Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews.
Among Merton’s most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice.
Merton was impressed by him, believing the monk was profoundly centered in God. While Merton expected Brahmachari to recommend Hinduism, instead he advised Merton to reconnect with the spiritual roots of his own culture. He suggested Merton read the Confessions of Augustine and The Imitation of Christ. Merton read them both.
Writer
Merton kept journals throughout his stay at Gethsemani.
Initially, he felt writing to be at odds with his vocation, worried it would foster a tendency to individuality. But his superior, Dunne, saw that Merton had both a gifted intellect and talent for writing.
In 1943 Merton was tasked to translate religious texts and write biographies on the saints for the monastery. Merton approached his new writing assignment with the same fervor and zeal he displayed in the farmyard.
Merton had mixed feelings about the publishing of this work, but Dunne remained resolute over Merton continuing his writing.
The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton’s autobiography, was written during two-hour intervals in the monastery scriptorium as a personal project.
A person’s place in society, views on social activism, and various approaches toward contemplative prayer and living became constant themes in his writings.
During long years at Gethsemani, Merton changed from the passionately inward-looking young monk of The Seven Storey Mountain to a more contemplative writer and poet.
he published a journal of monastery life titled The Sign of Jonas.
Merton became well known for his dialogues with other faiths and his non-violent stand
By the 1960s, he had arrived at a broadly human viewpoint, one deeply concerned about the world and issues like peace, racial tolerance, and social equality.
He had developed a personal radicalism which had political implications but was not based on ideology, rooted above all in non-violence. He regarded his viewpoint as based on "simplicity" and expressed it as a Christian sensibility.
Merton’s role as a writer is explored in novelist Mary Gordon’s On Merton (2019).
Merton was first exposed to and became interested in Eastern religions when he read Aldous Huxley’s Ends and Means in 1937, the year before his conversion to Catholicism.
Throughout his life, he studied Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Sufism in addition to his academic and monastic studies.
While Merton was not interested in what these traditions had to offer as doctrines and institutions, he was deeply interested in what each said of the depth of human experience.
Eastern traditions, for Merton, were mostly untainted by this type of thinking and thus had much to offer in terms of how to think of and understand oneself.
Merton was perhaps most interested in—and, of all of the Eastern traditions, wrote the most about—Zen.
Merton had a deep understanding of what it was those men sought and experienced in their seeking. He found many parallels between the language of these Christian mystics and the language of Zen philosophy.
Merton struggled to reconcile the Western and Christian impulse to catalog and put into words every experience with the ideas of Christian apophatic theology and the unspeakable nature of the Zen experience.
In keeping with his idea that non-Christian faiths had much to offer Christianity in experience and perspective and little or nothing in terms of doctrine, Merton distinguished between Zen Buddhism, an expression of history and culture, and Zen.
What Merton meant by Zen Buddhism was the religion that began in China and spread to Japan as well as the rituals and institutions that accompanied it. By Zen, Merton meant something not bound by culture, religion or belief. In this capacity, Merton was influenced by Aelred Graham’s book Zen Catholicism of 1963.
With this idea in mind, Merton’s later writings about Zen may be understood to be coming more and more from within an evolving and broadening tradition of Zen which is not particularly Buddhist but informed by Merton’s monastic training within the Christian tradition.
Interest in his work contributed to a rise in spiritual exploration beginning in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.
Merton’s letters and diaries reveal the intensity with which their author focused on social justice issues, including the civil rights movement and proliferation of nuclear arms.
He had prohibited their publication for 25 years after his death. Publication raised new interest in Merton’s life.