Otherwise, it just
ain't the blues.
Spirituality:
towards unity, oneness
First, let me say that Father Thomas Merton's reflections brought him to the realization that the goal of all spiritually was to become buddha-like: calm, peaceful, and at one in harmony with the universe. To his great credit before the days of oecumenism he authenticated and reconciled occidental and oriental forms of spirituality as having divergent paths but the same focal point (my lingo).
Second, I will treat these two forms of spirituality, the western and the oriental, with the view that each respectively is going down the path of the other in their own way (my interpretation) making for greater unity among all religions of the world. In short, I believe it's possible to view both as following parallel paths, but each going in an opposite direction towards becoming more complete.
Western spirituality puts the emphasis on the creation of the inner voice of the individual whose development allows him or her to have a discourse with his/her fellow man/woman and his/her Creator as brilliantly expressed by the Gospel transfiguration story of Jesus with Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor. (By the way, El Salvador, the country of the now famous war martyr, Bishop Oscar Romero, commemorates this event as a national holiday in accordance with the liturgical calendar in the month of August.)
In the conceptual and historical framework of Western Society, the directional impulse of Western spirituality is in my opinion from inside the individual to outside into the community as reflected by the perennial image of Christian holiness, Saint Francis of Assis, the Father of Italian literature and percursor to the most eminent of world poets, Dante: people gave to him to receive his blessing and he would turn around and give what he had received to the poor.
(Therefore, it was quite natural that the religious leaders of the world met in Assis at Pope John Paul II's request a decade or so ago.)
Undoubtedly, every individual is faced with many moral choices: to lie or to tell the truth, to be unfair or to be just, to be friendly or to be hostile, to be violent or not ... Undboubtedly, s/he has a moral obligation to assume responsibility for his/her personal actions.
Though Society is to be supportive, it has an inherent obligation to the public/greater good to impose corrective action to errant personal behavior or an errant individual, but in the final analysis it is the individual who counts uppermost. Western society does not allow the collective spirit to "dictate" to the individual who has the imperative to determine oneself in light of his/her interests and talents.
In other words society plays a secondary role though a supportive one to that of the individual offering him/her free reign to act.
Unlike the almost laissez-faire of the occident, oriental society does not inherently believe that the individual should have such "unrestrained freedom" as the individual will in all likelihood do more damage than good due to a lack of personal wisdom. In the orient society has the upperhand over the individual who has to prove his worth and readiness to handle more 
responsibility. And in this manner, oriental society is much more paternalistic and careful than western society.
Oriental spirituality puts society as the dominant value and the needs and expressions of the individual are very much regulated to a secondary position. (This is also very true of Judaism because of its oriental roots.)
For this reason in the orient the people who came prior, the ancestors, are worshipped for having preserved society by and through the family and the individual is seen only as a societal component to the whole to which he is accountable for his actions.
His/her personal value and importance is considered to be a very limited one. In this sense oriental sprirituality may seem very bureaucratic to those from the occidental way of thinking in my view.
On the other hand, western spirituality in the eyes of those of the oriental spiritual tradition seems to be needlessly wreckless and exposes society needlessly to the forces of chaos which can undermine social harmony.
Adherents of western spirituality would agree with this criticism, but they believe it is important to trust that the Holy Spirit will move the individual along the right path for him/her that will lead to maturity, self-sharing/other- centeredness, and productiveness being in the end a credit to his/her society and humanity.
The Western approach to sprirituality is very much a micro one, I feel, as it is based on the exhortation of the Gospel addressed individually to go and baptize (i.e. to consecrate the world to God): it's a commission given to the individual to make a difference given the assurance that the force of the Holy Spirit will be with him/her.
According to oriental spiritual belief, the good of the collectivity must predominate over any individual as the individual is seen only as a component and an infinitesimally small part of the great whole. Therefore, its approach to spirituality is in my view more of a macro one whereby the individual must learn to conform like everyone else for the sake of social harmony and peace.
Interestingly, as Western Society goes into a post-modern mode, the individual is encouraged to give back to society in recognition of all s/he has received from it. Hence, I predict society will be seen more and more as constituting a rudimentary building block for the spiritual and linguistic identity of the individual.
Thus, the individual is perceived to have a debt of gratitude to society when s/he realizes and cherishes to what extent his/her inner voice is unconsciously grounded in his/her society and that it is his/her responsibility to find and share his/her inner voice with that of society so both entities, the artistic individual and his canvas, society, may be enriched in the bidirectional sharing between the two adding to the rich synergy known popularly as "culture".
I believe that to some extent Western spirituality is currently arriving at the point where oriental spirituality has always resided in putting the needs of society first and oriental spirituality is going down the path from where western spirituality has come, allowing its members a greater degree of personal expression and freedom.
It seems to me that together over time both spiritual traditions will share a greater degree of commonality then they do now .
Each being faithful to his/her tradition is finding a greater degree of commonality in the other like the Beatles who went to India to seek personal enlightenment. There is a need today to have a rich and fruitful exchange between these two rich traditions.
Today, there is a celebration of diversity and sense of commeradery as both camps reach out to the other in the spirit of fraternity and mutual friendship.
To his great credit Father Thomas Merton did that long before it was in style: he helped to prepare the way for world religions to come together so each may profit from the insights of the other and grow more together towards greater fraternal unity.
Father Thomas Merton's contribution to modern spirituality was his theology of the power of the person "just being" derived from oriental spirituality of life-affirming consciousness. He helped to prepare the way that lead to the meeting of world religious leaders at Assis in Italy and helped to ensure that it was a sincere and brotherly encounter in honour of the thousandth anniversary of Saint Francis of Assis, the Father of Italian literature thanks to his poem Frate sole e sora luna (Bother Sun and Sister Moon).
(As an aside, I'd like to repeat the words of the world reknown Renaissance Italian priest and writer, Petraca, who affirmed in his letter written to Prosperity regarding the rewards of literature: "No earthly delight is more nobler than the delight of literature.") :-)
Also, to his credit Father Thomas Merton wrote to those in power on Capitol Hill denouncing the Vietnam war.
But his genius was to recognize that the direction of Western spirituality was towards one of greater unity, openness, and commonality with that of the Orient.
I would not be surprised that in the very near future this English-born American trappist monk were to be declared "blessed" by the Vatican thanks to his rich spiritual legacy.
I was personally edified by his honest life story of his struggle to find a path that was right for him, an enlightened path, un sendero luminoso, in his book entitled The Seven Story Mountain.
Soo, "hats off to the boy",
I say. :-)
GOD BLESS
AMERICA 
THE BEAUTIFUL.
Nuestra señora de Guadalupe,
ruega por nosotros,
los Americanos.
Updated: January 17, 1999
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