The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  Enough! I am not far enough along the path to perceive the Absolute in my own dung—yours, maybe, but not mine. Shit is shit, as Zen would say, or rather, Shit! I boot this trace of my swift passage through the world out of the yard. Then I thank the man for his hospitahty and show him a rock that contains a pretty fossil, but having no idea what I require of him, he is indifferent to my thanks and stones.

  Slowly I pass along the field of prayer stones to the picturesque low door of Crystal Monastery, with its old prayer wheels, one of copper, one of wood, inset in the walls on either side. Over the door is a small Buddha of worn stone, bright-painted in the reds and blues of earth and sky. Unless Tundu comes this afternoon, bringing the key, I shall never pass through this small door into Shey Gompa. The entrance stupas and Lama Tupjuk's chapel at Tsakang have given me a clue to the interior, and tomorrow, with luck, I shall visit the temple at Namgung, five hours hence across the eastern mountains, which is also a Karma-Kagyu gompa. All the same, it seems too bad not to have seen the inside of the Crystal Monastery, having traveled so far to such a destination.

  (Not long after my departure, Tundus wife turned up with the key to the monastery, demanding one hundred rupees to open the door. GS ignored her, and on the eve of his departurre, she let him enter for five rupees. According to his notes and floor plan, Shey Gompa contains a number of fine bronze Buddhas, hanging drums, old swords and muzzle loaders from the bandit days, and the heavy printing blocks that made the "wind pictures" given me by Lama Tupjuk. Otherwise, the gompa differs mostly in its large size from others in the region, excepting one bizarre and unaccountable detail: on a hanging cloth, with a wolf, Tibetan wild asses, and an owl, there is a picture of a female yeti.

  This drawing at the Crystal Monastery is more curious than first appears. Pictures of yeti have been reported to exist in remote lamaseries, but they are in fact extremely rare; the only other I have ever heard of in Nepal is found at Tengboche Monastery, under Mount Everest That such a drawing should exist well to the west of where yetis have been heretofore reported deepens the enigma of that sunny morning in the forests of the Suli Gad, and the strange dark shape that sprang behind a boulder.)

  I clhnb to my old lookout, happy and sad in the dim instinct that these mountains are my home. But "only the Awakened Ones remember their many births and deaths,"22 and I can hear no whisperings of other lives. Doubtless I have "home" confused with childhood, and Shey with its flags and beasts and snowy fastnesses with some Dark Ages place of forgotten fairy tales, where the atmosphere of myth made life heroic.

  In the longing that starts one on the path is a kind of homesickness, and some way, on this journey, I have started home. Homegoing is the purpose of my practice, of my mountain meditation and my daybreak chanting, of my koan: All the peaks are covered with snow—why is this one bare? To resolve the illogical question would mean to burst apart, let fall all preconceptions and supports. But I am not ready to let go, and so I shall not resolve my koan, or see the snow leopard, that is to say, perceive it. I shall not see it because I am not ready.

  I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me—S-A-A-O!—then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free.

  THE WAY HOME

  O servant, where dost thou seek me?

  Lo! I am beside thee.

  I am neither in the temple nor in the mosque,

  neither am I in rites and ceremonies

  nor in yoga nor in renunciation.

  If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see me.

  Thou shalt meet me in a moment's time.

  Songs of Kabir (trans, R. Tagore)

  Do not be amazed by the true dragon.

  DOGEN ZENJI

  Fukanzazenji

  NOVEMBER 18

  At daybreak, with Tukten and Dawa, I walk up the White River toward the sun. We are accompanied by GS, who will go as far as the eastern pass on a blue-sheep survey, and by Jang-bu and Gyaltsen, off to Saldang to buy a goat. Frustrated by the snow leopard, GS is resorting to live bait, which if nothing else will provide the camp with meat; should wolves appear, the goat won't be set out, for wolves leave nothing.

  (A week after my departure, two snow leopards traveling together skirted Shey Gompa. A goat was staked out, and GS slept near it for two nights, but the snow leopards vanished from the region; the goat was butchered and consumed by human beings. One goat leg was presented to Lama Tupjuk together with a pair of Phu-Tsering's trousers: Jang-bu wished to offer up his boots but was forbidden to do so by GS, who had to get his expedition out over the mountains.)

  Phu-Tsering will stay behind, and I shall miss him. Last evening he astonished us with a sheaf of lively drawings—airplanes, the heads of girls, peculiar European scenes—one of which was made away with by our landlord, Ongdi, no doubt with an eye to sale or barter. Taking leave of Phu-Tsering this morning, I asked if I might call on him in Khumbu should I ever visit the lamaseries of eastern Nepal, and this good friend and merry cook, as upset as myself, cried, "Thank you!"

  Not one hundred yards outside the village are three sets of fresh wolf tracks; the silver beasts had skirted the frozen dwellings, under the waning moon. On the slopes above, the big rams of the Somdo herd stand motionless against the snow line. I walk backward for a little way, watching as the transparent flags of Crystal Monastery withdraw into the Somdo mountain . . . OM! I set my rucksack and stride onward. In an icy brook, a spray of fossil pectens is set in a dark-gray stone shaped like a mountain. The stone is very beautiful, the scallop rays sparkling with rime. I return it to the stream, and keep on going.

  A prayer wall on a rise is a haunt of wolves, and all around it in the snow are fresh wolf prints and yellow stains. The track turns northward, climbing the rocky bed of a tributary stream, and at the head of a long gradual ascent, a bowl of bright-blue sky appears between white walls. These portals shift and sink away as we draw near, it is no pass but only an illusion. Instead there is a slippery steep climb up ice and scree, between deep drifts. The air is thin, and stopping every little way to rest, I gaze over a world of purest white, without animal track or sound or passing bird.

  On the summit of this eastern pass, at 16,900 feet, stands a great cairn, built up by stones of the travelers of centuries. Ahead, broad lunar landscapes, dry and brown, stretch away into Tibet. In this mountain desert, sere and bare as a world above the clouds, only the crests of the highest peaks are white. The spires and ravines of the Himalaya have rounded into mountains and deep valleys, and off to the east, beyond the mountains, is a vast pale region—Mustang, the old Kingdom of Lo.

  Soon Tukten and Dawa rise from the banks of snow and cast their loads down on the cairn, and now there appear the boyish heads of Jang-bu and Gyaltsen. The sherpas are impressed by the immense horizons, spreading away in a great circle of the world, and for some minutes look about them without speaking. Where we have come from, the north faces of the Himalayan ramparts (not often seen by Westerners) rise in ice towers of shining white; that human life could persist in such a place seems unimaginable, and yet we know, or think we know, that Shey Gompa is down in those lost ravines, under Crystal Mountain.

  It is time to go. GS shakes hands with Tukten and Dawa, whom he will not see again, and the four sherpas set off down the north slope, in single file across the fields of snow.

  I stay a little. In the still windlessness, George blurts out, I'm sorry as hell to see you go," and I say that I'm sorry as hell to leave; I try to express inexpressible thanks as we shake hands. "I've been very very moved . . ." I say, and stop. Such words are only clutter, they do not say what I mean; I am moved from where I used to be, and can never go
back.

  Each is happy for the other that this expedition has worked out so very well. We have been on different journeys, and mostly we have worked alone, which suits us both, and even in the evenings, we talked little. I never shared with George the changes in my head, for fear he might imagine I'd gone crazy; and who knows what was going on in his! But we were always glad to meet at the day's end, which after two months of enforced companionship, in hard conditions, is enough.

  For want of words, we shake hands once more, knowing that when we meet next, in the twentieth century, the screens of modern life will have formed again, and we may be as well defended as before. Then I set off across the northern snow. When I turn to wave, there is no longer a blue parka and brown face, only the black emblem of a man against the sun, as in a dream. Slowly, the figure raises its right arm. Again I head north, and there at my feet are fine fresh wolf tracks in the snow. I turn again to yell about the wolves, but the sky is empty. There is only snow, whirling around the ancient cairn in golden sparkles.

  The trail descends into gray stony canyons. I have left my stave up at the pass; it is too far to climb back. The sherpas are long since out of sight, but Tukten waits at the first place where there is a chance of a wrong turning; he does not draw attention to his thoughtfulness, he is simply there. While waiting, this interested man has found more wolf tracks, and points out that one set is much smaller than the other—a cub. Two herders met with farther down say there are many jangu here, and sao as well, preying on the domestic herds and also na; though wolves prey more heavily on livestock than do leopards, it was a sao that had made off with a goat just the night before. In the early afternoon, bharal appear, twenty or more, apparently drawn to the herds of sheep and goats above Namgung. These na of Namgung are harassed by a pair of hunters who kill them for a living; in all this region, only Shey is free of hunting, thanks to the presence there of Lama Tupjuk.

  The village of Namgung is higher than Shey; it must be close to 16,000 feet. Namgung Gompa is a red stone structure built into the north wall of a gorge, and the Namgung villagers have carved out terrace fields on both sides of the Namgung torrent, which flows down to the Nam-Khong Valley. Leaving the others on the trail above, Jang-bu and I descend to the first house in the gorge, where we are driven back by a savage mastiff on a long thin chain; in this land without a tree, I regret bitterly the loss of my faithful stick. Emerging upon his roof, the householder is glaring down upon us with suspicion; making no effort to calm the maddened dog, he grooms his very long imbraided hair with an outlandish comb that resembles a small broom. But the man has the key to Namgung Gompa, under the gorge wall. The red-and-white of the gompa and its stupas is the only color in this barren landscape.

  At the gompa, the log ladders climb to a small third-story room, lit by a dusty ray of light from one small widow. The chapel is a litter of worn draperies, leather cases, hide drums, copper cauldrons, conch-shell ceremonial horns, painted wood boxes, wood-bound books, and terra-cotta figures of Karma-pa, Sakyamuni, and a bulge-eyed Padma Sambhava. A splendid bronze of Dorje-Chang on a platform above the center of the room seems to vibrate in the dusty light: I keep expecting it to speak, and can scarcely turn my back upon it.

  Disturbed by the neglect and disrepair, I ask if there is a Lama of Namgung. At this, the temple-keeper identifies himself as 'lama," although such lamas are mere sacristans by comparison with a true lama, far less a tulku, such as the Lama of Shey. Jang-bu tells me that his own father is a "lama," presumably a lay person of this sort. The man lights two butter lamps in demonstration of the ceremonial prerogatives of his offce, but he admits that the temple is much neglected, and that the more valuable thankas have already been removed. He is combing his long hair again when we take leave of him.

  The trail winds down around mountain after mountain, in a long slow descent toward Saldang. A second herd of blue sheep, thirty-three or more, stands on a crag across the valley. Jang-bu and Gyaltsen, dropping their Buddhist precepts with their loads, vainly pursue a flock of Tibetan snow cocks with hurled stones; then we go on again. Tukten carries food and cooking gear, Dawa my backpack, Gyaltsen some trading articles such as GS's old suitcase, to be bartered for the decoy goat, and Jang-bu a load of juniper, since fuel in this mountain desert is so scarce; as for myself, besides tent and bedroll, I lug a rucksack full of books and fossils. At dusk, after nine hours of hard going, Saldang appears below, on a plateau high above the Nam-Khong River.

  Jang-bu made friends on his first visit to Saldang, and goes straight to a house where we are welcome. The house has an upper storeroom that is used also as a prayer room, almost as large and considerably tidier than Namgung Gompa. There are no icons, and but two or three poor thankas in the garish modern style, but the array of butter lamps and brass offering bowls, the fine hide drum and other implements, testify to the strong faith of the family. Our Namu, Chirjing, and her ancient mother give me this room as a place to sleep, thereby trusting me with their scarce winter stores; when visitors arrive, the old lady secures the storeroom door with an iron lock so primitive that, later in the evening, letting me back in, she opens it readily with a twig of wood.

  In the storeroom comer stands a savage-looking spear that Chirjing says was made here in Saldang; it dates from the time, not more than thirty years ago, when bandit nomads from Tibet were descending on this region, killing and pillaging, until at last the villagers took up arms to keep them off.

  Tukten brings me tea on the open roof, and in the dying light, I gaze out over the Nam-Khong Valley toward Tibet, known here simply as Byang, the North. The eroded landscape, minced to dust by the sharp hooves of sheep and goats, is a waste of worn-out hills and deep gaunt gullies that is desert-brown for eight months of the year, and erosion continues even in the dearth of snow and rain, due to the endless freezing and thawing, cracking and quiet crumbling caused by the great range of temperature. With passing centuries, the rain clouds from the south no longer come; the soil is poor, the growing season brief, and even the old slow caravan trade in salt and wool to the south side of the Himalaya is dying, as cheaper supplies from India spread north. Eventually this town may be abandoned to the desert, like the old cities of western Tibet.

  I ask Jang-bu to buy meat, and later our hostesses prepare the best meal we have eaten since September, a goat stew with potatoes, turnips, and a little rice, accompanied by many cups of barley chang. Jang-bu is my drinking companion; Dawa and Gyaltsen will not drink, and Tukten, despite his reputation, seems indifferent to it, though he takes a glass or two. The feast is held over a smoky fire of dung and twigs in the windowless main room on the ground floor, and afterward pretty Chirjing serves hot wheat bread with salt and a pat of butter. While we feed, more villagers come in, until the firelight is a circle of lively faces, young and old. I wonder if I have ever seen so many faces that I like in a single circle, and I go off happily to bed, my belly glowing. Soon Jang-bu calls me down again, for a man has brought the thin elegant lute known as the danyen, its stem carved as the long neck of a swan. Everyone is dancing. More villagers come, filling the smoky room with the companionable smells of human grease and coarse tobacco, and the old woman makes a fresh pot of chang, squishing the fermented barley through a wicker basket. One fetching, round-faced girl who looks somehow familiar brings a round-faced infant named Chiring Lamo, and while the young mother dances, our old woman holds the little girl in her lap. Infant and ancient are both heavily beaded, and the baby has a copper locket and a string of money cowries; the wizened visage and the pearly one wear identical expressions of wide-eyed childlike wonder, all the more affecting because the old head rests its chin upon the new. The infant's clean face looks transparent, and the ancient has a spiritual serenity that has gone transparent in old age. Soon Chiring Lamo stands and urinates on the dirt floor, gazing down with curiosity at her fat wet legs.

  Laughing, the baby's mother dances, holding hands with cat-faced laughing Chirjing. The lute player, a dashing handsome
fellow in short smock and boots, smiles at me wholeheartedly in welcome, as if I were his dearest friend on earth. Soon others come, including a man who appears to be Chirjing's suitor. Jang-bu is playing his harmonica, and Dawa and Gyaltsen laugh indiscriminately at all they see, but the only one of the Shey party who will dance is Tukten—Tukten Sherpa, cook and porter, alleged thief, bad drunk, old gurkha, is a dancer, too, and dancing, he smiles and smiles. The dance is a short rhythmic step well suited to small spaces, and very like Eskimo igloo dances, even to the jet-black braids and red-bronze faces and the shuffle of the soft, mukluk-like boots. Soon the dancers begin singing, and Tukten joins them but not Dawa, who has an exceptional voice but is much too shy. The songs are melodious and wistful, and as in Dhorpatan I am reminded of the mountain huainus of the Andes. A Buddhist song has the modest title "Taking Flowers to the Lama," but there is also a song of older centuries, called "Highest mountain"; "Even the highest mountain cannot keep me from reaching Nurpu!" Or so Jang-bu translates it, watching to see if I will laugh at this longing reference to an ancient god.

  We drink more chang, Jang-bu and I, as he tells me that all of Tukten's few belongings were stolen at Ringo-mo during the return trip from Jumla; Tukten himself has never mentioned this. Jang-bu speaks again of how he was invited by the members of a Japanese mountaineering expedition to go to Japan and study agriculture. He is tempted by the idea, and certainly this handsome boy, with his harmonica, big finger rings, and flashing smile, is too sophisticated to devote his life to expeditions, though he is very good at this, even-tempered and adaptable and smart, and tough enough to move the porters when he has to—the B'on-pos were the only bunch that cowed him. However, he likes his wandering life, his chang and arak, and will never go.