"I simply like Chuang Tzu because he is what he is and I feel no need to justify this liking to myself or to anyone else. He is far too great to need any apologies from me. … His philosophical temper is, I believe, profoundly original and sane. It can of course be misunderstood. But it is basically simple and direct. It seeks, as does all the greatest philosophÂical thought, to go immediately to the heart of things. Chuang Tzu is not concerned with words and formulas about reality, but with the direct existential grasp of reality in itself. Such a grasp is necessarily obscure and does not lend itself to abstract analysis. It can be presented in a parable, a fable, or a funny story about a conversation between two philosophers."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Activists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesAutobiographers from the United StatesTheologians from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"A Note To The Reader".
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Merton
36 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Merton →
Related Quotes
"Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments."
"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It “consents,” so …"
"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which ar…"
"I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the e…"
"Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of thing…"
"This new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the im…"
"The biggest human temptation is … to settle for too little."
"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, i…"
"When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them—and that is of course because they accept the system and…"
"Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, th…"