The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1532 page)

 
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(Heb.,
zekut aboth
). Jewish doctrine of benefits secured for children by the good deeds of their ancestors.

 
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(Heb., ‘Chariot’ mysticism). Jewish speculations on God's throne. Later Jewish mystics speculated on the prophet
Ezekiel's
vision of God's chariot, and such study was recognized to have particular dangers to untutored minds.
Johanan ben Zakkai
was a practitioner of merkabah mysticism, and early accounts of his experience (e.g. in a
Cairo
Genizah fragment) so closely resemble the accounts of Saul/
Paul's
Damascus
road experience (with the obvious exception of the perception of Jesus) that it seems virtually certain that Saul had been an adept also. See also
HEKHALOT AND MERKABAH
.

 
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(1915–68).
Trappist monk and writer. Born in France, he went to school in England and university in the USA, where, after a confused adolescence, he became a
Roman Catholic
and in 1941 joined the Trappists at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. His autobiography,
The Seven Storey Mountain
(1946), portrayed a traditional conversion story to traditional Catholicism. But Merton's way, recorded in his immense literary output, echoed the changes in modern Catholicism, leading to a greater openness to other traditions, and a deep concern for the moral dilemmas of the contemporary world.

 
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Meru
,
also Sumeru.

Mythological golden mountain, axis or centre of the world, recognized in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, it appears in many myths in the
pur
as
, where it is placed in the
Him
layas
.
Ga
g
(Ganges)
springs from it. In Buddhism, Meru is important in a diagrammatic visualization of the process toward (or away from) enlightenment.