Mysticism without Walls
Thomas Merton as a prophet for our time
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Duration: 5 Weeks, starting from October 18, 2026
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Meeting time: Every Sunday from 14:00 to 18:00 CET
The spiritual life is first of all a life.
It is not merely something to be known and studied,
it is to be lived.
- Thomas Merton -
Thomas Merton died in 1968, and almost everything he was most concerned with has become more urgent since.
The compulsive performance of identity. The exhaustion of a life organized around achievement, status, and success. The hunger for something that Eastern traditions seemed to offer and Western ones seemed to have forgotten. The question of whether it is possible to live contemplatively without withdrawing from the world entirely.
Merton was not ahead of his time. He was simply paying attention.
Thomas Merton: A Man of Opposites
Born in France to artist parents, educated at Cambridge and Columbia University, and eventually becoming a Trappist monk in rural Kentucky, Merton's life brought together worlds that often seem far apart. He was a monk and a public intellectual, a contemplative and a social critic, a Christian deeply rooted in his own tradition and one of the first Western spiritual writers to enter into serious dialogue with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism.
Through books such as The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, he became one of the most influential spiritual voices of the twentieth century.
This retreat explores four themes that run through Merton's work and continue to speak with surprising force to contemporary life.
Almost everything Merton wrote has only grown more urgent ever since.
The True and False Self
At the heart of Merton's thought lies a distinction between what he called the true self and the false self. Beneath the identities we construct, perform, and defend, Merton believed there exists a deeper ground of being where our life is rooted in the divine. The contemplative path begins with learning to recognize the difference.
Throughout the retreat we will explore how Merton understood this process of awakening and why he regarded it as the foundation of every authentic spiritual life.
Merton's Dialogue with Eastern Religion
During the final decade of his life, Merton entered into sustained dialogue with Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist traditions. These encounters were never an attempt to leave Christianity behind. They sharpened his understanding of the contemplative wisdom already present within it.
Merton had his own way to walk, and Zen Buddhism was right in the middle of where he eventually arrived.
For many contemporary seekers, Merton remains an invaluable guide. He takes the insights of Eastern traditions seriously while remaining deeply committed to his own spiritual inheritance. His example offers a way beyond both superficial borrowing and rigid defensiveness, which has become ever more relevant.
Together we will explore how these encounters transformed Merton's understanding of contemplation, selfhood, and spiritual practice.
Contemplation and the World
Merton spent most of his adult life within a monastery, yet he became one of the most politically engaged spiritual writers of his generation.
His writings on war, racism, consumer culture, technology, and social injustice emerged directly from his contemplative practice. For Merton, contemplation was never an escape from the world. It was a way of seeing the world more clearly and responding to it more truthfully.
This dimension of his work feels particularly relevant today. What does contemplative practice have to do with public life? How can inner transformation deepen our capacity for responsibility, compassion, and meaningful action?
These questions form one of the central threads of the retreat.
Merton's Mystical and Literary Vocation
Long before he became known as a spiritual writer, Merton’s literary vocation found its foremost expression in his poetry. Throughout his life he remained convinced that art and contemplation belong together.
Poetry, literature, photography, painting, and calligraphy were not secondary interests. They were ways of cultivating attention. They helped him encounter reality with greater sensitivity, freedom, and wonder.
In Merton's writings, the contemplative life is inseparable from a certain quality of perception. The artist and the mystic share a common task: learning to see with attention, to attend to what is already present but habitually overlooked.
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve."
This final theme allows us to explore Merton not only as a monk and thinker, but as a creative figure whose vision continues to inspire writers, artists, and contemplatives alike.
The Structure of the Retreat
Each weekend focuses on one of these themes through close reading, guided discussion, contemplative practice, and shared reflection. Between sessions participants will be invited to engage with readings and practices drawn from the contemplative tradition Merton inhabited.
The retreat is oriented throughout toward ordinary life. Merton's enduring relevance lies in his conviction that contemplation is not reserved for monasteries. It begins wherever we are, in the midst of work, relationships, creativity, uncertainty, and the daily task of learning how to pay attention
No prior knowledge of Thomas Merton is assumed. The retreat is open to people of any religious background, or none.
