Thomas Merton–Dalai Lama dialogue

The Thomas Merton–Dalai Lama dialogue was a series of three meetings during Merton’s 1968 Asian journey, remembered as a rare exchange in which questions about meditation and monastic life led to mutual warmth rather than a simple comparison of religious customs. The conversations helped Merton think afresh about solitude, spiritual discipline, and his own place at Gethsemani; he left hoping to bring something of the Asian wisdom he had encountered back to his monastery.

The First Audience

Merton’s first meeting with the Dalai Lama took place on the afternoon of November 4, 1968. Reaching the palace required a long Jeep ride up a mountain, and an Indian official checked Merton’s passport. Merton described his host as “most impressive as a person. He is strong and alert, bigger than I expected.” He also found him “very solid, energetic, generous, and warm.” These impressions establish the personal openness that would become as important in Merton’s account as the subjects under discussion.

The conversation ranged across religion, philosophy, and meditation. Merton spoke about personal concerns and his interest in Tibetan mysticism; the Dalai Lama recommended philosophies for him to study and books to read, and urged him to build a strong grounding in metaphysics. He promised another conversation in two days, giving Merton time to consider what he had heard before their next meeting.

Solitude and the Second Conversation

Between the first and second audiences, Merton reconsidered his own life and future. The Dalai Lama’s advice prompted him to value anew the solitude available in his hermitage at Gethsemani, where study and meditation could take place. At the same time, he considered moving to a hermitage in Alaska, where he imagined there might be fewer distractions and interruptions. These reflections did not amount to a decision to leave his monastery: Merton loved Gethsemani and told its monks he would always be a monk there. But his frustrations with Gethsemani and the Cistercian Order made a change of context feel necessary for sorting through his concerns.

At the second audience, on November 6, the men discussed philosophical questions, although Merton had some difficulty making his meaning understood. The conversation then returned to meditation. The Dalai Lama demonstrated the sitting position he considered essential, and the two discussed concentrating on the mind. Merton called the exchange a “lively conversation” that both enjoyed. He particularly noted the apparent tension in the Dalai Lama’s view: he “insists on detachment, on an ‘unworldly life,’ yet saw it as a way to a complete understanding of, and participation in, the problems of life and the world.” Detachment, in this account, was not withdrawal from worldly problems but a discipline intended to make fuller understanding and participation possible. The Dalai Lama invited Merton to return for a conversation about Western monasticism.

Vows, Mystical Life, and Friendship

Merton regarded the third interview as the best. The Dalai Lama asked whether Western monastic vows were connected with spiritual transmission and whether monks might progress through them toward “eventual illumination.” He was also interested in whether ascetic self-denial could purify the mind of passions. These questions, as Merton presented them, moved beyond outward observances toward the inner purpose of monastic discipline: the Dalai Lama was more interested in the “mystical life” than in external forms. His inquiries about why monks did not eat meat and about alcoholic beverages and movies brought particular practices into the same conversation as vows and spiritual development.

Merton remembered the exchange as both intellectually serious and personally close. He wrote, “It was a very warm and cordial discussion and at the end I felt we had become very good friends and were somehow quite close to one another.” In a letter to Gethsemani, he expressed the hope that he could “bring back to my monastery something of the Asian wisdom with which I am fortunate to be in contact.” The hope connects the friendship to Merton’s communal life: the journey’s learning was not described simply as private discovery, but as something he might carry back to his monastery.

Significance in Merton’s Spiritual Search

The dialogue took place during a journey Merton had described in his journal as a long-awaited path, undertaken in the hope of settling a “great affair,” though the book notes that the phrase’s meaning is unclear. In that wider context, the audiences gave him a setting in which to examine his future, his contemplative practice, and his frustrations without abandoning his attachment to Gethsemani. His simultaneous wish for deeper solitude and continued identification with the monastery remains unresolved in the account; the conversations sharpen that tension rather than supplying a final answer.

The book presents Merton’s interest in Tibetan mysticism alongside his earlier account of a direct experience of God in Cuba that involved no sensory experience. Its broader discussion of Christian mysticism likewise emphasizes the direct consciousness of divine presence and the difficulty of expressing such experience in words. The dialogue does not claim that the Dalai Lama and Merton arrived at a single shared theology. Instead, its significance lies in the careful exchange of questions: meditation, detachment, vows, and mystical life become subjects for serious cross-traditional conversation, while the reported warmth between the two men makes intellectual difference compatible with friendship.