Editor's entry
~1 min readThomas Merton’s 1962 expansion of his 1949 Seeds of Contemplation — short reflections, more essays than chapters, on the contemplative life as understood inside the Trappist tradition. The book centres the move from the “false self” constructed by ego-conditioning to the “true self” that exists in immediate relation to God, and treats contemplation not as a special practice but as the recovery of one’s actual nature.
Published by New Directions with a new preface by Merton, the volume reshapes and almost doubles the original 1949 text. It is the fifth and final edition of the project Merton began at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the 1940s, and the version on which his standing as a contemplative writer in the lineage of John of the Cross and The Cloud of Unknowing is largely built. Sue Monk Kidd contributed a new introduction to later printings.
Themes & tags
8 totalRead / watch next
auto-computedLoading related entries…
First lines
opening of the bookContemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being.
Reception
editor-collectedConsidered by Merton scholars and by the wider Christian contemplative community as the most distilled statement of his mature theology. Particularly influential on Centering Prayer (Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington) and on the post-Vatican II revival of Christian contemplative practice. Read outside its tradition — by Buddhist, Sufi and secular contemplatives — Merton’s framing of the false-self/true-self distinction has been recognised as parallel to but not identical with non-dual formulations elsewhere; the 1968 Asian Journal documents how seriously he took those parallels in his last year. Praised at publication as a notable successor in the meditative tradition of St John of the Cross and The Cloud of Unknowing.
Index reception note
Frequently asked
3 questions- What is New Seeds of Contemplation about?
- Thomas Merton’s 1962 expansion of his 1949 Seeds of Contemplation — a sequence of short reflections on the contemplative life inside the Trappist tradition, organised around the move from the “false self” constructed by ego-conditioning to the “true self” that exists in immediate relation to God.
- How does it differ from the 1949 Seeds of Contemplation?
- It is the fifth and final edition of the project. The 1962 text is roughly twice the length of the 1949 original, with a new preface by Merton and substantial revisions — minor redactions to early passages, major additions throughout. Most current readers encounter the book in this expanded form rather than the 1949 one.
- Why is it influential outside Catholic monasticism?
- It is the source most often cited by the Centering Prayer movement (Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington) and was a foundational text for the post-Vatican II revival of Christian contemplative practice. Buddhist and non-dual readers have noted parallels — not identities — between Merton’s false-self/true-self distinction and formulations from their own traditions; Merton’s 1968 Asian Journal documents how seriously he took those parallels in his last year.
Catalogue record
- Author
- Thomas Merton
- Title
- New Seeds of Contemplation
- Publisher
- New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Year
- 1 January 1962
- Pages
- 297
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780811217248
- Shelf
- Awakening · Presence · Philosophy
Availability
By the same author
no other entriesLoading other entries by Thomas Merton…