. . . . [captioning made possible by cbs television network] >> one of the things that that appeals to people about merton is that he's real. he speaks to people who are seeking, he speaks to people who are devout, and he speaks to people who know that they're imperfect and believe that god loves them anyway. >> the karmapa may have been short, but his salient characteristic was his giant, roaring lion of dharma-like presence. >> he was a living buddha. everybody just fell in love with him. >> theology is poetry. like all poetry, it is trying to say something that cannot be expressed in logical, discursive prose. when you're talking about god, there will come a point where we listen to the absolute stupidity of what we're saying and lapse into silence. >> cbs presents "modern masters

of religion." the narrator is ted holmes. >> the four people most responsible for me becoming a jesuit are the father, the son, the holy spirit, and thomas merton. >> thomas merton is considered one of the greatest american catholics of the 20th century. author of over 70 books, his influence as a writer, mystic, and social activist continues to be felt by many. >> if he hadn't entered the monastery and spent months and months writing his books, i wouldn't be a jesuit. i wouldn't be here. i'd probably be miserable. >> father james martin is a priest and best-selling author. >> i was very dissatisfied with my life at g.e. where i was working, and i came home one night and turned on the tv and saw a documentary about thomas merton, and just something about his life, the look on his face -- which seemed so content and peaceful -- really drew me in and made me want to know, you

know -- what was the secret to this guy's happiness? >> merton was born in france in 1915. his mother was american and his father was from new zealand. they were artists and moved frequently between europe and the u.s. >> i think he never really felt like he fit in when he was young. his mother died when he was extremely young and his father died, i think, when he was a teenager. >> as a young man, merton declared, "i believe in nothing." but faith came calling through a back door. >> he was very attracted to the church aesthetically. he'd be attracted to icons in churches he visited in europe. and so that is one way that he gets drawn into catholicism. >> in 1933 he entered cambridge university in england. >> like a lot of college kids he's, you know, more interested

in getting drunk and, you know, going out with women and things like that. >> during this period, it was rumored that merton fathered a child out of wedlock. >> it's still unclear exactly what happened, but his guardian says to him -- i think it would be a good idea for you to go somewhere else. >> merton went to new york city where he enrolled at columbia university. >> thomas merton was a real cultural sponge. he liked jazz. he hung out with famous artists. he was really interested in kind of what was going on at the time, new styles of writing. >> merton himself showed a gift for writing. he studied english literature, wrote for the university's newspapers, and considered becoming a journalist. >> and he's struggling. he's searching. he's trying to figure out what to do. and he gets turned on at columbia to the catholic church through a course in medieval philosophy. and at one point he's reading gerard manley hopkins, a jesuit poet, and he says, you know, i

felt this urge within me to kind of get up and go to the church. and so he gets up and he goes to corpus christi church on 121st street and presents himself and says, you know, i think i want to be a catholic. >> at the age of 23, merton was baptized. >> like a lot of things in merton's life. it's all or nothing. you know, "if i'm going to be a catholic, i'm going to be the most devout catholic i can be." >> merton decided he should become a priest and was disappointed when his application to join the franciscan order was rejected. but he wasn't discouraged. >> he says, well, i'll just live like a monk in the world. >> he gave up drinking and womanizing and took up prayer. in september 1940, he accepted a job teaching english at st. bonaventure, a franciscan college in upstate new york. >> and he sets himself up as a sort of monastic teacher living

that life. >> then, the following year, he went on a week long retreat to the abbey of gethsemani, a trappist monastery in kentucky. >> it's this incredible moment where he feels that his questions have been answered, and really, from then on, it's clear what he wants to do. >> in december 1941, thomas merton entered gethsemani. >> when thomas merton entered the trappists in the 1940's, they would have gotten up maybe at 3:00 a.m. to start their prayers. a lot of work, very little conveniences. they slept in their wool habits year round. but i think that kind of spartan discipline really appealed to him and it gave him a sense of not only belonging, but purpose, which he had been looking for for a long time. >> seven years after he entered the monastery, merton published his autobiography. >> he writes "the seven storey mountain," really, in response to his abbott's request. they were looking for something

to help the monastery. and he writes it much like st. augustine or st. teresa of avila write their books, which is to show how god has been at work in their lives. >> the book was critically acclaimed and was immediately a bestseller. it has remained in print and has sold over 1 million copies to date. >> people like it for different reasons. for myself, i like it because it shows his inner struggle and it's just very honest, basically. a lot of people like the writing. he's a great stylist. and a lot of people just like the journey. >> merton was ordained to the priesthood in 1949. but his faith did not remain static. he was a seeker and his ideas evolved through the years. >> later in his life, he ends up kind of rejecting a lot of the dichotomies of "the seven storey mountain," which shows his maturity. i think what he didn't like is the fact that it was very black and white, you know, "world -- bad, monastery -- good." but in a sense, you can get

drawn into "the seven storey mountain" by that kind of youthful enthusiasm and you kind of forgive it. >> merton was a mystic and had several epiphanies. >> one of the most famous is on the corner of 4th and walnut, which i just visited. there's a plaque there in louisville. and he says when he's looking around that he was suddenly one with everybody. and he says in that very famous line -- "how do you go around telling people they're shining like the sun?" >> the thing that we have to face is that life is this simple. we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and god is shining through it all the time. and this is not just a fable or a nice story. it is true. god manifests himself everywhere, in everything. >> but merton had personal, human struggles, nonetheless. >> one was over fame and humility. he wanted to be successful as a writer, but he also knew that the christian person has to be

humble. another struggle was obedience. one of his abbots and he clashed a lot, in terms of what he could do, what he could publish. that was difficult for him because he had a very strong will, but he also knew that he had taken a vow of obedience, freely. >> merton decided to live monastically in the hermitage of gethsemani, but he connected to the world outside through his writing. >> in the 1950's and 1960's, he starts writing about the cold war, about peace, nuclear disarmament, and in a sense his conscience gets awakened to, kind of, his public responsibility. and the berrigan brothers come to see him and joan baez comes to see him. >> in 1966, merton underwent back surgery at a hospital in louisville, kentucky. while he was recuperating, the 51-year-old priest fell in love with his 25-year-old nurse. >> and it overtakes him and he breaks his vow.

but in the end, he reconciles himself to that and he returns. >> towards the end of his life merton began to explore eastern religions. he starts reading about zen and buddhism, and it really has a profound effect on him. >> in november 1968, merton traveled to india and met the dalai lama, who said merton introduced him to the real meaning of the ord "christian." a few weeks later, while attending an interfaith conference in thailand, merton died at the age of 53. >> he was giving a talk -- i think to mostly priests and brothers and sisters -- and he says at the end of his talk, "well, now, i'll disappear and we'll all go have a coke." and he goes into his room. he's taking a shower and he comes out and slips on the tile floor and to break his fall, he grabs a fan and it falls on him, and he's electrocuted.

he is actually brought back on a transport plane that also carries the bodies of dead american soldiers from the vietnam war, which was very poetic, given that he had really spoken out against war and violence for most of his life. thomas merton's legacy, i think, are his words and his witness. when you step back, you can see thomas merton in all of his flaws. you know, he's headstrong, he can be prideful at times, but in the end, you see him as a very holy person. and i like to think that that's the way god looks at us, you know, in all of our complexity, but holy and beloved all the same. >> we will return after theses messages.,,

>> his holiness the 16th karmapa was born in tibet in 1924.

at the age of two, he was recognized as the reincarnation of the previous karmapa. five years later he entered the monastery and began his spiritual training. >> his holiness the karmapa is the head of one of the four lineages of tibetan buddhism, the kagyu lineage, which goes back a thousand years. >> the kagyus are mainly known for their great efforts in meditation and yoga and devotion, and so the teacher is very important. >> according to the teachings of buddha, the way to enlightenment and the end of suffering is through right conduct and the negation of desire. >> his holiness was very much the epitome of the realization of that path. he was a living buddha. >> in 1950, when the karmapa was only 26 years old, china invaded tibet.

>> karmapa foresaw the invasion, and not just the chinese would invade or take over part of tibet, but that they would try to wipe out buddhism. >> hundreds of thousands of tibetans were killed and 6,000 monasteries destroyed. after unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the chinese, the karmapa decided to leave. >> he left tibet with a couple of mule trains of his monks and some of the monastery treasures, relics that are a thousand years old. >> in 1966, the karmapa and his followers established a new seat for the lineage at rumtek monastery in northern india, preserving the legacy for future generations. lama surya das started out in life as jeffrey miller.

when the counter culture of the 1960's came along, miller followed. >> i grew up in long island, born in brooklyn, jewish on my parents' side. >> like other young americans of the period, he was disillusioned with mainstream american values and the war in vietnam. >> leave this area immediately. >> in 1970, a national tragedy touched his personal life. >> when my friend allison krause got shot and killed on kent state campus by the national guardsmen, that really turned my head around and i understood that fighting for peace was a real contradiction in terms. >> miller joined the pilgrimage of many young people who found their way to asia, seeking enlightenment. >> overland through europe, volkswagen bus, and hitchhike. people would tell you, if you go here, there's a yoga ashram, and if you go to katmandu, you can probably go and find somebody

who teaches westerners. and then i heard the great news that the karmapa was coming. >> in 1973, das met the karmapa while studying at a monastery in the himalayas. >> there was an opportunity to go up one by one and get blessings by him. there's a picture from that day showing my big jewfro from behind and beard and karmapa's radiant sun-like face beaming at me like -- i just felt so accepted and welcomed and loved. >> in the 1970's, the karmapa left india to go on a series of world teaching tours. >> he was the first karmapa to travel around the world. not just like a three-week tour, but three, four, five months. >> chogyam trungpa rinpoche, who was an early pioneer in bringing tibetan buddhism to the west, introduced the karmapa to america. >> immediately, you feel like

him sort of stepping out of this ageless tradition into the modern world of cars and skyscrapers. >> derek kolleeny was a student of trungpa's at the time. >> what the karmapa did for those of us who were students of trungpa rinpoche, it gave us this idea of the vastness of the tradition that he came from, so that it was not just us in this little community or little world, but we were then joining this huge family of tibetan buddhist practitioners. most westerners at that time knew tibetan buddhism as, basically, shangri la -- this mystical place filled with magical llamas. very esoteric. so he comes right out of that world and dispels your image of it as being shangri la.

seeing him go up onto the stage was just like -- yes, it's true. you know, everything i've read in these books can actually happen. >> in 1980, kolleeny took a year off from college in order to assist with the karmapa's u.s. teaching tour. >> it was just an amazing experience, to be included in the inner world of the karmapa. although, he was actually not that tall, he would just fill up the room with his presence. there was, like, this light. there was like this beaming light. >> one of the duties of the karmapa was to perform the black crown ceremony. >> he puts on this crown, which is this incredible relic that goes back hundreds of years, studded with all sorts of jewels. here you see his holiness dissolve into the mind of the absolute buddha. just the seeing of the black crown ceremony is said to give one the possibility of attaining liberation on the spot.

>> on one of his american tours, the karmapa founded a monastery in woodstock, new york. >> somebody had given some land to his holiness to be his seat in the united states. so he drove up to woodstock, new york to see the place and spend some time there and picked a spot for the actual monastery to be built there, which is now what you see there today, this totally traditional tibetan monastery. >> toward the end of his u.s. tour, the karmapa began showing signs of exhaustion. >> he had contracted bell's palsy. the right side of his face is sort of limp, but it was accompanied by a sort of weariness that was unusual for him. >> in december 1980, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. he sought treatment at a hospital outside chicago. >> he underwent a lot of treatments there, but nothing worked.

>> his holiness died on november 5, 1981. >> i like to think he was born in the east and he died in the west to wrap the whole world in his liberating, enlightening buddha activity. >> his existence -- it was like the proof of enlightenment. the myth of tibetan buddhahood is actually true and here's a living embodiment of it. >> we will return after these messages. ,,,,,,,,

>> karen armstrong is a world-renowned religious historian. author of over 20 books, she contends that religion is not about belief, but practice. >> religion is a form of practical knowledge, like swimming or dancing. you can't learn to dance by reading a book. you have to practice it day and night. and if you practice assiduously,

you can develop an unearthly grace that is absolutely impossible for an untrained body. by living in a certain way, compassionately, getting rid of the ego you develop capacities of mind and heart that are impossible for a non-practitioner. you're not going to get them just by darting into church and singing a few hymns. religion should propel you from your peaceful prayers out back to the world. jesus left the desert, his solitary struggle with satan, went into a healing mission in galilee. mohammed left his solitary cave in mount hira and worked all the rest of his life to create a just and decent society. >> what's missing from modern society, says armstrong, is the practice of the golden rule. >> i am convinced that unless now we learn implement the golden rule politically and

globally, we will not have a viable world. >> "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a central tenet of nearly all the world's religions. >> have concern for every creature in the world, said the buddha. love your enemies, said jesus. reach out to all tribes and nations, says the koran. it requires you to look into your own heart, discover what gives you pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. >> armstrong's interest in religion began at an early age. born in england, she was raised catholic. she became a nun at 18, against her parents' wishes. >> i thought when i became a nun i would become sort of buddha-like and serene and at peace with myself, above all that adolescent confusion. but, of course, that didn't happen. and god -- i wrestled with this.

i had a very inadequate notion of god. god was a personality, out there, and often seemed like a catacosmic big brother. >> as a novitiate, armstrong says she was physically and psychologically abused and could not find the spirituality that she had been seeking. >> i wasn't expecting voices or visions, but perhaps a little parting of the clouds or just a little glimmer of light. it was hopeless. i couldn't pray. i couldn't pray in the way we were being instructed to pray. >> armstrong left the convent after seven years. she pursued a graduate degree in english at oxford university in london. >> and for about 13 years or so, i wanted nothing whatever to do with religion ever again. i thought i -- i felt a sickening sense of failure about the whole thing.

>> years later, at the urging of a friend, she wrote about her life in the convent. >> the first draft was extremely angry. i showed it to my agent, and she said, well, you know if it was that bad, why didn't you just get up and go? so then i started going a little deeper and i started remembering things -- moments that had been better, that had been ok. and gradually, the whole process, painful as it was, was redeemed, in some way. >> "through the narrow gate" became a bestseller and led to a job working on a documentary about st. paul. >> i thought, ah, this is my chance to knock paul, hater of women, hierarchical, etc., and then, when you're actually studying the text and what paul wrote and what he didn't write, i began to get quite close to him. the man was a genius.

>> the job took her to jerusalem. >> and it was there that i encountered, for the first time, judaism and islam. and i began to see that there were things in these other traditions that i could really relate to and that my view of religion had been very parochial, very limited. >> when her television career ended soon after, she decided to write a book called "a history of god." >> i expected this book to follow the skeptical course of its predecessors. >> but her studies took her in a different direction. >> i was living in a very remote part of london, so i was living in silence, and there was just me and the texts. and so, in that silence, they began to speak to me in a quite a different way. i had to leave clever, over-educated, vociferous, skeptical karen on the back burner, put her on to one side

and get beyond the self. it was a discipline, i now realize, of what the greeks called ekstasis. it means stepping outside of the self, which is what compassion is. >> her ideas about god were also changing. >> all these theologians -- jewish, christian, and muslim -- insisted god is not another being. god is nothing, not a thing. god is being itself. >> armstrong went on to write critically acclaimed books on the prophet muhammad, the buddha, and islam. >> what i'm doing now is very much what i hoped i'd be doing as a nun, which is spending my days writing and thinking and reading and studying about god or spirituality or faith issues.

>> in 2009, she was awarded the ted talks prize and created the charter for compassion. >> i don't promote compassion because i'm filled with the milk of human kindness -- i'm a very impatient person. i'm in it for a great sense of fear, a deep anxiety. we are in great peril in our divided world. >> we are deluged by images of suffering, as no previous generation. they're beamed into our homes every night on the evening news. and we can't think, oh, i don't want that. turn it off. but we should see it as a spiritual and humanitarian opportunity, to look closely at those images, take one of them that has moved you particularly, return to it during the day and evoke that germ of disquiet that will make you act.

>> to view this program and others like it, go to cbs.com/religionandculture.,,,,, ,,

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