Dear Friends: Sometimes seeds get mixed up in the package. My mistake. There was a third sower who should have part of my article “Seminal Conjectures” (Western Friend, Nov/Dec 2023). That would be Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. It was he who met with Thomas Merton, not Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche.
On the night of May 26, 1966, while in the US on a speaking tour arranged by The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Nhat Hahn met Merton at the Trappist Monastery in rural Kentucky where Merton lived. The event is thoroughly chronicled in the book Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hahn: Engaged Spirituality in an Age of Globalization, written by Robert H. King. Merton and Chagdud Tulku never met. At least not in this lifetime.
Thich Nhat Hahn and Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche were both political refugees whose spirituality germinated under the dark cloud of oppression.
Together, these three deep spiritual practitioners – Thomas Merton, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, and Thich Nhat Hahn are, to my mind, the terra firma of contemporary engaged spirituality. May the seeds they sowed find places in our hearts and practice, not to mention in the arid soil of our times.
– john heid, Pima Monthly Meeting, Tucson, AZ (IMYM)