The Book of Transformations: Thomas Merton and the I Ching

“The Book of Transformations: Merton and the I Ching” I recently returned from a meeting of the Thomas Merton Society in Atlanta, GA, where I presented an earlier form of this paper on Merton and the I Ching. Upon coming home after the long drive, I sat down with my wife to watch the new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, based upon Chinese science fiction writer, Liu Cixin’s novel of the same name. Little did I expect what was to happen next. The series is set in the contemporary present, mostly in London, and initially revolves around a group of physicists and scientists. After the death of their mutual mentor, one of the physicists, Jen Cheng (played by Jess Hong), receives a mysterious and advanced VR headset. When she puts it on, she is transported back to a world that is reminiscent of ancient China. The object of the “game” is to figure out and predict when the next cataclysmic event will happen in that world. She has been recruited to the game as a scientist but has competition from another character in the game who appears to be a shaman or philosopher. Both of them are brought before the emperor and the shaman immediately begins laying out patterns of sticks in rows of six, some broken, some whole. Almost instantaneously, Cheng knows what it is: an ancient method of using an early form of I Ching. Seeing the I Ching not merely referenced but laid out physically and playing a key part of the plot of a sci-fi series within twenty-four hours after presenting on it was stupefying. I felt the same way Merton perhaps felt when experiencing similar coincidences with the Changes: “awed,” and “a most significant event.” Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1985) 401. Like many of his contemporaries, Merton became increasingly interested in Asian wisdom traditions through the 1950s and 60s, especially Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen. This shift towards Asian modalities and religious systems culminated in his visit to various Asian countries and his untimely death in Bangkok. Carried out over years of correspondence with and reading of key figures such as D.T. Suzuki, Buddhadasa, and Thich Nhat Hanh, Merton’s relationship with these religious/philosophical systems seems to have been largely defined in terms of shared monastic vocations, with a drift toward the primacy of experience. This paper seeks to add to the conversation about Merton’s engagement with Asian wisdom traditions to include his use of the Chinese divinatory text the I Ching or Book of Changes. Others have already explored his relationship to Confucianism, Daoism, and Zen but have left his use of the Changes unexplored. Beginning with a brief background on the text, Western appropriative precedents, and some framing of the oracle within the Catholic tradition, this article then looks specifically at Merton’s use of it. My cumulative argument is twofold: 1) Merton’s use of the I Ching adumbrates his later, deeper engagement with Asian wisdom traditions, but, in 1959, it was mainly in the psychoanalytic register and, 2) the results of his interaction with the text helped him process and negotiate his vocational crises. The I Ching and the Western Tradition Simply put, the I Ching or Book of Changes or Transformations or the Tao of I, is a 3000-year-old, Chinese divination manual consisting of sixty-four, six-line symbols made up of various permutations of broken and solid lines called gua or hexagrams derived from the two most basic ones, either all solid, or Qian or all broken, called Kun. Around 1000 BCE, each hexagram’s permutation acquired a name and a brief description known as the judgment. Each line also had an explanation known as the line statement. Richard Smith in The I Ching: A Biography, writes: The operating assumption of the Changes, as it developed over time, was that these hexagrams represented the basic circumstances of change in the universe, and that by selecting a particular hexagram or hexagrams and correctly interpreting the various symbolic elements of each, a person could gain insight into the patterns of cosmic change and devise a strategy for dealing with problems or uncertainties concerning the present and the future. Richard Smith, The I Ching: A Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012) 4-5. Regarding its usage, Taoist Master Alfred Huang also notes, “It is a book that not only tells one who consults it about the present situation and future potential but also gives instruction about what to do and what not to do to obtain good fortune and to avoid misfortune. But one still retains free will.” Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, trans. Alfred Huang (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1998) xviii. Here there is no naïve fortunetelling of “what will happen,” but a complex tradition that recognizes the future as potentiality rather than as settled. Change, then, is ontological rather than illusory. Huang observes: “The main theme of the I Ching is that everything is in process of continuous change, rising and falling in a progressive evolutionary advancement.” Huang, xx. Such philosophical implications are further intimated through the commentary that developed over time and accompanies the gua. This commentary, traditionally attributed to Confucius, is “crucial” to its divinatory power. Huang continues, “The Chinese call Confucius’s commentaries the Ten Wings. They believe that the I Ching depends on the Ten Wings to be able to fly. . . without Confucius’s commentaries the I Ching cannot be understood.” Huang, xvii. Altogether, the relatively short corpus that comprised the core of the work has become a tome of more than five hundred pages. Huang’s translation weighs in at 540 pages, Legge’s translation is just shy of 500 and Merton’s Wilhelm-Baynes version is over 670 pages. Of course, none of it would be available to English readers without translation and transmission. Smith observes that “the transmission of the Changes to the West parallels the process by which Buddhism and Daoism traveled to Europe and the Americas.” The I Ching: A Biography, 170. This process, he argues, was initiated by late 16th century Jesuit missions to China. Taking seriously St. Paul’s “I have become all things to all people that I may win some,” these missionaries’ inculturation was undertaken “with the goal of winning converts by underscoring affinities between the Bible and Confucian classics. . . [with] the Changes serv[ing] as a major focus for their proselytizing scholarship.” The I Ching: A Biography, 171. Some of these Jesuits even translated the text into Latin. Later, the writings of the French Jesuit, Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), gained attention from Gottfried Leibniz, who came to believe that “the study of the Changes could assist in [his] quest [for the antediluvian language] and in the creation of a comprehensive scientific/mathematical language.” The I Ching: A Biography, 177. After Leibniz, a French sinologist, Julius Mohl (1800-1876) produced a two-volume critical edition with commentary in 1830 that was then followed by more translations in the late 19th century, including James Legge’s famous one in 1899. Huang wryly comments: “Legge had a good command of the old Chinese written language, but he did not believe in the I Ching,” xxi. How one translates the text, it would appear, hangs on belief for Huang. However, the Changes was largely confined to scholars and sinologists. Smith notes, “Although the period witnessed a certain vogue for occult writings in Europe, the Changes was simply too obscure to appeal to a broader public readership.” The I Ching: A Biography, 188. But, he continues, this situation changed in 1924 when “the missionary-scholar Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930) published a German translation of the Changes. . . which became a global sensation when it was translated into English by one of Carl Jung’s students, Cary Baynes, and published in 1950 as I Ching, The Book of Changes.” The I Ching: A Biography, 188. It became known simply as the Wilhelm-Baynes edition. Undoubtedly, Jung’s notoriety and foreword helped launch the text into broader American culture. Additionally, famed British occultist and theosophist, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), made his own translation which became part of The Holy Books of Thelema. See Aleister Crowley, Liber Trigrammaton: The Book of the Trigrams of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang (London: Ordo Templi Orientis, 1909). Given Jung and Crowley’s promotion of Changes and their associations with the occult and what would become the New Age, it is little wonder that it was mainly the American counterculture of the 1950s and 60s which adopted and adapted it. It gained a significant amount of cultural cache fairly early after the Wilhelm-Baynes edition of 1950. In 1951, John Cage, the famous experimental musician, released a piano solo called Music of Changes, created using the I Ching (Wilhelm-Baynes edition). Later artists, musicians, and writers would follow suit. Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) features characters using and discussing the Changes. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 1962). Around 1964, Merry Prankster Ken Kesey recalls dropping acid and consulting the oracle: One night in Mexico, in Manzanillo, I took some acid and I threw the I Ching. And the I Ching — the great thing about the I Ching is, it never sends you Valentines, it slaps you in the face when you need it — and it said we had reached the end of something, we weren’t going anywhere any longer, it was time for a new direction — and I went outside and there was an electrical storm, and there was lightning everywhere and I pointed to the sky and lightning flashed and all of a sudden I had a second skin, of lightning, electricity, like a suit of electricity, and I knew it was in us to be superheroes and that we could become superheroes or nothing. Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968) 31-32. Earlier than his much-publicized conversion to Christianity in 1979, Bob Dylan claimed in 1965 that the I Ching is “the only thing that is amazingly true, period.” And, “Besides being a great book to believe in, it’s also very fantastic poetry.” The I Ching: A Biography, 199. George Harrison related that the Changes was his inspiration for the song, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (1968). George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ring Starr, The Beatles Anthology, ed. Derek Taylor (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2000), 306. Its appeal among the “hippies” Smith notes, “can be explained primarily by the challenge the book seems to pose to conventional Western values.” The I Ching: A Biography, 194. Merton, as usual, seems to be an early adopter, “throwing” the I Ching in 1959; perhaps having encountered it through the Beats earlier in that decade, although I am unable to find any specific records. For the Beats’ influence on Merton, see Claire Hoertz Badaracco, "The Influence of ‘Beat’ Generation Poetry on the Work of Thomas Merton," The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality, and Social Concerns 15 (2002) 121-35. For a late Beat reference to the Changes, see Allen Ginsberg’s 1967 poem, “Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake.” What exactly these “conventional Western values” are, Smith does not specify, but one imagines they include something of the Judeo-Christian worldview that has featured so prominently in the development of Western culture. Specifically, part of the counter culture’s rebellion was precisely the rejection of Christianity’s hegemonic influence, so an outside text like the Changes was a welcomed as a means of resistance and protest. Further, part of that hegemonic influence included basic metaphysical ideas such as a linear conceptualization of history/time where forays into discovering the future are generally off-limits due to numerous reasons, the least of which being the kind of harm knowing the future can bring. Divination also mitigates against a sense of God’s providence directing history, a metaphysics in which “chance” itself is an appointed and created minister, the Lady of Permutations, as Dante so eloquently puts it. Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York, NY: New American Library, 2003) 63. eyond the modern, rather secularized, nebulous, and generic God-hauntedness that permeated the twentieth century (mostly Anglo-American) landscape and which generated a vague dis-ease about non-Christian traditions and their texts, historically, the Church has pointedly marked out divination as forbidden for decidedly spiritual reasons. As a divinatory text, the Changes falls under the general, but often impotent, prohibition on sortilege and its association with demonic magic and necromancy found throughout Christian history. For recent scholarship on divination in the Christian tradition, see Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts: Divination in the Letters of Paul (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), Robert Wisniewski, Christian Divination in Late Antiquity (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and Matthew Sharp, Divination and Philosophy in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Following the Douay-Rheims translation, Leviticus 19:26b reads: “You shall not divine nor observe dreams.” In the New Testament, Acts 19 records an episode where new converts who had “practiced magic arts” burned their books, suggesting a very close association between magic and texts. Lastly, Revelation 21:8 places “sorcerers” in the lake of fire. St. Thomas Aquinas, too, addresses sortilege specifically in his magnus opus, Summa Theologica. There he outlines three types: sortilege of allotment, consultation, and divination. For him, allotment means the casting of lots to determine “what is to be given to whom,” e.g., a position, punishment, task, etc. Consultation is where “one seeks to know what ought to be done,” and divination, “what is going to happen.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (The Logic Museum ), IIª-IIae q. 95 a. 8 co. https://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Thomas_Aquinas/Summa_Theologiae/Part_IIb/Q95 Aquinas is quick to point out that the results of sortilege are “not subject to the dispositions of the stars,” and those who include astrology as part of their effort to determine the unknown are “not free from the interference of demons.” As Aquinas was aware, the use of sortilege for allotment enjoys some biblical basis. In Proverbs 16:33, it reads: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision if from the Lord,” and in Acts 1:26, the Apostles cast lots to see who would replace Judas. The fact that the latter is not directly prescribed but, rather, a cultural option to break the stalemate between Mathias and Joseph, makes Aquinas hesitant to recommend the practice as part of Christian decision making. Quoting St. Augustine, he writes, that “‘[if] should there be no other means of coming to an agreement, so far as I can see, they must be chosen by lot.’” Summa Theologica IIª-IIae q. 95 a. 8 co. Interestingly, Aquinas also addresses the perennial “Christian” divinatory practice: bibliomancy with the Scriptures, which would fall under consultation in his schema. Again, quoting St. Augustine, Those who tell fortunes from the Gospel pages, though it is to be hoped that they do so rather than have recourse to consulting the demons, yet does this custom also displease me, that anyone should wish to apply the Divine oracles to worldly matters and to the vain things of this life. Summa Theologica IIª-IIae q. 95 a. 8 co. . Such a practice seems to be counter to St. Augustine’s opinion more than a sharp, theological proscription; Aquinas simply leans on authorial precedent. If even Scriptural bibliomancy is a concession, one can imagine the I Ching would not have been endorsed by the Doctors of the Church, as its cultural context and historical usage would have been as spiritually suspect as non-Christian, Greco-Roman texts/practices. As I am not an Aquinas scholar, I do not claim to grasp his theology of religions but am inferring a general reticence toward other traditions. Since the I Ching is decidedly not just a means of (permitted) allotment, it would, hypothetically fall somewhere between sortilege of consultation and divination in Aquinas’ framework: divination, if used to discern what will happen and consultation to know what one ought to do. In any case, both of the latter types of sortilege are suspect, regardless of the text—a suspicion echoed into the modern period. In the modern era, closer to Merton’s own lifetime, Catholic catechesis further underscores the illicit nature of such practices due to their vulnerability to and association with demonic influence. The Baltimore Catechism (1898) even addresses divination just for curiosity’s sake: It is sinful to consult mediums, spiritists, fortune tellers and the like even when we do not believe in them, but through mere curiosity, to hear what they may say: (1) Because it is wrong to expose ourselves to the danger of sinning even though we do not sin; (2) Because we may give scandal to others who are not certain that we go through mere curiosity; (3) Because by our pretended belief we encourage these impostors to continue their wicked practices. The Baltimore Catechism, (The Catholic Primer, [1891] 2005) 263. Clearly, one should thus abstain even from the appearance of evil (1 Thess. 5:22). Just before Vatican II, the popular Penny Catechism (1958) also forbids “consulting spiritualists and fortune-tellers, and trusting to charms, omens, dreams, and other such foolish things.” The Penny Catechism: 370 Fundamental Questions and Answers on the Catholic Faith, (Houston, TX: Magnificat Institute Press, [1958] 2004) 26. That the English Penny Catechism finds it necessary to weigh in on these practices suggests their continued widespread and popular practice—practice that likely increased among the laity during the turbulent 60s as the I Ching and other non-Christian forms of spiritual practice became more mainstream. So, in short, while the hippies and counterculture may have been rebelling against a generic, cultural, hegemonic Christianity in their appropriation of divinatory texts and non-Christian traditions, the Church maintained its general prohibitive position due to the likelihood of demonic influence occurring outside of approved dogma and praxis. Merton and the I Ching Merton’s use of the I Ching, however, was explicitly not as a divinatory text, but rather, as a tool of psychoanalysis. In fact, it was Jung’s foreword which partly licensed Merton’s use of the divinatory manual contra Catholic teaching outline above. That Merton confers such authority on Jung probably reflects both his long engagement with his thought and his contemporaneous popularity. Merton mentions reading Jung quite early both in The Seven Storey Mountain and in the “secular” sections of his journal, see Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (Garden City, NY: Garden City Books, 1948) 124. Also, Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation, The Journal of Thomas Merton, Vol. 1: 1939-1941, ed. Patrick Hart O.C.S.O., The Journals of Thomas Merton, (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1995). For a more extensive analysis of the relationship between the two authors/thinkers, see David Henderson, "Carl Jung and Thomas Merton: Apophatic and Kataphatic Traditions of the 20th Century," Studies in Spirituality 13 (2003) 269-91. Upon his first casting (that we have record of) on March 3, 1959 in the midst of one of his many vocational crises concerning a possible move to South America, Merton writes, A most significant event. After much thought, prayer, and debate, consulted the I Ching as, I think a valid experiment. Not a question of sortiegium [divination], but a consultation in the same spirit as that of Jung in the preface. To learn something of my own deeper moral self and to see more clearly, perhaps, into my most hidden motives and problems. Much as one might take a Rorshach test, for instance. That was the spirit of the experiment. Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Journals of Thomas Merton, (1996) 266. Here, taking Jung as his guide, Merton self-consciously psychologizes and perhaps, rationalizes, his illicit (sortilege of consultation) use of the text, comparing it to that other psychological tool, the Rorshach test. In his copy, Merton double marks Jung’s words: “Even to the most biased eye it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives.” Carl Jung, "Foreword," in The I Ching or Book of Changes (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1950) xv. It would seem, to me, that Merton knew of the manual and had a sense of what it was before he acquired his copy a full eight years after its publication and popularization. Thus, his reading of it was with the intent of using it at some point. Two days after this entry, Merton reached out to psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, asking him about the book. Fromm’s reply indicates he has avoided studying it because “a number of people use it for purposes of prognostication and prediction” but, given Merton’s inquiry, will “take it up again and try to get better acquainted.” Erich Fromm, “Letter to Thomas Merton, March 18, 1959.” Original to Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington, KY. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY. Accessed 29 February 2024. Less than two months later, Merton, writing to John Harris on May 5, 1959, suggests using the I Ching but draws a distinction between its oracular character and psychoanalytic possibilities: “Because of its oracular character, one has to play the game it proposes, in order to see what it is really driving at. This should not be done by one who is not clear where fortune-telling ends and analysis begins.” Hidden Ground, 389. Again to John Harris in weeks after using the oracle, Merton proclaims: You see that my concept of Christianity is far from being an old-maidish theology of hiding in a corner of the house and standing on chairs for fear of heretical mice. But the important thing for you at the moment is not Zen or I Ching. . . All that these others have to teach is found in the Church also (and they too are of “the Church” in their own hidden way). Hidden Ground, 390. We see Merton here preemptively rebutting presumed objections—just as he does in his journal entry above, clearly aware of his audiences: Fromm, Harris, the censors, posterity, and so on. In the earlier journal entry, he offers further justifications; instead of using ordinary American coins for the coin method of consulting the Changes (see below), he uses “‘special’ religious medals”: one of St. George, Our Lady of Cobre, and Our Lady of Perpetual Hope. One imagines that these specifically Catholic coins further sanctify what might be perceived as “sortiegium.” He goes on, aware that the censors are reading, repeating, “And [after] as I say much prayer” with the biblical addition: “After all, the Holy Spirit spoke through a drawing of lots when St. Matthias was chosen apostle.” Who exactly is he trying to convince here? Had he read Aquinas? But it is not just Jung’s psychologized preface, which he calls “fascinating,” that encouraged Merton to move past the exoteric “fortune-telling” readings. For him, the I Ching intimated the kind of dynamic ontology Merton himself was moving toward and what he saw in Boris Pasternak’s (1890-1960) work. In a letter to Helen Wolff at Pantheon, the American publisher of Doctor Zhivago (1958), on May 8, 1959, he writes: Certainly I feel that the Christian poetry and literature of our time must abandon static and outworn concepts and utter their praise of Christ in intuitions that are dynamic and in full movement. Such is Pasternak’s vision of reality, a reality which must be caught as it passes, reality which must carry us away with it. If we pause even for a moment to formulate abstractions we will have lost life as it goes by. . . This is the very vision of reality we have in the I Ching. Thomas Merton, The Courage for Truth: The Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers, ed. Christine M. Bochen (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1993) 97. He had made much the same point to Harris just three days earlier on May 5, 1959: I saw an very interesting analogy with an ancient Chinese book which P[asternak] probably does not know at all. It is the Book of Oracles called the I Ching. This consists of a series of symbolic configurations of events, or “changes” which one arrives at by drawing lots of tossing coins; but that is not the important thing. What is fascinating is the fact that each change is exactly that sort of fluid “style of movement”. . . “arrangement of groups”. . . which constitutes Pasternak’s inclinations. Jung has written a fascinating preface to the I Ching bringing in his archetypes. The I Ching had a tremendous influence on both Confucius and Lao Tzu, and what amazes me is that it is exactly the Pasternak approach. Hidden Ground, 289. Merton thus synthesizes the aesthetics of Pasternak, the depth psychology of Jung, and the dynamic, cosmological vision underlying the I Ching. Undoubtedly using the I Ching, referring to it as “a most significant event,” validated these synthetic intuitions hammered out here in his correspondence. Therefore, as the name suggests, it is precisely in the process of consulting the divinatory manual through which one comes to know its dynamic and, really, participatory ontology. In this construal, the I Ching is a kind of computer that reveals the shifting forces at work in any given situation. But unlike modern computers where the user is outside the calculating system that renders the same answer every time, the I Ching includes the user and its answers shift, reflecting a Heraclitan-like/Daoist understanding of reality as flux. This inquirer-inclusive-interactionism resists mere fortune-telling. In the only passage Merton stars and underlines from the Introduction, it reads: Thus the individual [comes] to share in shaping fate. For his actions intervened as determining factors in world events, the more decisively so, the earlier he was able with the aid of the Book of Changes to recognize situations in their germinal phases. The germinal phase is the crux. As long as things are in their beginnings they can be controlled, but once they have grown to their full consequences they acquire a power so overwhelming that man stands impotent before them. . . Given this perspective, the word of the oracle would indicate what should be done to meet the need of the time. Richard Wilhelm, "Introduction," in The I Ching or Book of Changes (New York, NY: Pantheon 1950) xxxiv. There is, then, a right action suggested for the person in that moment—a moment that is always changing and inclusive of one’s own agency and psyche as well as the agency and psyche of others and other forces. It is here, at this intersection of a diagnostic tool of changing reality and its simultaneous circumscribing of the inquirer where Merton’s philosophical and psychoanalytic intuitions converge. This existential edge of Merton’s experience with the Changes comes about as a meaningful intersection of the consultation process, the oracular results, and their application to his complex situation. It is clear from Merton’s journal that he is using what is called the coin method in contrast to the older yarrow-stalk method. But, as we also know, he is not using American currency but religious medals. The way this method works is by assigning a value of 3 for one side of the coin (or medal) and 2 for the other. The 3 corresponds to yang and 2 to yin. Yang represents the masculine principle or heaven and is represented by a solid line (——). Yin represents the feminine principle or earth and is symbolized by a broken line (— —). One then asks a question of the oracle, “casts” the three coins, and adds up the resultant values, depending on which side lands “up,” with the highest possible sum being 9 and the lowest sum 6. A sum of 7 is called a young yang and is drawn as a solid line that is unchanging. A sum of 9, however, is called an old yang or a moving line, and is represented by a solid line with an “O” in its center. A sum of 8 is a young yin, drawn as a broken line, and is unchanging; 6 is an old yin and is drawn as a broken line with an X in its center. Below is Merton’s own note that he used for his calculations, taken directly from the Wilhelm-Baynes edition: Fig. 1 Thomas Merton, “I Ching,” Notebook 52, p. 29. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY. Accessed 29 February 2024. Used with Permission. Using the notations above (Fig. 1), Merton records his (first) result as the Ta Kuo or hexagram 28. He writes, Fig. 2 Thomas Merton. Scanned portion of a personal journal entry, 3 March 1959. Sub-Section C1, Journal 4, p. 195. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY. Accessed 29 February 2024. Used with Permission. His handwriting, admittedly, is difficult to decipher (Fig. 2). In the Journals, it is transcribed as: Fig. 3 Search for Solitude, 266. But, in the Wilhelm-Baynes, it reads, “It furthers one to have somewhere to go” rather than “The fortress to have somewhere to go”( Fig. 3). Clearly, “The fortress” error here renders Merton’s enthusiasm (“The answer was a crucial one—struck me very deeply, and I think it was astonishingly correct”) somewhat unintelligible. But Merton himself dropped “one” in his journal, making the line read: “It furthers [one] to have somewhere to go” (Fig. 2). The “furthers one to have somewhere to go” reading together with “Success,” the additional commentary Merton copies from the Changes, and his own emotional response all suggest that he positively correlated the results with his situation and the reason he consulted the oracle in the first place. Although he does not say explicitly in 1959 what prompted him to seek the oracle’s advice, it was perhaps his ongoing restlessness and vocational crisis. Lawrence Cunningham writes, “He is unhappy in the monastery, finding it too successful and too busy. . . His old desire for a more retired life with its attendant temptation to look to the more eremitical Carthusians and Camaldolese comes back with a vengeance.” Lawrence S. Cunningham, "Introduction," in A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Journals of Thomas Merton (1996) xvii. Such conflict was exacerbated by a Benedictine prior who “offers him a new life” in Latin America, Cuernavaca, Mexico specifically, although Merton considered other sites throughout Latin and South America during this time as well. Cunningham, "Introduction," xvii. Waxing psychological, Cunningham muses on Merton’s inner turmoil as a form of monastic accedia as described by John Cassian. Helpfully summarizing Cassian, he writes: The monk begins to feel “a horror of the place where he is” and “disgust with his cell.” The same monk begins to “complain that he is making no progress: and is “devoid of all spiritual progress.” Finally, he “sings the praises of monasteries located in other places” and concludes that “he cannot get any better as long as he stays in his present place” (Institutes X.2). He then notes, “I wrote Cassian’s words in my journal with the notation: “‘an exact description of TM in 1959.’” Cunningham, "Introduction," xviii. This background helpfully reconstructs Merton’s state of mind and vocational situation involved in his enthusiastic and emotional response to the results of his first casting. Writing a week after, he recalls not having had “time to write down everything about the Hexagram from the I Ching.” But, reflecting the inner/psychological dimensions of his “experiment,” he offers: “To a great extent, I think, the necessary change has been made. A deep interior one, rather than an exterior change. . . it was like pulling up the roots of something and I don’t quite know how it got done—perhaps it is not yet done completely. Probably not.” Merton, ever self-aware, writing just five days later, picks up where he left off: “Same struggle in the depths. All I can do is want what is in one to swing somehow into line with forces I do not know or understand, that are reality.” Search for Solitude, 267. His language here, “swing somehow into line with forces I do not know. . . that are reality,” is in line with the operations of the I Ching and its dynamic cosmology. But Merton was not finished with the Changes. Perhaps struggling with the same crises outlined above, Merton turned once again to the I Ching for insight. During a retreat in May of 1959, Merton consults the oracle, turning up hexagram 43, Kuai. Given that some of the lines of his hexagram were changing (old yang/old yin), Merton also looks up hexagram 29, K’an. Wilhelm-Baynes records it as K’an NOT Ka’an as in the Journal. His own interpretation of the commentary intimates a kind of resignation with the need for inner resolve, a kind of active waiting: Not yielding to temptation to push forward blindly and obstinately at any cost. Not seeking to enforce my own will. Not using force. Be on guard in myself against the faults I have branded in the community, etc. Not fighting my own faults directly, but indirectly, by progress and good. Search for Solitude, 280. He goes on: “I am satisfied that the thing is to wait quietly without any special plans or any special purpose. And not care for how long. The more I am content to wait the sooner the right answer will come, all by itself. . . What I seek is simply being—and here it is.” Search for Solitude, 281. In sum, Merton is true to his word; it appears he really does use the I Ching only as a psychoanalytic tool to help him diagnose his inner world and to construct attitudinal posturing rather than for divinatory (what will happen) purposes. His resultant interior state based on his use of the oracle seems to have helped him when in December of that year he got a definite “No” from the Vatican itself about leaving Gethsemani. Cunningham remarks at the shift in his attitude: “It is striking, given the passionate character of his earlier entries in his journal, that Merton received this news with a calm sense of acceptance” hoping to secure “‘solitude outside of geography.’” Cunningham, "Introduction," xviii. This, of course, ultimately resulted in Merton’s move to the hermitage. However, the same restlessness and accedia of 1959 would come back toward the end of his life—and with it, the I Ching. Although we have no further records of Merton’s own use of the Changes from 1959-1967 (that we know of), his long-time friend John Harris consults it for him and sends him the results (an “offering”). After receiving Harris’ letter, written on December 19, 1967, Merton responds on the 31st: Now as to the offering from I Ching. I am suitably impressed. I am indeed quite awed. For there is much urging from a new monastery we have in Chile that I should come there (“south” if anything ever was!) and in lots of ways I would like to go, and have in fact tried to get there before. More than that, I have an even more attractive scheme for joining one of my former novices [Ernesto Cardenal], who now is running a very small out-of-the-way monastic encampment on an island [Solentiname] in a lake in Nicaragua (“south!!!”) … We’ll see in a little while. I’m not sure what is coming, but great changes are coming. . . But I have a feeling I am liable to get shipped north south east or west or maybe just stay here and get shot for my mad opinions. Hidden Ground, 401. Merton supplies his own context; once again he is looking toward South America—just like he was in 1959. This rhyming of events did not go unnoticed in his journal; just before he wrote Harris back, he records: I might have to go to Chile (John Harris consulted the I Ching for me in Cornwall and turned up the same hexagram I did years ago when thinking of South America. Fear not Departure toward the South Brings good fortune!) Well. “One must see the great man!” Br. Frederic and Fr. Callistus will be here from Chile for the election and I will talk with them. Thomas Merton, The Other Side of the Mountain: The Journal of Thomas Merton, Vol. 7 1967-1968, ed. Patrick Hart O.C.S.O., The Journals of Thomas Merton, (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1998) 31. Merton’s quotation from the Changes (“Fear not. . . One must see the great man!”) sheds light on his epistolary enthusiasm above, especially in regard to the “Departure toward the South” line and his upcoming visitors. Interestingly, this specific judgment/commentary is not attached to any of the three hexagrams Merton mentions in his journals—even the ones back in 1959 that he seemingly cross-references in “I did years ago when thinking of South America.” Instead, all of the lines Merton quotes from the Changes are attached exclusively to hexagram 46, Shêng. Outside of faulty memory, there are a couple of possibilities for this discrepancy: 1) His first hexagram, Ta Kuo or 28, contained changing/moving lines which changed it into Shêng; he simply did not do the calculations or just did not record the change like he did during his May retreat. Or, 2) he consulted the oracle a third time and did not record it. This latter possibility I find more intriguing because “Departure toward the South/ Brings good fortune!” is substantially more divinatory, in the future-telling sense, and on the nose vis-à-vis Merton’s contemporaneous context than the other hexagrams he had recorded before. Regardless, Merton’s “awe” at the aptness of Harris’ “offering” and the fact that it paralleled his earlier I Ching consultation within a similar context in some way demonstrates why Merton and others (like Bob Dylan) had such strong reactions to the I Ching: it seemingly “works”—it may be over the course of years, but it does indeed, to use a literary metaphor, reveal the parts of life’s poetry that are likely to rhyme time and again. Given Gethsemani’s and Bangkok’s locations, Merton did ultimately depart (in more ways than one) toward the South, met the Great Man, and, his quick trip to the afterlife was, in light of the Resurrection, “good fortune.” Conclusion Merton’s use of the I Ching thus provides us with a glimpse into those ever-present tensions that existed just below the surface of his psyche: To what degree can one authentically participate in non-Christian traditions? How does psychology relate to spirituality? What does one do when the prescribed methods for ascertaining the God’s will are silent? What is my vocation? Carrying it further, it could be, too, that the “successful” casting of the I Ching in 1959 influenced Merton’s later, continued exploration of Asian traditions. In fact, it was less than a year after his experience with the Changes he published his first work on Confucianism, The Ox Mountain Parable of Meng Tzu (1960). For more on Merton and Confucianism, see Patrick O’Connell, "‘A Way of Life Impregnated with Truth’: Did Thomas Merton Undervalue Confucianism?," The Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Spirituality, and Social Concerns 28 (2015) 112-33. O’Connell also notes Merton’s use of the I Ching, but does not develop it much further, see 128, n. 38. In closing, beyond energizing already present inclinations, Merton’s psychoanalytical use of the oracle seems to have empowered him to recognize his own role/responsibility in shaping an ever-evolving future. Returning again to his letter to Wolff: “[C]hristian poetry and literature of our time must abandon static and outworn concepts and utter their praise of Christ in intuitions that are dynamic and in full movement. Such is Pasternak’s vision of reality, a reality which must be caught as it passes, reality which must carry us away with it. 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