What did thomas merton think of Buddhism?

Answer 1

Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West. "Awakenings: How formerly obscure Tibetan Buddhism became one of the West's fastest-growing religions"

Jeffrey Paine opens his riveting narrative about Tibetan Buddhism's

emergence in the West with an account of Thomas Merton's brief but prophetic encounter with "the dharma." In 1968, the last year of his life, America's most celebrated Catholic writer stopped in India on his way to an interfaith conference in Bangkok. The Trappist monk was a serious student of Asian religions, a translator of the Tao Te Ching, and had written extensively about Zen. Yet Merton had dismissed Tibetan Buddhism as a sect riddled with superstition. After a series of unscheduled meetings with several Tibetans, however, Merton, without rejecting his Catholicism, vowed to return to pursue a yearlong retreat as preparation for advanced Buddhist spiritual practices. " 'The Tibetan Buddhists are the only ones at present,' " he wrote in The Asian Journals, " 'who have a really large number of people who have attained to extraordinary heights in meditation and contemplation.' "