| Author Quoted | Mary Lelia Makra |
| Title Quoted | Hsiao Ching / transl. (from the Chinese) by Mary Lelia Makra ed. by Paul K. T. Sih |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1961/05/29 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1961 |
| Quotation | I have carefully gone through your fine translation of the Tao Te Ching, and it is all superb. I really mean to get down to the article. I loved the Hsiao Ching too. It is so completely in tune with reality. The Zen books you speak of interest me, but my German is slow. I shall be eager to see if they appear in English translation. If I once reached Buddhahood and redescended to my present state, all I can say is that I made a really heroic sacrifice. But I don't regret it, as the other Buddhas seem to have done the same. Yourself for instance. Thus we go along gaily with littleness for our Mother and our Nurse, and we return to the root by having no answers to questions. Whatever I may have been in previous lives, I think more than half of them were Chinese and eremitical. |
| 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. 618 |
| Letter to | John C.H. Wu |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.) |