It is all I truly want to do, despite all the irons in the fire that I must attend to. It is a play not merely against conformism but about totalitarianism. By DP. By … I must read Walden again, and see if Thoreau already guessed that he was part of what he thought he could escape. Of course the festival of rain cannot be stopped, even in the city. Thus you can become all the more committed to the collective illusion in proportion to becoming more hopelessly mortgaged to collective power. The man who dares to be alone can come to see that the "empitness" and "uselessness" which the collective mind fears and condemns are necessary conditions for the encounter with truth. “The unborn child,” says Philoxenos, “is already perfect and fully constituted in his nature, with all his senses, and limbs, but he cannot make use of them in their natural functions, because, in the womb, he cannot strengthen or develop them for such use.”. It all implies one basic lie: only the city is real. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! This you do by creating an awareness of yourself as, How does this work? Of this, more later. Advertisers tell us that we must buy more and do more in order to become complete. In theory such a good time can be so convincing that you are no longer aware of even a remote possibility that it might change into something less satisfying. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. I left that college to become an English major and a writer, a degree that instead became History. The standard procedure was to have him submit these works to two censors (who were to remain anonymous). If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art. And second, the contemplative life, which must not be construed as an escape from time and matter, from social responsibility and from the life of sense, but rather, as an advance into solitude and the desert, a confrontation with poverty and the void, a renunciation of the empirical self, in the presence of death, and nothingness, in order to overcome the ignorance and error that spring from the fear of "being nothing." I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Can’t I just be in the woods without any special reason? Though as a matter of fact that is what fun seems to be: a state of diffuse excitation that can be measured by the clock and "stretched" by an appliance. He recognized that the Buddhist meditator and Christian contemplative are both grounded in a silence that is free of concepts. We are prisoners of a process,, a dialectic of false promises and real deceptions ending in futility. TODAY the insights of a Philoxenos are to be sought less in the tracts of theologians than in the meditations of the existentialists and in the Theater of the Absurd. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. This file includes documents allowing or banning publication of Merton's essays, books, and introductions to others' books. )”, – Thomas Merton, Excerpt from “Rain and the Rhinoceros”. Naturally no one can believe the things they say about the rain. But in return, the gift of truth with which Christ dispelled the three kinds of illusion offered him in his temptation (security, reputation and power) can become also our own truth, if we can only accept it. This will give it meaning.). I admit it. I cannot say. There are always a few people who are in the woods at night, in the rain (because if there were not the world would have ended), and I am one of them. a rhinoceros), a man who has no time, who is a prisoner of necessity, who cannot understand that a thing might perhaps be without usefulness ; nor does he understand that, at bottom, it is the useful that may be a useless and back-breaking burden. But because he is willingly enclosed and limited by the laws and illusions of collective existence, he has no more identity than an unborn child in the womb. I am not kidding anybody, even myself. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. Their complaints are mechanical and without spirit. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something, Naturally no one can believe the things they say about the rain. It also tightens its demand for conformity. And that brings me to Philoxenos, a Syrian who had fun in the sixth century, without benefit of appliances, still less of nuclear deterrents. He is alien to his own truth. He seems to be alone, perhaps, for he experiences himself as “individual.” But because he is willingly enclosed and limited by the laws and illusions of collective existence, he has no more identity than an unborn child in the womb. The rhino horn would have … "You too go out into the desert," said Philoxenos, "having with you nothing of the world, and the Holy Spirit will go with you. The desert islands are places where the wicked little characters in the Lord of the Flies come face to face with the Lord of the Flies, form a small, tight, ferocious collectivity of painted face, and arm themselves with spears to hunt down the last member of their group who still remembers with nostalgia the possibilities of rational discourse. Rhinoceros is a captivating, critically acclaimed commentary on what is absurd about human nature. Everything has to make sense and be totally useful to the totally obsessive operation. They do not see that the streets shine beautifully, that they themselves are walking on stars and water, that they are running in skies to catch a bus or a taxi, to shelter somewhere in the press of irritated humans, the faces of advertisements and the dim, cretinous sound of unidentified music. To be the last man in the rhinoceros herd is, in fact, to be a monster. Yet even here the earth shakes. Just being in the woods, at night, in the cabin, is something too excellent to be justified or explained! One would think that urban man in a rainstorm would have to take account of nature in its wetness and freshness, its baptism and its renewal. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. For me he is simply one of the most important writers, ever. I admit it. This will give it meaning. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. He has life, but not identity. “I just typed it in, and suddenly it appeared. After all, hermits are not useful to society. To have an identity, he has to be awake, and aware. See the freedom with which Jesus has gone forth, and go forth like Him-see where he has left the rule of men; leave the rule of the world where he has left the law, and go out with him to fight the power of error.”. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. But the rain brings no renewal to the city, on to tomorrow’s weather, and the glint of windows in tall buildings will then have nothing to do with the new sky. We find it was after all not in the city, but in ourselves . Not for their own sake: not out of stoicism or despair-only for the sake of the invulnerable inner reality which we cannot recognize (which we can only be ) but to which we awaken only when we see the unreality of our vulnerable shell. Rhinoceros is a captivating, critically acclaimed commentary on what is absurd about human nature. 502-272-8177 or 8187. In a grocery and a café, the mundane squabbles of bourgeois life fill the air. In addition, they are also immune to art: In all the cities of the world, it is the same. Basically, this is an illusion of omnipotence: an illusion which the collectivity arrogates to itself, and consents to share with its individual members in proportion as they submit to its more central and more rigid fabrications. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. They do not see that the streets shine beautifully, that they themselves are walking on stars and water, that they are running in skies to catch a bus or a taxi, to shelter somewhere in the press of irritated humans, the faces of advertisements and the dim, cretinous sound of unidentified music. She smiles and affirms its sentiment. For when he considers going out into the street "to try to convince them," he realizes that he "would have to learn their language." From the moment Christ went out into the desert to be tempted, the loneliness, the temptation and the hunger of every man became the loneliness, temptation and hunger of Christ. Of course at three-thirty A.M. the SAC plane goes over, red light winking low under the clouds, skimming the wooded summits on the south side of the valley, loaded with strong medicine. It sounds very much like Philoxenos to me. Read it and re-read it. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. There is nothing I would rather hear, not because it is a better noise than other noises, but because it is the voice of the present moment, the present festival. Meanwhile: what does my Coleman lantern tell me? I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness. Meanwhile the obsessed citizens plunge through the rain bearing the load of their obsessions, slightly more vulnerable than before, but still only barely aware of external realities. I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Technology is here, even in the cabin. Meanwhile, in order to increase its power over you, the collectivity increases your needs. François de Sainte-Marie, O.C.D. Summary. Meanwhile: what does my Coleman lantern tell me? Into solitude. What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! The woman from the delicatessen scampers along the sidewalk with a newspaper over her head. (Just a simple little operation, and the whole mess may become relatively tolerable. But it is not a matter of "escaping." In the sixth century Berenger might perhaps have walked off into the desert of Scete, without too much concern over the fact that all his fellow citizens, all his friends, and even his girl Daisy, had turned into rhinoceroses. He died so young and has been gone so many years. Please send us a message by filling out the form below and we will get back with you shortly. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. enter my cabin arm in arm it will be nobody’s fault but my own. The problem of Berenger, in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros , is the problem of the human person stranded and alone in what threatens to become a society of monsters. Their complaints are mechanical and without spirit. What did I learn? Reflections on the Character and Genius of Fenelon, Russian Mystics, by Sergius Bolshakoff with a preface by Thomas Merton, Sacred Art and the Spiritual Life (Sacred Art and Religion), Saints for Now, by Clare Boothe Luce with an essay by Merton regarding St. John of the Cross, Selections from Gandhi, selected and with an introduction by Thomas Merton, Signed Confession of Crimes against the State, Spiritual Direction [article for the New Catholic Encyclopedia], The Moslems' Angel of Death: Algeria 1961, Third Spiritual Alphabet, by Francisco de Osuna [book review by Merton], Trappist Cistercian Salve Regina (Hail, Holy Queen) [meditation on the text], Wisdom in Emptiness: A Dialogue between Daisetz T. Suzuki and Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton [-] RAIN AND THE RHINOCEROS [-] NIHIL OBSTAT : fr.

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