Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915, and died in 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand by accidental electrocution.
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/can-you-trust-thomas-merton article by Anthony E. Clark. "He was at one time a womanizer, a member of the Young Communist League, an English student at Columbia, a peace activist, an English teacher at St. Bonaventure University, a social work volunteer. He was an orphan, the father of a child, a Catholic convert, a Trappist monk, a priest, a poet, a writer, and some describe him as a Zen Buddhist. It is difficult to distill the essence of Thomas Merton: He and his work are complex."
I have never read one of his 60 books but I was hunting about the internet to read about Mendel the Monk when I came upon his name. I read some of his biography online, and I was taken with the notion that he was still searching... and his manner of death clung to me the rest of the day and into my night. And then he came to me in my dream: this man I never read or met until that morning.
Please enjoy my dream through poem and the photograph below. If you want to learn more about this man, you can try www.merton.org or not.
"We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make it known to us." Thomas Merton