The San Diego Thomas Merton Society is a chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS). The ITMS, based out of Bellarmine University in Louisville, was founded in 1987 to promote a greater knowledge of the life and writings of Thomas Merton. The Society sponsors biennial conferences devoted to Merton and his work and supports the writing of general-interest and scholarly books and articles about him. Membership in the ITMS helps support the organization's activities, and members receive The Merton Seasonal quarterly (which includes the Newsletter of the ITMS twice a year), along with information on a continuing basis about events connected with Thomas Merton at international, national, regional, and local levels.

	Merton with the Dalai Lama, shortly before Merton's death in 1968.

Thomas Merton is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential American spiritual writers of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has been continuously in print since 1948, achieved multiple millions in sales and translated into twenty-eight languages. Merton wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence and the arms race.

Born in Prades, France and educated in Europe, both of Merton's parents died before he was a young teen, and he finished his education at Columbia University in New York City, where his grandparents lived. After a self-described wild youth, he converted to Catholicism in his twenties, and by December 1941 entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, near Louisville.

The twenty-seven years he spent in Gethsemani brought about profound changes in his self-understanding. This ongoing conversion impelled him into the political arena, where he became involved in the peace movement of the 1960's and the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the great example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States." For his social activism, Merton endured severe criticism, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who assailed his political writings as unbecoming of a monk.

During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far east in 1968, the Dalai Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution.