
27. Ibid., 2.
28. Ibid., 3.
29- Ibid., 4.
30. Ibid., 3.
31. Ibid., 4.
32. Merton, The New Man, 34.
33- Chögyam Trungpa, Illusion's Game: The Life and Teaching ofNaropa (Boston: Shambhala,
2009), 61-62.
34. Chögyam Trungpa, "Dome Darshan," in The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, vol. 3,
539- More traditional Buddhadharma might speak about the need to realize the First Noble
Truth of suffering. Trungpa is taking aim at hope because, in the context of the severe spiritual
materialism he was facing and that we must still face, it is perhaps the most common form of
avoiding the very beginning of the Buddhist path, that is, the dharma of suffering.
35. Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, 223.
36. Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, 15.
37. Trungpa, The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation (Boston: Sham
bhala, 1995), 14-15; emphasis mine.
38. Ibid.
39- Trungpa, "Dome Darshan," 539.
40. Ibid., 542.
41. Most often, it seems that Trungpa uses the word "paranoia" with the negative meanings
most typically attributed to it; for example, "one has to give up the paranoia that one might
not fit into situations, that one might be rejected" (Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, 104).
The use of the word to refer to the positive quality of self-criticism is unusual.
42. Trungpa, "Dome Darshan," 541.
43. Ibid., 540.
44. This is not to say, however, that cynicism has any absolute status for the practitioner.
Trungpa taught that it too must be cut through by a sense of trust or what he variously called
a sense of warmth, a sane romanticism, or devotion. See Chögyam Trungpa, "Cynicism and
Devotion," in Gimian, The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, vol. 5, 55—62.

45. Merton, Prometheus, 7.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 34-35.
50. Ibid., 40.
51. Ibid., 48.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 41.
54. Ibid., 109.
55. Ibid.
56. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contetnplation (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961), 38.
57. Carr, preface to Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, 7—8, indicates the even
"He wrote of the false self, neu
greater breadth of language Merton used to describe this self:
rotic, empirical, exterior or merely superficial self, the masked or sham or masquerading self,
the knotted cramp of the imagination or solipsistic bubble who understands itself as the center
of the world, the 'individual' who parades itself in disguise to impress the crowd, the phony
that makes faces at itself as if in a mitror to prove its own reality, the Cartesian ego who thinks
of itself as in control of all truth. This is the servile and anxious self who feels that it is walking
a tightrope across an abyss of nothingness."
59- Ibid., 128; emphasis mine.
60.For a book-length discussion of this, see James Finley, Merton's Palace of Nowhere: A
Search for God through Awareness of the True Self (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1978).
61. In taking up the theme of contemplation, I depart from the context of Merton's reflec
tions on Prometheus. This theme is not at all present in Prometheus!A Meditation. Nor is it
explicit in The New Man, where the remedy for Promethean spirituality, which is grace, leads
Merton to reflect on the sacramental and liturgical implications, specifically of baptism and the
Easter vigil. While Christian contemplation cannot, of course, turn itself away from sacrament
and liturgy, I turn to Merton's reflections on contemplation proper simply because it serves my
intention to resume his dialogue with Trungpa.
62. In Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, 295—356 (hereafter, "The Inner Expe
rience"). Merton wrote this essay sometime between the meditation on Prometheus and the
publication of The New Man. Cunningham provides a brief note on the history and context of
the essay on 294.
63. "The Inner Experience" includes a discussion of the "uniquely Christian" aspects of con
templation. I confine myself here to the traditional categories and understanding of nature and
grace, Eastern religions, and Christianity operative in "The Inner Experience." But that essay
also stretches beyond the more rigid articulations of that paradigm. In comparing biblical texts
with Hinduism and Buddhism, Merton's most generous statement in the essay is this: "It may
be remarked in parentheses that theologians generally regard the spiritual experiences of ori
ental religion as occurring on the natural rather than on the supernatural level. However, they
have often admitted, with Jacques Maritain and Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, that truly supernatural
and mystical contemplation is certainly possible outside the visible church. ... As we grow in
knowledge and appreciation of oriental religion we will come to realize the depth and richness
of its varied forms of contemplation. Up to the present, our judgments have been too vague and
too undocumented, and have borne witness chiefly to our own ignorance" (323).
64. Merton, "The Inner Experience," 295.
65- Ibid., 296.
66. Ibid., 296-297.
67. Ibid., 338; emphasis Merton's.
68. Ibid., 338-339.
69- Ibid., 340.
70. Ibid., 341.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., 342.
73. In Trungpa's words, "the differences between the ways [of approaching spirituality] are
a matter of emphasis and method. The basic problems of spiritual materialism are common to
all spiritual disciplines. The Buddhist approach begins with our confusion and suffering and
works toward the unraveling of their origin. The theistic approach begins with the richness of
God and works toward raising consciousness so as to experience God's presence. But since the
obstacles to relating with God are our confusions and negativities, the theistic approach must
also deal with them. Spiritual pride, for example, is as much a problem in theistic disciplines
as in Buddhism" (Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, 4).
74. Fear is a major theme in Trungpa's teaching. Although it has not played an explicit
role in my discussion of Trungpa here, insofar as the Three Lords are essentially strategies of
protection, they clearly imply the role of fear. References to fear in Trungpa's teachings and
books would be too many, but see as an example the most recent Chögyam Trungpa, Smile at
Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery (Boston: Shambhala, 2009).
75. It is worth considering, however, whether the Buddhist Vajrayäna offers at least some
thing to bridge this great chasm, for without surrendering the nontheistic ground, it teaches
and employs many theistic elements as skillful means (upäya), such as the necessity of a per
sonal guru and of the blessing of the guru and the lineage.
76. The words "meditation" and "contemplation" are used very differently in Buddhism
and Christianity. Simmer-Brown in The Getbsemani Encounter, 208—209, explains, "when Chris
tians speak of meditation, it is what we Buddhists call contemplation; and when Christians
speak of contemplation, it is what we Buddhists call meditation. In Buddhism, contemplation

involves duality, and meditation involves nonduality. In Christianity these are reversed."

Trungpa y Merton

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Trungpa y Merton

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Trungpa's Barbarians and Merton's Titan: Resuming a Dialogue on Spiritual Egotism

Author(s): Steven R. Shippee

A DIALOGUE BEGUN: THE MEETING OF

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA AND THOMAS MERTON

University) in Boulder, Colorado. This institution was founded in 1974 by Chögyam

Naropa hosted an important series of Buddhist-Christian contemplative dialogues

of a deep friendship. Merton was so impressed with Trungpa that he immediately

tremendous loss, to me personally and to the world of genuine spirituality."8

Studies32 (2012) 109—125. © by Universityof Hawai'i Press. All rightsreserved.

noblest spiritual aspirations.

Tibetan teachings on the Lalos (kla.klo, literally "barbarians"), which he translated as

tive of their insights, nonetheless effectively crystallize their respective thoughts on

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA ON SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM

Three Lords of Materialism," symbolic personifications of the trap to which he referred

confusion, misunderstanding and expectation."14 Therefore, he gave these teachings

practice and realization.

to him to be continuous and solid [but which] is actually a transitory, discontinuous

event."15 This confusion, though ultimately evanescent, is nonetheless the source of

enhancement and self-maintenance. "Experience continually threatens to reveal our

transitoriness to us, so we continually struggle to cover up any possibility of discover

Noble Truth, which may be variously translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, anxiety,

the discomfort that characterizes our moment-to-moment existence. What Trungpa

describe this activity.17

world and experience. Interpretations, ideologies, identities, philosophies, religions,

care enough about important matters to be bothered with (ignorance). Again, it is

rotic commitment to concepts, categories, and interpretive devices. What Trungpa

which we find unmanageable, confusing, or threatening. Conceptual labeling makes

tuality as self-improvement or therapy. Yoga, drugs, prayer, meditation, trances, and

tence. Spirituality seems the true way.

A "spiritualized ego" is, of course, an absolute impossibility, but an ego playing at

spirituality is a distinct possibility. Trungpa writes,

Ego is able to convert

However, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can

qualities. It feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having

only to the Lord of Mind.

sibility of such suffering.

self-deception, the first of which is mistaking the discontinuity of experience for

security beyond our actual condition.

THOMAS MERTON ON SPIRITUALITY AS EXPLOIT

Merton first published Prometheus/A Meditation in 1958,20 enlisting Hesiod's Pro

obstruct authentic Christian life.21 The most fundamental conviction of Christian

perversion is idolatry, his imagining a false God. Merton's meditation on Prometheus

God is condemned, by his false gods, to this despair."22

the third: Prometheus's construal of the spiritual life as an exploit or conquest. By

of Promethean spirituality become clear.

Prometheus's first mistake is his assumption of spiritual poverty. This is rooted in

been cheated and impoverished, from above.

fire-hoarding deity in order to achieve his own spiritual freedom.

This Promethean heroism is of a radically self-involved sort, and it shows the

Prometheus's spirituality, in short, is a thoroughly egocentric one, a spirituality of,

false self of ego.

TRUNGPA ON THE ANTIDOTE

present, do not face the pain or neurosis as it is."34

knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular

ego is seeking."'6 Trungpa explains meditation as simply looking at or noticing the

of one's life and mind.

deal with spiritual materialism as such is to develop an ultimately cynical or critical

kind of paranoia, which is intelligence, or scientific mind, then we are in a situation

of resourcefulness, tremendous wealth." w

This critical intelligence is an awareness of the pervasiveness of ego's game and,

the nature of this cynicism, Trungpa replied, "cynicism is a self-critical attitude in

some sense, but it is not self-punishment. A self-critical attitude could be taken as an

MERTON ON THE ANTIDOTE

Merton used the Prometheus myth to highlight central features of an egocentric