"The moment of takeoff was ecstatic...joy. We left the ground I with Christian m
antras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years
of waiting and wondering..." With these words, dated October 15. 1968, the late
Father Thomas Merton recorded the beginning of his fateful journey to the Orien
t. His travels led him from Bangkok, through India to Ceylon, and back again to
Bangkok for his scheduled talk at a conference of Asian monastic orders. There h
e unequivocally reaffirmed his Christian vocation. His last journal entry was ma
de on December 8, 1968, two days before his untimely, accidental death. Amply il
lustrated with photographs he himself took along the way and fully indexed, the
book also contains a glossary of Asian religious terms, a preface by the Indian
scholar Amiya Chakravarty, a foreword and postscript by Brother Patrick Hart of
the Abbey of Gethsemani, as well as several appendices, among them the text of M
erton's final address. "
