The American Catholic monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), read the Bhagavad Gita as a master’s student in English at Columbia University in 1938. (1) Merton returned to the Bhagavad Gita on a number of occasions over the course of his monastic life, reading, commenting, and writing about it in private journals and public works. The text would prove to have a sustained impact on his monastic identity. As his understanding of the text deepened, so did his appreciation of it. Near the end of his life, he observed that “the gita remains utterly vital today." (2)
Scholarly research gives attention to Merton’s engagement with the Bhagavad Gita and mentions Vinoba Bhave (1895-1982). (3) Vinoba was a spiritual leader in India: he was a disciple, confidant, and spiritual successor to Mahatma Gandhi. During his imprisonment in the Dhule jail in 1932, Vinoba delivered a series of lectures to his fellow freedom fighter inmates. These lectures, providing his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, were collected and published in Marathi as the Gita Pravachan. In 1960, it was translated into English under the title Talks on the Gita. In that same year, Merton’s friend, Robert Lax, arranged for a copy to be sent to him. (4) The book had a marked impact on Merton. Reading the Talks on the Gita provided him with a framework and language to process his vocational crisis in 1960, to bear non-violent witness in 1962, and to critique contemporary spirituality in 1965. (5)
As evidenced in journal entries and correspondence from 1960, when Merton first read the Talks on the Gita, he applied Vinoba’s teachings to his own life. As Merton works through the first part of the book, he closely considers his vocational dilemma utilizing the concepts of svadharma (one’s personal dharma) and of non-attachment to the fruits of one’s actions. His consideration advances a resolution to his crisis. (6) He leaves the book unfinished.
When he returns again to the Talks on the Gita, in 1962, he does so to think about nonviolence. (7) His journal entry of November 2, 1962, consists of this teaching from the text: “It is impossible to get rid of violence when one is oneself full of violence. On the contrary, one only adds to the number of the violent.” Vinoba Bhave. (8) Whereas Merton again applies Vinoba’s teaching to his own life, his focus also shifts to a more general and external application.
In this paper, we explore this transition in Merton’s understanding of the Bhagavad Gita. We argue that, with the Talks on the Gita, Merton comes to understand the Bhagavad Gita as a text of both personal and universal application, and to see Vinoba as an inter-religious sage. By examining several specific references to Vinoba and the Talks on the Gita in Merton’s works from 1963-1968, we demonstrate his turn from a private to a public application of teachings in the Bhagavad Gita. As Merton introduces Vinoba and the Talks on the Gita to a predominantly Christian audience, he advances a public application of the Bhagavad Gita by showing a universal meaning of several core Hindu principles.
We begin with an unpublished 1963 notebook in which Merton considers the contemporary relevance of the Bhagavad Gita’s teachings. (9) Drawing on the examples of Gandhi and Vinoba, Merton makes space for a broader application of the Bhagavad Gita. We show that this application first occurs publicly in his appeal to Vinoba and the Talks on the Gita in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1965). We then examine how Merton continues this application in subsequent references to Vinoba and his teachings in “The Significance of the Bhagavad Gita” (1968), and “Bhakti Yoga and Inter-Monastic Dialogue” (1968). We conclude with a look at Merton’s public support, in 1968, of Vinoba’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The 1963-1968 references to Vinoba and the Talks on the Gita hearken to Merton’s 1938 reading of the Bhagavad Gita: Merton encounters Vinoba and his teachings in the context of his lived experience and evolving thought. He positions Vinoba and his teachings in a heuristic context of other thinkers, ideas, and works. As a result, Merton envisions Vinoba and his teachings as universally applicable: transcending ideological boundaries, broadening, and informing his more global worldview. Merton’s efforts proffer relevant questions about the identification, meaning, and lived experience of “multiple religious belonging.”
Endnotes
1. Arthur W. Biddle, ed. When Prophecy Still Had A Voice: The Letters of Thomas Merton & Robert Lax (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 13-14.
2. Thomas Merton, “The Significance of the Bhagavad-Gita,” in The Asian Journal, ed. Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart and James Loughlin (London, UK: Sheldon Press 1974), 348.
3. See the essays by David M. Odorisio, Christopher Key Chapple, and Steven J. Rosen in Merton & Hinduism, ed. David M. Odorisio (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae 2021). See also William Apel, Thomas Merton and the Gita: A Testament to Freedom and Transcendence,” The Merton Journal 27.2 (2020): 1-10.
4. Thomas Merton, Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 4: 1960-1963, ed. Victor A. Kramer (San Francisco, CA: Harper 1996), 33-34. See also Arthur W. Biddle, ed. When Prophecy Still Had A Voice: The Letters of Thomas Merton & Robert Lax (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 206.
5. Swasti Bhattacharyya and Bernadette McNary-Zak, “Merton Discerning His Svadharma,” The Merton Journal 30.1 (2023): 26-33.
6. Ibid.
7. Thomas Merton, Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 4: 1960-1963, ed. Victor A. Kramer (San Francisco, CA: Harper 1996), 238-239.
8. Italics added. Thomas Merton, Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 4: 1960-1963. Prophecy Still Had A Voice: The Letters of Thomas Merton & Robert Lax (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 262. Although not identified, the source is Talks on the Gita, page 226.
9. Thomas Merton, Notebook 11 (Gandhi), p. 79. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY. Accessed 30 October 2024.
In 1960, the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), received a copy of the Talks on the Gita. This commentary on the Bhagavad Gita was written by Vinoba Bhave, disciple, confidant, and spiritual successor to Mahatma Gandhi. The book has a marked impact on Merton, providing him with a framework and language to process his vocational crisis in 1960, to bear non-violent witness in 1962, and to critique contemporary spirituality in 1965. In this paper, we explore a transition in Merton’s understanding of the Gita. We argue that, with the Talks on the Gita, Merton comes to understand the Gita as a text of both personal and universal application, and to see Vinoba as an inter-religious sage. Merton envisions Vinoba and his teachings as universally applicable: transcending ideological boundaries and broadening his more global worldview. Merton’s efforts proffer relevant questions about the identification, meaning, and lived experience of “multiple religious belonging.”