In his book about his journey to the Himalayas to see the snow leopard, Peter Matthiessen writes most often about elusiveness. Perhaps to make sure his readers understand the essential quality of that which cannot be grasped, Matthiessen calls his book--a journal, really, of his days of expedition during the fall of 1973--The Snow Leopard in honor of the cat he did not see. But, of course, not seeing the snow leopard was at the heart of all he was otherwise able to see.
When I finished this book, I was in a strange state for days. As though I, too, had been on expedition high in the realm of those mountains--mythic as their height and distance render them--at once appearing and disappearing into their mists and snow and terrain.
Before embarking on this journey, Matthiessen, a practicing Buddhist, sought counsel from his Roshi who told the trekker poised for adventure to go without expectation. This counsel proved pivotal to the pilgrimage. Like the mantra it was no doubt intended to be, it served the author as a steady guide during the arduous parallel journeys he undertook: The one, an external challenge of altitude and acclimation and how the body is to survive and ultimately thrive in seemingly inhospitable terrain; the other, an internal struggle and finally one of surrender and acceptance of whatever is is.
Shortly after finishing the book, I loaned it to a friend who spoke to me of tentative plans he was making to travel to and trek in the Himalayan ranges. Like Matthiessen, he also was a meditator, one comfortable in grand silences. Still, I felt compelled to warn him--or at least to counsel him as Matthiessen's Roshi had. "It is not an easy read," I remember telling this friend. What I wanted to say was that the story would not give itself up so readily. In other words, in the truest sense, the book is a body of work, and to read it is to work right along with its author. It is, in fact, how I imagine trekking in the Himalayas would be. A slow unraveling of the senses so that they may be rendered sharp again. Or, like a compass, true. In that process is a complete untethering from what had grounded one before.
If we attend to it, this is what our path here is. A practice--call it a journey, a vision quest, a life--constant in its groundlessness. Every moment, another inquiry: Are you willing to let this go?
He is gone now, the man I loaned my copy of The Snow Leopard, all of a sudden and just like that and much too young in my mind. Matthiessen is gone now as well. But, time, I am told, and slowly I am learning, is constantly evolving. And the deaths we endure--of loved ones and all the rest that cannot remain as it was, the all we are not meant to cling to--may simply be an evolution of time that must move along without us or move us along.
Like Matthiessen's parallel journeys at the top of the world. The thing is to be moved, not by the promise of seeing whatever happens to be our snow leopard, but by the journey alone without expectation.
When I finished this book, I was in a strange state for days. As though I, too, had been on expedition high in the realm of those mountains--mythic as their height and distance render them--at once appearing and disappearing into their mists and snow and terrain.
Before embarking on this journey, Matthiessen, a practicing Buddhist, sought counsel from his Roshi who told the trekker poised for adventure to go without expectation. This counsel proved pivotal to the pilgrimage. Like the mantra it was no doubt intended to be, it served the author as a steady guide during the arduous parallel journeys he undertook: The one, an external challenge of altitude and acclimation and how the body is to survive and ultimately thrive in seemingly inhospitable terrain; the other, an internal struggle and finally one of surrender and acceptance of whatever is is.
Shortly after finishing the book, I loaned it to a friend who spoke to me of tentative plans he was making to travel to and trek in the Himalayan ranges. Like Matthiessen, he also was a meditator, one comfortable in grand silences. Still, I felt compelled to warn him--or at least to counsel him as Matthiessen's Roshi had. "It is not an easy read," I remember telling this friend. What I wanted to say was that the story would not give itself up so readily. In other words, in the truest sense, the book is a body of work, and to read it is to work right along with its author. It is, in fact, how I imagine trekking in the Himalayas would be. A slow unraveling of the senses so that they may be rendered sharp again. Or, like a compass, true. In that process is a complete untethering from what had grounded one before.
If we attend to it, this is what our path here is. A practice--call it a journey, a vision quest, a life--constant in its groundlessness. Every moment, another inquiry: Are you willing to let this go?
He is gone now, the man I loaned my copy of The Snow Leopard, all of a sudden and just like that and much too young in my mind. Matthiessen is gone now as well. But, time, I am told, and slowly I am learning, is constantly evolving. And the deaths we endure--of loved ones and all the rest that cannot remain as it was, the all we are not meant to cling to--may simply be an evolution of time that must move along without us or move us along.
Like Matthiessen's parallel journeys at the top of the world. The thing is to be moved, not by the promise of seeing whatever happens to be our snow leopard, but by the journey alone without expectation.
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