Like you, I love an adventure. I love the anticipation of a new experience. I love seeing new and different things. I even love the travel involved. I like all kinds of roads. I like hotels and lobbies and lounges. I like airports, ferry terminals…even bus stations–but especially train stations. I have romantic memories of all the train stations between Melville, Saskatchewan, and Montreal.

I love words like journey and junket, expedition and excursion. I place a great deal of import on place. And even while I believe that all ground is holy, I also believe there are sacred places, or places made sacred, and to journey to such a place–whether it’s under a birch tree in the river valley, or an ashram in India–is spiritually forming. And of course, that is pilgrimage.

But, however much importance one places on a geographical journey, it is crucial to remember, as Merton reminds us, that, "Our real journey in this life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts."

In 1968, when Merton penned these words, he added, "Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action." It was necessary then, and it is necessary now.

I’m on a journey to Bangkok. And even though I don’t leave until Thursday, (Oct. 2) I have an itch to begin today. Ostensibly, I go to represent Hope Mission at a board of directors meeting with Project LIFE, a kind of "sister" mission that works in the slums of Bangkok.

I’m interested to see the work that Project LIFE does with women and children–and am prepared–although apparently it’s never possible to prepare–to see the madly wretched conditions that Bangkok’s poorest of the poor live in. Does one worry about multibillion dollar bailouts when visiting such slums?

Having been given a week in Bangkok my hope is to absorb as much of the city as I can, without vexing about seeing it all. It worked for me in New York. I simply wandered around Manhattan for several days and picked up the energy of the place. Well, Bangkok is not New York, and that’s good, but whether I can "wander," I won’t know until I get there. Of course, guided tours to start.

First stop will be Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the adjoining Grand Palace. I’m interested in Thai Buddhism, that is, Theravada Buddhism. It is generally regarded as the oldest, and "purest," form of Buddhism, and I’m hoping to soak up what I can.

So I expect to visit any number of wats. A wat, I learn from the glossary of Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, comes from the Sanskrit word "Vata," meaning "enclosed ground,"  and is a monastery or temple in Thailand. 

I thought that no better preparation for the trip would be to reread Merton’s Asian journal.

Incidentally, on October 17 it will be exactly 40 years since Merton landed in Bangkok to begin his fateful journey. Two months later, having visited India, the Himalayas, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), he arrived back in Bangkok for a conference of Asian monastic orders. On December 10, 1968, after giving his talk and retiring to his room, he somehow received a fatal shock from an electric fan. He was 53 years old (my age) when he died. His last words, given at his address, were, "And now I shall disappear."

The above photo was taken in Dharmasala, India by the secretary of the Dalai Lama, a month before Merton’s death. The Dalai Lama is 33 years old here.

Socrates had it wrong. The examined life is…well, it just keeps you up at night. It’s the unexamined life I want to live–the one children live.

The examined life is confusing, implacable, raises regrets, and harbours all kinds of darkling shadows. And in the end, it’s inscrutable. The unexamined life, on the other hand, just is. Thing is, as Socrates no doubt knew far sooner and better than most, is that the examined life is not an option.

I recall looking out of a frost covered upstairs window–I may have been eight, I’m not sure–but the experience itself I can call to mind with ease. I was standing absolutely still, watching the light of a grey winter day settle on snow covered rooftops, and without warning, a trip-wire went off in my mind. Questions came: Why am I me and not someone else? Why am I here and not there? It was as though I was outside in that bracing air, looking back in at myself. And there was no going back. No retreating from this crack of self-awareness. Like it or not, the examined life was upon me.

But now, decades of examination later, the frost gilded window that framed those explosive questions is stained and dry and mostly opaque.

And I’m left with this: The only way Socrates’ examined-and-therefore-worthy life can work—as far as I can see, and the way I’ve worked it out–is as life examined on the third level. Not the the first level with it’s regrets and ghosts and all its concern for identity and security. And not even the second level, where aesthetics moves the shadows away–although the second level is pleasant and let’s you sleep and in fact I could probably get happily stuck there–but the third.

This third level, I’m thinking, is the level St. Paul was caught up into when he heard and saw things he couldn’t repeat because he didn’t have the words. It’s the place of paradisal mystery, where depth is brought to aesthetics and meaning to the quotidian. This is the naked place, deep within us all, where the quark of our soul rests in utmost silence and peace…but with company. The love within, and the intimacy of this company, that is, of your life with this life, can only be described as, not two, but not one.

Of course this third level examination of life is mystical, and usually, I suppose, involves forms of contemplation and meditation. But it’s also the way of child’s play. The difficult way of simply living.

And, so, it seems I’m back in agreement with Socrates. An unexamined life, which is that kind of distracted examination of life on the first level, is, in fact, not worth living. The truly examined life, which turns out to be both, the non-examination of a child at play, and a grown-up inner encounter, is exceedingly worth living.