THOMAS MERTON’S PATH TO THE PALACE OF NOWHERE By James Finley
Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, author, and student of Zen, remains one of the most important and beloved figures in the modern Christian contemplative movement. His writings, which bridge Eastern and Western spiritual thought, continue to inspire us with their real possibilities for immediate and direct experience of the divine.
Now James Finley, who for six years lived, prayed, and studied with Brother Louis, as Merton was known at the Abbey of Gethsemani, shares with us the gifts passed on to him by this towering figure on Thomas Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere.
First presented at a series of popular retreats, this full eight-CD program takes a participatory approach to Merton’s most useful teachings, helping us to discover our true self … to disappear into God; to be submerged into his peace; to be lost in the secret of his face, as Merton said, through daily practices including contemplation, prayer, and faith. In the end we find ourselves in what the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu called the Palace of Nowhere, where all the many things are one.
There is an Eastern teaching called transmission of mind, in which the enlightened mind embodied in the master is manifest in the student’s awakening. It is in this spirit that James Finley invites us to follow Thomas Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere.
What is Metaphysics ?
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. The word “metaphysics” comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean “after or behind or among [the study of] the natural”. It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. ‘after the Physics ’, another of Aristotle’s works).
Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions of:
- What there is
- What it is like
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
THOMAS MERTON’S PATH TO THE PALACE OF NOWHERE By James Finley
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