Quotes About Monastic life

Thomas Merton stayed at the abbey for twenty-seven years. His autobiography

I was also told that the Eihei Daishingi (Regulations for Eiheiji Monastery), of which the Tenzo Ky?kun is the first chapter, was one of the easier works of D?gen, since it deals with practical matters.

Abbots and priors and monks, oh my.

William was a monk at Malmesbury and had evidently seen inside the king's tomb.

For more than twenty years I was a pious monk, read Mass daily, and so weakened myself with fasting and praying that I would not have been long for this life had I continued. Yet all this taken together cannot help me in even one little crisis to be able to say before God: 'All this I have done, now please consider it, and be gracious to me.' What else did I achieve with this than to plague myself uselessly, impair my health, and waste my time?

For formerly, under the papacy, when I was a monk, it was by no means customary to speak of a promise. And I give thanks to God that I may live at this time, when this word "promise" resounds in my ears and in the ears of all the godly. For he who hears the Word easily understands the divine promise, which was obscure and unknown to all the theologians throughout the papacy.

Middle Ages

The monastic life is not only quite devoid of value as a means of justification before God, but he also looks upon its renunciation of the duties of this world as the product of selfishness, withdrawing from temporal obligations. In