On our last day in Thailand, during this past Summer, I felt the draw to seek out the holy place from which Thomas Merton departed this Life. The walk there from the train through the Samutprakin area just outside Bangkok alongside the Dan Canal was lovely and peaceful. It took us a while to find the now Thai Red Cross Rehabilitation Center where the 1968 conference was held wherein the Christian Trappist delivered a talk on December 10th and then departed the world, or as he would say “disappeared.”We found the sacred bungalow he stayed and died in while here in his passionate aim for interreligious dialogue. The dilapidated bungalow is still standing, but as of yet unmarked and unmemorialized officially. Even so, the vibrations are deeply interpenetrating theoughout the landscape. Much gratitude for this…
We were staying at the Hotel Thomas, which was near the Phaya Thai train station in Bangkok.. Keha was the last train stop on the line that we needed to take to walk to the Red Cross rehabilitation center in our effort to find the cottage that Thomas Merton stayed in during the conference in 1968 when he died.
The irony of the draw to seek out this final location for Thomas Merton on this earth in physical form was centered around, oddly enough, news that Leonard‘s brother, his oldest brother Shelton, had passed away back in the states. We had been in Thailand for two weeks, but had received word a couple of days before our return home that Leonard’s brother was in hospice and not expected to live long.
Earlier on the trip, I had recalled that Thomas Merton had died in Bangkok, but was not sure of the details of the exact location. All of the sudden, the day of the news of Shelton’s death, prompted a more magnetic aim of actually seeking out this holy place of departure. How curious these connections between life and death and beyond.
The train ride was over 25 stops and took about 50 minutes. Oddly enough, there was no palpable anticipation to reach the final stop, watching the ebb and flow of passengers on the train, as we moved toward the end of the line of that particular train route.
Perhaps the most vivid impression on that train ride was involving a passenger on the train who boarded the train and stood next to me holding onto the stanchion. As I stood next to this person, I noticed that there was a soft humming coming from his mouth. It was only later that I realized that this person was blind. The train was very crowded when we first got on, and indeed when he got on he had to stand along with us, as there were no available seats.
As we neared the end of the stops on that line, the crowd dwindled a bit and seats became open. People were sitting down in them. I remember as the seats were opening up, I wanted to assist the blind person to sit in one of the seats; however, since I assumed that this person would not understand English, and to have someone physically touch him and try to move him through the train car would be possibly more intrusive than helpful, I did not approach him. So, I moved to one of the open seats and at the same time, another passenger, ostensibly from Thailand, walked over to the blind person and walked him over to the seat next to me.
I remember and will always remember how strong that impression was. The compassionate consideration of a stranger for someone who just needed some help. After a while of riding on the train, the person who was blind was approached again by another person on the train, who had been watching the person blind to ascertain what stop he needed to exit the train. This stranger escorted him off the train at his stop.
A few stops later, as we exited the train at Keha, there was such a marked sense of peacefulness and connectedness in the atmosphere, and not just with the people who were very considerate to each other, but also the physical environment. Interestingly enough, our trek to discover the location wherein Thomas Merton left this planet took us along a serene canal lined with trees and flowers marked by plaques identifying species names. It was a straight way that included not just a walking path, but also a pathway for scooters to traverse.
It was so interesting how the pathway was shared by those who were riding on scooters and those who were pedestrians, There was an innate awareness of both the scooter riders and the pedestrians for each other as if they were of one mind and space. We were not fearful at all of being hit by a scooter. We were also amazed at the striking similarity between these plants and flowers of Thailand and our own at home. There was a deep interpenetration and intensity of connectedness in all these beautiful aspects of the environment.
…a fisherman on a bridge, local gathering places along the canal, beautiful flowers and trees, fish swimming in the murky waters, a busy highway on the other side of the walkway …
As we neared the turn that would take us across a major road to the Red Cross compound wherein we hoped to find the cottage, we noticed a very striking and outstanding Buddhist temple. The reflection of the standing Buddha in the canal was remarkable. I couldn’t help but imagine how Thomas might’ve felt if he had looked out from the Red Cross compound to see the Buddhist temple across the street from the conference he was attending in 1968..
Following our GPS, we crossed over the major road from the canal and saw the Thai red cross hospital sign and entered the compound. As we entered, we noticed immediately the sublime beauty of the grounds. The mangroves were outstanding, holding their own, lining the small winding brook that flowed into the compound, almost as if these mangroves embraced the water environment around them.
We had no idea where we were going, our seeking based only on a description provided by a person who had planned a pilgrimage to this place and done the groundwork for finding out exactly where it was. I had done a google search in the morning and found that what I thought would be terribly complicated was in fact “just across the threshold.”
We walked down the road lined with lush trees and blooming flowers (Ixora, Pentas, Night Blooming Cirrus, etc.) before we were directed by a guard not to go a certain way. I had crossed a bridge to the left and a guard waved me down and indicated that this area was off limits. As we walked back over the bridge, we saw movement in the water below. Being from Louisiana, we immediately thought it would be an alligator, but as we stood there, we saw it was instead a rather large lizard that was swimming in the canal.
We went back to the main road and turned right as we tried to cover as much of the compound as we could on our own. After walking a ways down, we realized that we were either in the wrong place or we were judging the locations incorrectly. A bit frustrated, we walked back up to the front of the Red Cross compound and walked into a lobby area, where we tried to communicate in English what we were looking for to two young ladies in the lobby. I showed a photo of the cottage building that we were looking for to the women . I never gleaned that they recognized the picture we showed them, but when we told them the name of the building, they told us using hand gestures to continue back the way we had already explored and to travel further. And that’s what we did.
On the way, we passed by a nice looking resort area and then a very dilapidated house. It matched the house in the picture photo that I had saved on my phone. We continued on looking for a smaller building that would look somewhat like the one we had just seen. Instead we found a few houses with families. There with a rooster and several turkeys who got very agitated as we passed. We then saw a park area that was filled with gazebo type buildings and walked through silently hoping that this may be a tribute to Thomas Merton, but of course it was not, and we could not read the Thai inscriptions indicating what these pagoda style gazebos were. The park with gazebo buildings stood in stark contrast to some of the poor domiciles that surrounded them.
Still not finding the cottage, based on the photo that I had screenshotted from an article, we continued on our pilgrimage down a paved walkway through an apparent swamp area. We walked through this area noting that there was nobody else on the trail. It was very exquisite . It reminded us of the everglades in Florida and the sound of the birds that we did not see was very intense. We did eventually see a couple of large birds on a closed off walkway, but they were totally unimpressed with our presence. Thank God!
As it was getting late, and this was the last day of our trip, we needed to head to the airport. So we decided to head back to the main road, but agreed to stop at the building that looked very dilapidated on the way out. It was then that we realized that we had mistakenly thought that this was a picture of another building other than the cottage that Thomas Merton stayed at for the conference in 1968.
The awnings were the give away. We looked at a close-up of the photo of the building and realized that it was, in fact, a close-up of the cottage itself that was two-storied. We had found the sacred place that Thomas Merton stayed and died in 57 years ago.
The cottage was abandoned and in poor condition. The door was locked, but we were able to look through the windows to see the inside and it corresponded exactly with the inside of the building as photographed and described in the article I had found . As we could not get in, which was not that important, there was a deep sensation present that affirmed this moment. The spirit that we had been feeling in this environment all along was now revealed in its intensity as we stood in front of the cottage. The impression was stalwart! Had we left the compound without finding this building, I am convinced that the impression would be nonetheless as powerful.
Yes, we had found the cottage or bungalow, and peering through the window, I could see the doorway of the room that Thomas Merton’s body was found within. The grounds around this abandoned cottage were green and flower-laden. Birds sang, fish swam in a canal that ran alongside the cottage – there was an innate sense of stillness. Specifically, there was a tremendous plumeria, a tree omnipresent in Bangkok and really all throughout Thailand, in front of the cottage, specifically near a star-shaped fountain without water. It stood just in front of the cottage.
Many of the plumeria flowers had fallen down to the ground and without any deliberating, Leonard began to collect the blossoms and place them at the foot of the door to the cottage. This was our offering for this space that housed a holy person and inevitably welcomed his transition to further realms. This Christian monk who died in Bangkok in 1968 after giving a talk on Marxism and Monanasticism.
I have read many of Thomas Merton’s writings and felt somewhat connected to him, but not as intimately connected as I felt at this point. The pilgrimage was quite unexpected and came about in my mind (at least) as simply a calling up of the fact that Thomas Merton had died in Bangkok in 1968. But as with all things on this trip and possibly all journeys that are embarked upon, when there is any slight element of openness, the greater force sneaks in and provides that which is needed, even if not expected. Here we were, ARE, in the presence of Presence. Nothing mattered but here and now.
It was further interesting that we had talked about the possibility of trying to find the location of Thomas Merton’s death place in Bangkok earlier in the trip, but it was actually the day that we found out that Leonard’s brother, Shelton, had died back in the states that the real Magnetic force drawing us to this pilgrimage came up upon us.
Truly, life and death are timeless and there is always the possibility to cross over into that moment when presence arrives. Who is Thomas Merton? Fr. Louie, a Trappist monk attending a conference in Southeast Asia hoping for some connection between Western Christianity and eastern Buddhism in all of its spirituality. Is it all the same question? What is the quest, the longing? Is it simply an opening to what is here now!
That my seeking could be a genuine expression of humility in ignorance, that is all I WISH! I only know that the understanding of this pilgrimage is something which I cannot describe because it resides deep within a place that can be sourced only if I allow it to be without expression or expectation. Silence is the landscape. I am the landscape.
