No Man Is an Island (Shambhala Library) [Hardcover]

Thomas Merton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2005 | Series: Shambhala Library

Here, in one of his most popular of his more than thirty books, Thomas Merton provides further meditations on the spiritual life in sixteen thoughtful essays, beginning with his classic treatise "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." This sequel to Seeds of Contemplation provides fresh insight into Merton's favorite topics of silence and solitude, while also underscoring the importance of community and the deep connectedness to others that is the inevitable basis of the spiritual life—whether one lives in solitude or in the midst of a crowd.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A stimulating series of spiritual reflections which will prove helpful for all struggling to find the meaning of human existence and to live the richest, fullest, and noblest life."—Chicago Tribune

"Merton wrote of ageless spiritual life and religious devotion with the knowledge of a modern."—New York Times

About the Author

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was a Trappist monk, spiritual director, political activist, social critic, and one of the most-read spiritual writers of the twentieth century. He is the author of many books, including The Seven Storey Mountain.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590302532
• ISBN-13: 978-1590302538
• Product Dimensions: 4.6 x 1.1 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Catholicism > Saints
  • #70 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Theology

More About the Author

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has millions of copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.

After a rambunctious youth and adolescence, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism and entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic order.

The twenty-seven years he spent in Gethsemani brought about profound changes in his self-understanding. This ongoing conversion impelled him into the political arena, where he became, according to Daniel Berrigan, the conscience of the peace movement of the 1960's. Referring to race and peace as the two most urgent issues of our time, Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States." For his social activism Merton endured severe criticism, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who assailed his political writings as unbecoming of a monk.

During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far East in 1968, the Dali Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. The date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance to Gethsemani.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Assurance That God is Able, July 7, 2000

By 

S. Byrne "northern light" (Alaska USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Man Is an Island (A Harvest Book) (Paperback)

A wellspring of encouragement for those who are looking for spiritual simplicity, without dogmatism. Merton's flowing prose carries the reader so effortlessly, that I often had to stop myself, saturated, and put off going on until I had the capacity to absorb more. The greatest challenge of this book is not in comprehending his points, but in accepting them as actually possible, and internalizing their meaning for one's own life context. Merton opens a door to a place of potential joy, that many will desire to pass through.

82 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Man is an Island., January 23, 2004

By 

Wesley L. Janssen (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Man Is an Island (Paperback)

The writings gathered in this volume will not be read quickly or superficially. Paragraphs will continually ask to be reread. Thomas Merton's perspicacious meditations, offered with such poetic strength, are to his reader like veins whose rich ore leads the miner deep. The effort is real and so too is the reward. Merton (1915-1968) was a contemplative monk, a Trappist, and although most of his readers may think themselves of another world, so to speak, it is the world of which Merton writes which is Real, and the clabbering, self-directed world of our common experience that is illusory.
A few thoughts, ones that are obviously directed more narrowly toward other Catholic monks, may generally be less helpful to most readers (I think of basically one chapter). I could offer other minor detraction but it would probably only amount to vanity on my part. It will be more valuable to meditate on these words of Merton:
"Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquillity of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion. God is present, and His thought is alive and awake in the fullness and depth and breadth of all the silences of the world. The Lord is watching in the almond trees [Jer 1.11, 12]. . . Whether the plane pass by tonight or tomorrow . . . whether the liner enters the harbor full of tourists or full of soldiers, the almond tree brings forth her fruit in silence.
"There are some men for whom a tree has no reality until they think of cutting it down . . . men who never look at anything until they decide to abuse it and who never even notice what they do not want to destroy. These men can hardly know the silence of love: for their love is the absorption of another person's silence into their own noise. And because they do not know the silence of love, they cannot know the silence of God . . . Who is bound, by His own law of Charity, to give life to all those whom He draws into His own silence."

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Without solitude there can be no communion., April 5, 2000

By 

Jackie M. Sthilaire "Memere Jackie" (Manchester, NH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Man Is an Island (A Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Thomas Merton is full of wisdom as he shares his spiritual insights. Merton exemplifies a life lived in the spirit of God. There are many enemies of the spirit but the first enemy is our own self ( our ego). We love to be in control, to share our opinions, we are so afraid to let go, to go within and listen to the silence. Only when we listen with an open heart can we start living our real self with no mask. Our busyness turns to a more peaceful existence, we become more creative and less stressed, more grateful and less in need of stimulus . Less powerful but more compassionate. We are less fearful and more trusting of ourselves and others. Less depressed and more self accepting. The inner soul created in the image of God. This is our true being. "To be or not to be that is the question."