The Snow leopard

by Matthiessen, Peter

  I go down along the canyon rim and sit still against a rock. Northward, a snow cone rises on the sky, and snowfields roll over the high horizon into the deepening blue. Where the Saure plunges into its ravine, a sheer and awesome wall writhes with weird patterns of snow and shadow. The emptiness and silence of snow mountains quickly bring about those states of consciousness that occur in the mind-emptying of meditation, and no doubt high altitude has an effect, for my eye perceives the world as fixed or fluid, as it wishes. The earth twitches, and the mountains shimmer, as if all molecules had been set free: the blue sky rings. Perhaps what I hear is the "music of the spheres," what Hindus call the breathing of the Creator and astrophysicists the "sighing" of the sun.

  Before me on a simple stone I place this plum pit, minutely inscribed to the Lord Who is Seen Within:

  Kanzeon! Devotion to Buddha!

  We are one with Buddha

  In cause-and-effect related to all Buddhas

  And to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

  Our true Bodhisattva Nature is Eternal, Joyful, Selfless, Pure.

  So let us chant each morning Kanzeon, with Nen!

  Every evening Kanzeon, with Nen!

  Nen, Nen arises from Mind.

  Nen, Nen is not separate from Mind.8

  Kanzeon is Kannon or Avalokita. Cause-and-effect is karma. Dharma is the great wheel of Universal Law set in motion by Sakyamimi Buddha; and Sangha is the community of Buddha's followers, past and present "Eternal, Joyful, Selfless, Pure" are the qualities of nirvana in which the Dream-state, "the Many," of samsara, is transmuted into Awakening, "the One."9 Nen is mindfulness, attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as if this present moment were ones last. Mind is Universal Mind of which individual minds are part, in the way of waves; the waves do not derive from water, they are water, in fleeting forms that are not the same and yet not different from the whole.

  In November 1971, I attended a weekend retreat at the New York Zendo. All-day meditation in the lotus postures can be arduous, and D, who had been suffering for two months with mysterious pains, decided to limit herself to the Sunday sittings. On Saturday evening, when I returned to where we were staying, she opened the door for me; she was smiling, and looked extremely pretty in a new brown dress. But perhaps because I had been in meditation since before daybreak and my mind was clear, I saw at once that she was dying, and the certainty of this clairvoyance was so shocking that I had to feign emergency and push rudely into the bathroom, to get hold of myself so that I could speak.

  Before dawn on Sunday, during morning service, D chanced to sit directly opposite my own place in the two long facing lines of Buddha figures—an unlikely event that I now see as no coincidence. Upset by what I had perceived the night before, by pity and concern that this day might be too much for her, I chanted the Kannon Sutra with such fury that I "lost" myself, forget the self—a purpose of the sutra, which is chanted in Japanese, over and over, with mounting intensity. At the end, the Sangha gives a mighty shout that corresponds to OM!—this followed instantly by sudden silence, as if the universe had stopped to listen. And on that morning, in the near darkness—the altar candle was the only light in the long room—in the dead hush, like the hush in these snow mountains, the silence swelled with the intake of my breath into a Presence of vast benevolence of which I was a part: in my journal for that day, seeking in vain to find words for what had happened, I called it the "Smile." The Smile seemed to grow out of me, filling all space above and behind like a huge shadow of my own Buddha form, which was minuscule now and without weight, borne up on the upraised palm of this Buddha-Being, this eternal amplification of myself. For it was I who smiled; the Smile was Me. I did not breathe, I did not need to look; for It was Everywhere. Nor was there terror in my awe: I felt "good," like a "good child," entirely safe. Wounds, ragged edges, hollow places were all gone, all had been healed; my heart lay at the heart of all Creation. Then I let my breath go, and gave myself up to delighted immersion in this Presence, to a peaceful belonging so overwhelming that tears of relief poured from my eyes, so overwhelming that even now, struggling to find a better term than ''Smile" or "Presence," the memory affects me as I write. For the first time since unremembered childhood, I was not alone; there was no separate "I."

  Already the Buddha-Being was dissolving, and I tried to convey gratitude, to inform It about D, but gave this up after a moment in the happy realization that nothing was needed, nothing missing, all was already, always, and forever known, that D's dying, even that, was as it should be. Two weeks later, describing to Eido Roshi what had happened, I astonished myself (though not the Roshi, who merely nodded, making a small bow) by a spontaneous burst of tears and laughter, the tears falling light and free as rain in sunlight

  One intuits truth in the Zen teachings, even those that are scarcely understood; and now intuition had become knowing, not through merit but—it seemed— through grace. The state of grace that began that early morning in the Zendo prevailed throughout the winter of D's dying, an inner calm in which I knew just how and where to act, wasting no energy in indecision or regrets: and seemingly, this certainty gave no offense, perhaps because no ego was involved, the one who acted in this manner was not "I." When I told the Roshi that I felt this readiness and strength, even a kind of crazy exaltation, he said quietly, "You have transcended." I think he meant "transcended your ego," and with it grief, horror, and remorse. As if awakened from a bad dream of the past, I found myself forgiven, not just by D but by myself, and this forgiveness strikes me still as the greatest blessing of my life.

  In those last months, it seemed that love had always been there, shining through the turbulence of waves, like the reflection of the moon in the Zen teachings; and love transformed the cruel and horrid face that cancer gives to death. One day, knowing she was dying, D remarked, "Isn't it queer? This is one of the happiest times in all my life." And another day, she asked me shyly what would happen if she should have a miraculous recovery—would we love each other still, and stay together, or would the old problems rise again to spoil things as before? I didn't know, and that is what I said. We had tried to be honest, and anyway, D would not have been fooled. I shrugged unhappily, she winced, then we both laughed. In that moment, at least, we really understood that it didn't matter, not because she was going to die but because all truth that mattered was here now.

  After D's death, I wondered if the specter of remorse might overtake me. It never did. In the grayest part of the empty months that followed, my heart was calm and clear, as if all that bad karma of the past had been dissolved on that early morning of November.

  Toward that Presence who prepared me for D's death I was filled with gratitude, quite different from the thankfulness I felt toward Eido Roshi and toward D, toward kind family and friends and children. It was not that I felt grateful to myself, yet the question seemed inescapable: where could that vast Smile reside if not in my own being? In chanting the Kannon Sutra in such desperation, I had invoked Avalokita, but I had been paying no attention to the words, only to D, who sat in the line of Buddha forms across the way. And so it was hard to identify Avalokita with that Presence unless He was also D, also myself—in short, what Meister Eckhardt meant: "the Eye with which I see God is the Eye with which God sees me." Or Jesus Christ: "I and my Father are One."10 Surely those Christian mystics spoke of the Lord-Who-is-Seen-Within.

  That year I was a new student of Zen, expecting nothing, and almost another year had passed before something said by an older student made me realize what had happened. I went to Eido Roshi, who confirmed it. But a kensho, or satori, is no measure of enlightenment, since an insight into "one's True Nature" may vary widely in its depth and permanence: some may overturn existence, while others are mere tantalizing glimpses that "like a mist will surely disappear."11 To poke a finger through the wall is not enough—the whole wall must be brought down with a crash! My own experience had been premature, and a power seeped away, month after month. This s
addened me, although I understood that I had scarcely started on the path; that but for D's crisis, which had cut through forty years of encrustations, I might never have had such an experience at all; that great enlightenment was only born out of deep samadhi In this period the invitation came to go on a journey to the Himalaya.

  Wind brings swift, soft clouds from the south that cast shadows on the snow. Close at hand, a redstart comes to forage in the lichens, followed soon by a flock of fat rose finches. I do not stir, yet suddenly all whir away in a gray gust, and minutely I turn to see what might have scared them. On a rock not thirty feet away, an accipitrine hawk sits in silhouette against the mountains, and here it hunches while the sun goes down, nape feathers lifting in the wind, before diving after unseen prey over the rim of the ravine. Then the great lammergeier comes, gold-headed and black-collared, a nine-foot blade sweeping down out of the north; it passes into the shadows between cliffs. Where the river turns, in a corner of the walls, the late sun shines on a green meadow, as if a lost world lay in that impenetrable ravine, so far below. The great bird arcs round the wall, light glancing from its mantle. Then it is gone, and the sun goes, the meadow vanishes, and the cold falls with the night shadow.

  Still I sit a little while, watching the light rise to the peaks. In the boulder at my back, there is a shudder, so slight that at another time it might have gone unnoticed. The tremor comes again; the earth is nudging me. And still I do not see.

  OCTOBER 17

  Jang-bu hoped to be back today by noon, but perhaps he is having trouble finding porters. Rather than wait another day, GS and I will take two loads over the Jang Pass while Phu-Tsering and Bimbahadur guard the rest. This high valley between snows would be a bad place to be caught by storm, with no firewood and sick, ill-equipped porters, but blizzard now seems most unlikely: last night was so clear that the Milky Way rose in a mist out of the snows, and for the third day in a row, the dawn was cloudless. The end of the monsoon, a fortnight late, is here at last.

  I start early, climbing toward the sun. Until now we have carried rucksacks only, leaving to others our books and heavy gear. Today we will carry our full backpacks, together with bedding, tents, and food, and GS will also take his telescope and camera.

  From the crest of the first ridge, getting my breath, I turn for a last look down the Saure ravine; absurdly, I feel homesick for that green meadow under the dark walls where in this lifetime I shall never go. I move on quickly, to gain altitude before the sun softens the snow, crossing a stream of icy boulders, climbing on. The trail made by the Tarakots and Jang-bu is easy to follow in the snow, and the high pack protects my brains from the rising sun, and my boots crunch reassuringly upon the crust. Soon the track enters the long white valley that rises to Jang La. How strange it seems that the blue sky is so much darker than the mountains! This morning the moon is centered in a crescent between the white peaks, off to the south. A neat fox foot trails snow-cock prints to three pools like black mirrors. The ice-free pools are springs of a stream that flows away under the snow and falls over a cliff into the Saure.

  Behind and below, among swirls made by snow gleam and the ice-broken black brook, a surreal figure very like my own pursues me across the vast floor of the mountains. It crosses the shining boulders, coming on with slow, portentous step. The sight of this figure brings a small foreboding, as if it were the self of dreams who seeks me out with the coming of the day at the black labyrinthine river, in dead whiteness.

  At this altitude the white is thick and silent, only a soft murmur of snow-shrouded streams. The moon rests on the white crescent. All is still, I walk in sun-filled dream, as wind blows sparkling snow from the rock faces.

  From a summit where torn choughs are flying, a small cairn rises like a man. If this is Jang La, its fearsomeness has been exaggerated. "Jang" means "green," which seems to suggest that it is rarely snowbound; and "La" signifies a pass—more properly, the deity or keeper of the pass who may or may not let the traveler cross over. The cairn marking this place is no more than a heap of stones with sticks and rags upon which, in propitiation of the mountain gods, some traveler has set two skulls of na. The north face of the cairn is under snow, and down the north side of the pass the snow descends unbroken to the tree line. GS, who overtakes me at the summit, reads 14,880 on his altimeter, which is accurate within one hundred feet; in Kathmandu, we were informed that this pass lies at 17,000 feet. Similarly, the headman of Tarakot had assured us that from the Saiue Camp up over Jang La and down to tree line was a journey of seven hours; carrying full loads, we shall make it without difficulty in four. True, we left early enough to make good time on the hard snow, whereas the local people will slog extra hours through wet mush rather than break camp before sun strikes it.

  GS is discoursing happily on the freedom of carrying one's own pack, of being "independent of childish people who've lived all their lives in the mountains and won't wear rag strips on their eyes in snow—do you realize we could travel for a week this way, and make good time, with just what we have here on our backs?" I do realize this, and am happy, too, watching him tramp off down the mountain; the sense of having one's life needs at hand, of traveling light, brings with it intense energy and exhilaration. Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being. ("I could not simplify myself"—the explanation of the suicide Nezhdanov.12) Jang La is behind us, my lungs are holding up in this thin air, my doiu: boots show some signs of relenting. And starting a relaxed descent, I enjoy the view of distant shadows that mark the deep gorge of the Bheri River. Beyond the Bheri the steep mountains rise toward the snow peaks of the Kanjiroba Himal; on the far side of those distant peaks lies Crystal Mountain, Liberation, freedom—unaccountably I think about a girl I talked to once in a marine-supplies store where she was buying rope, just a few years ago. The next day, with her young husband and a British companion, she rose in a balloon from the Long Island farmland, waving goodbye to a cheering crowd, and headed eastward, bound for England over the Atlantic Ocean. None of the three was ever seen again. At this moment I feel moved, not by the disappearance of that girl (which was no tragedy, only a brave essay that was lost) but by the name of their great adventure—The Free Life Balloon. Perhaps the voyagers on the Free Life Balloon meant "free life" as described by a mountaineer: "The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as breath." But the same mountaineer, after nearly losing his life, wrote of "freedom" in a quite different way: "I saw that it was better to be true than to be strong. ... I was saved and I had won my freedom. This freedom, which I shall never lose ... has given me the rare joy of loving that which I used to despise. A new and splendid life has opened out before me."13 This is closer to my own idea of freedom, the possibility and prospect of "free life," traveling light, without clinging or despising, in calm acceptance of everything that comes; free because without defenses, free not in an adolescent way, with no restraints, but in the sense of the Tibetan Buddhist's "crazy wisdom," of Camus's "leap into the absurd" that occurs within a life of limitations. The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty (to that self which is inseparable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible.

  I feel great gratitude for being here, for being, rather, for there is no need to hie oneself to the snow mountains in order to feel free. I am not here to seek the "crazy wisdom"; if I am, I shall never find it. I am here to be here, like these rocks and sky and snow, like this hail that is falling down out of the sun.

  Cruck! My stave makes a blue hole in the snow.

  Down the glazed surface of the slope blows a cold wind, the wind of Jang. A dry moth is transfixed upon the glaze, and a caterpillar that followed some dim impulse to crawl up from below, but in this icy place there are no birds to eat them. A black tumulus, snow-sheathed and treacherous, twists the boots. Then the track rou
nds the mountain and comes down from winter into an autumn kingdom where brown swifts flicker in pursuit of the warm insects, over golden woods. Like a bharal, I jump down through patchy snow and red wildflowers.

  By the path, GS is glaring toward high glaciers on the Dhaulagiris, which we are skirting on our journey to the north. "We made a mistake, leaving today," he says. "This isn't blue-sheep habitat at all." He is also upset that we have not met Jang-bu, and we eat in silence. But we have scarcely set off again when Jang-bu turns up on the trail below. It is fortunate that we have carried our full loads, for he has no new porters, only Tukten, Gyaltsen, and the singing young Tamang called Karsung—the only men well enough to return today. Tired from the trek the day before, they had left Tarakot late, carrying firewood, thick green discs of buckwheat bread, and a flask of arak. We celebrate for a few minutes on the sunny mountainside before these cheerful fellows climb onward to Jang La. Already it is afternoon, and it will be dark, in snow and stars, before they reach the Saure.

  In high spirits, we continue down through alpine pastures to dry slopes of oak and pine. Below, the Bheri Valley can be seen, winding down out of dark canyons to the north and east. Camp is made on a sunny ledge, near a shadowed stream; here spruce and fir and pine all live together.