20% discount / NOW AVAILABLE. Merton and Hinduism- The Yoga of the Heart. Edited by David M. Odorisio. 464 pp. Paperback FIND OUT MORE about the Fons Vitae ‘SWAGATAM – A Celebration of India & Book Launch (Nov 18, 2021) HERE

Merton and Hinduism is the first book to thoroughly and definitively trace the lasting influence of Yoga and Hindu traditions on the life and writings of renowned author of The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton, Catholic Priest and Trappist Monk, and pioneer of inter-religious dialogue. Informative and original essays by leading scholars highlight specific points of contact between Merton and various aspects of the Hindu and Yoga traditions, such as Merton and Gandhi, Merton and the Bhagavad Gita, and Merton’s dialogue and friendship with key Indian intellectuals such as A.K. Coomaraswamy, among many others. Approximately half of the book collects Merton’s own writings on Hinduism and Yoga, and many essays are published here for the first time. These essays portray Merton as teacher and novice master, cultural commentator, and contemplative practitioner interested in the mutually enriching dialogue among Catholic Christianity, Hinduism, and Yoga traditions.

David M. Odorisio, PhD, serves as Director of The Retreat at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA, and is Associate Core Faculty in Pacifica’s Mythological Studies graduate degree program. David received his PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and teaches in the areas of methodology, psychology and religion, and comparative mysticism. He has published in numerous journals in the fields of Jungian and transpersonal psychology, as well as The Merton Seasonal, and is co-editor of the volume Depth Psychology and Mysticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is a former Board Member of the International Thomas Merton Society.

• “Once we live in awareness of the cosmic dance and move in time with the Dancer our life attains its true dimension. It is at once more serious and less serious than the life of one who does not sense this inner cosmic dynamism. To live without this illuminated consciousness is to live as a beast of burden, carrying one’s life with tragic seriousness as a huge, incomprehensible weight…. The weight of burden is the seriousness with which one takes one’s own individual and separate self. To live with the true consciousness of life centered in Another is to lose one’s self-important seriousness and thus to live life as ‘play’ in union with a Cosmic Player.” -Thomas Merton, “The Significance of the Bhagavad-Gita

“I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. This does not mean syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing. There is much that one cannot “affirm” and “accept,” but first one must say “yes” where one really can. If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.”– Thomas Merton

WATCH: The Fons Vitae book book launch for ‘Merton & Hinduism’ and Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ (Coleman Barks). SWAGATAM: A Celebration of India – The Wisdom of Merton & Tagore (Highlights film). A celebration of India through faith, the arts and our shared universal values. Indian music, poetry, dance, film, art, book signing, food, and the wisdom of Thomas Merton & Rabindranath Tagore.