The Seven Storey Mountain

In the third book of The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton reaches his metaphorical “earthly paradise” when he joins a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.

Christian monasticism began in the sixth century when St. Benedict wrote his Rule, and gathered together ideas and practices that had been developed over centuries by mystics and hermits—above all, by the Desert Fathers who lived in the fourth century in caves in remote places, devoting themselves to spiritual practice and prayer. Benedict organized their lifestyle into a communal arrangement that was formally recognized by the Church. Over the centuries, other orders arose besides Benedict’s, including the Cistercians in 1098. Some orders are called contemplative and others are called active. Active orders devote their energies to the traditional works of love such as clothing the naked, feeding the poor, and so on, while contemplative orders devote themselves to contemplation, or contemplative prayer.

Trappists are a contemplative monastic order who branched off from the Cistercians in the 17th century. Like Cistercians, they are known for their commitment to silence. They follow the Rule of St. Benedict, a foundational text of Christian monastic life. Merton’s attraction to the Trappist life came from his sincere desire to do not what was easiest in order to maintain a spiritual life but to do what would challenge him spiritually. He saw the Trappist’s silence and their emphasis on prayer and physical labor as spiritual disciplines necessary to test and refine his soul. He writes, in fact, that a soul is only ever as strong as is allowed by testing and exercising it to its limits.

Contemplation, or contemplative prayer, to which Merton devoted himself, is the practical side of mystical theology. Unlike verbal prayer, which is the most familiar kind of Christian prayer, and unlike Christian meditative prayer, which consists of reflection or reading, contemplative prayer is generally silent and consists of something like attentive waiting upon the invisible God. Mystical theology describes the capacity for knowing God in experience through the affect or the purified intellect. Based on the third-century writings of the Pseudo-Dionysus, it flowered in the Middle Ages before waning in the modern world. The 20th century witnessed a rebirth of interest in contemplation and the Christian mystical tradition, and Thomas Merton was an important figure in that rebirth.

The Seven Storey Mountain is self-consciously steeped in theology, and it is conscious of the tradition of spiritual autobiography in which it takes its place. Thus, the Seven Storey Mountain is more than the tale of a young man finding himself who happens to find himself in the tradition of Catholic spirituality. It may be that, too, but it is also a veritable introduction to and apology for a system of Western spirituality that Merton felt had been neglected. The book is filled with reflections on theological topics, such as aseity, which is the idea that God is Being itself, that Merton finds revelatory and a more sophisticated notion of God than that which he had previously attributed to Christianity.

Merton succeeded in renewing interest in Christian spirituality as expressed in the practice of contemplation. In fact, the most well-known form of Christian contemplative prayer today is called the Centering Prayer, which was developed on the basis of Merton’s writings and popularized in the 1970s. Thomas Merton had a life-long interest in Eastern spirituality, too. He was a scholar and practitioner of Christian mysticism who recognized strong parallels between Christian mystical prayer and Eastern meditation. Later in life, Merton pursued inter-faith dialogue with Zen Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Hindus, and others. In fact, he died in Thailand in a tragic accident attending an inter-faith conference.