📿 Musings from Monks
“Musings from Monks” is an occasional series exploring insights from monks, mystics, and martyrs—designed to be an invitation to the art of contemplation. May these prompts and practices (in a small way) be a source of wisdom and insight for living a contemplative life.
Knowing Beyond Knowing
In this edition of “Musing from Monks,” we turn to the American Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915—1968) to learn about the art of knowing beyond knowing.
For in contemplation we know by ‘unknowing.’ Or, better, we know beyond all knowing or ‘unknowing.’
Contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, and beyond our own self. To enter the realm of contemplation, one must, in a certain sense, die, but this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life.
It is a death for life, leaving behind all we know and treasure: thought, experience, joy, and being.
