Thomas Merton Meets the Unspeakable: Rendezvous in Thailand

By Jerome Donovan

Born in 1915 in France to artists—an American mother with Quaker roots from New York, and a New Zealand-born father—Thomas Merton would become one of the twentieth century’s most influential spiritual leaders.

Baptized as a Catholic at age twenty-six, he joined a Trappist monastery near Louisville a year later.

From that point on, his spiritual side exploded into a tsunami of directions—Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and more. At age thirty-three, he became a best-selling author, beginning with his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain.

He corresponded with Nobel Prize laureates and other literary and political luminaries. His public opposition to the Vietnam War assured his worldwide celebrity.

In late 1968, at the peak of his popularity, Merton died in Thailand after addressing a conference of Western Christian monks and nurses stationed in Asia. For decades it was thought that, wet from a shower, he was electrocuted by a faulty standing fan.

But for a growing number of his admirers there were dark suspicions that he might well have been assassinated by those who feared his antiwar message. In 2013 the author and his wife Sharon retraced Merton’s last days in Thailand. This book tells what they learned.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532042461

Jerome Donovan

Jerome Donovan has many years of legal experience in developing countries. He is also the author of Kierkegaard’s Clown (iUniverse, 2007). He and his wife Sharon live in Iowa near three of their eight grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2018 Jerome Donovan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Photos: Sharon Donovan

Photographs of Thomas Merton used with permission of the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.

Joan’s photo by: Marina Chavez used courtesy of Joan Baez.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4245-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4246-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018902358

iUniverse rev. date: 10/04/2018

CONTENTS

Preface And Acknowledgments

Preface

Acknowledgements

The Merton Saga, Briefly

The Merton Chronology

Two Months In Asia … Then Samut Prakan

Herbert Marcuse

Merton Dives In

The Mystery Begins

Doubts Arise

Doubts Persist

A Visit To Samut Prakan

An Interview Adds Some Clarity

Afterword

Thomas Merton, the Dalai

Lama, and the Road Not Taken

Joan Baez: My Picnic with Thomas Merton

PREFACE AND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T he 1960’s were fraught for Americans and fatal for many of their leaders. To anyone living then the roll call is hauntingly familiar.

April 17, 1961: The Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA’s botched attempt to oust Cuba’s President Fidel Castro

October 14-28, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis, the harrowing confrontation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. over the presence in Cuba of Soviet nuclear missiles

November 22, 1963: John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas

February 21, 1965: Malcolm X assassinated in New York

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in Memphis

June 6, 1968: Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles

Recent research – summarized in these pages – strongly supports this grim addition:

December 10, 1968: Thomas Merton assassinated in Samut Prakan, south of Bangkok

PREFACE

M erton was a French-born American monk in a Cistercian (Trappist) monastery near Louisville, Kentucky. (The Trappists are among Catholicism’s most cloistered orders.) He was a prodigiously productive writer, poet, artist, teacher, and peace activist – a man whose life and work continue to instruct and inspire his legions of admirers worldwide.

In 2015 Merton’s deep spirituality, and that of his friend Dorothy Day – a peace activist and founder of the Catholic Worker movement – were publicly acknowledged as spiritual role models by Pope Francis on his trip to the United States. (The Pope also cited Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, America’s sixteenth president, who was assassinated in 1865.)

Why did the Pope include Merton in his honor roll? Perhaps not least because Merton shared with at least one other person on the list – King – a somber distinction: he died under circumstances that convince many that the U.S. government, which feared his antiwar message, assassinated him to silence him. (As to King, recent findings by the respected online researcher Ole Dammegard reinforce such dark suspicions.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

F or years, along with other admirers, I had been reading Merton and discussing his life and works. But it was not until 2013, when my wife Sharon and I visited the site of his death, that I had ever lent much credence to the assassination theory. I returned home convinced that the theory was correct.

This book tells the story of what we learned. Its conclusions are mine alone and are not necessarily shared by anyone listed below, all of whom over the years have guided me along the