| Author Quoted | Titus Burckhardt |
| Title Quoted | An introduction to Sufi doctrine |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1961/05/13 |
| Imprint | Lahore : Ashraf. [1959] |
| Quotation | After reading Burckhardt, I have glimpsed many interesting relationships and problems. The question of Tawhid is of course central and I think that the closest to Islam among the Christian mystics on this point are the Rhenish and Flemish mystics of the fourteenth century, including Meister Eckhart, who was greatly influenced by Avicenna. The culmination of their mysticism is in the "Godhead" beyond "God" (a distinction which caused trouble to many theologians in the Middle Ages and is not accepted without qualifications) but at any rate it is an ascent to perfect and ultimate unity beyond the triad in unity of the Persons. This is a subtle and difficult theology and I don't venture into it without necessity "¦ One of the chapters I like best in Burckhardt is that on the renewal of creation at each instant, and also that on the dhikr which resembles the techniques of the Greek monks, and I am familiar with its use, for it brings one close to God. |
| Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 49 |
| Letter to | Abdul Aziz |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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