“Something Breaks Through a Little”: The Marriage of Zen and Sophia in the Life of Thomas Merton - Christopher Pramuk enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN…
(p. 67) Thomas Merton’s view of the divine came from the East -- Zen and Russian Orthodoxy’s Sophia.
#Soloviev #Bulgakov #Evdokimov
(p. 69) Merton communicates with Zen master D. T. Suzuki who in return, “often cites Meister Eckhart with approval”.
(pp. 71-4) Merton goes down the rabbit hole of Russian Orthodoxy’s Kabbalistic Sophia never to return.
(p. 74) Merton notes that he has been reading Paul Evdokimov, a student of Bulgakov’s and member of the first graduating class of St. Serge: “Here is a real theologian,” he comments, “one of the few.” Evdokimov describes sophiology as “the glory of present-day Orthodox theology”
(pp. 74-5) Merton has dreams/visions in which Sophia comes to visit him in the garb of a young Jewish girl named, “Proverb”.
(p. 76) Merton writes Hagia Sophia after meditating on an icon of Holy Wisdom (aka Sophia) painted by Victor Hammer.
(pp. 79-80) “several years of meditation on the Russian theologians had brought Merton here to the rather striking insight that faith in Sophia is “the great stabilizer today for peace”—an intuition that would find its most sublime expression in Hagia Sophia.”
(p. 83) Merton jokes that he is, “On the road to heresy... Certainly, it is a dangerous problem, and I am in danger. Thank God for it.”
(p. 84) The insanity of the theology of Merton
(p. 89) Bulgakov felt he was in heaven when he visited the Hagia Sophia (a mosque) in Constantinople and saw Moslems praying to allah, it was the power of Sophia.
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