The Snow leopard
Page 30
1. George B. Schaller, Mountain Monarchs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
2. It has been suggested that the yogas were a kind of synthesis of Aryan physical austerity and the intricate psychic lore of the Dravidians. "The newly-settled nomads were striving to make themselves, body and will, tempered and taut like the bow and the bowstring—their favorite simile. They underwent intense tests and ordeals . . . sitting for long spans unwaveringly erect under midday sun surrounded by blazing fires. . . ." (Gerald Heard, The Human Venture, New York: Harper & Row, 1955). What was sought was a deflection of the vast forces of the Universe with siddhis, or powers cultivated through yogic mastery of body-mind— not the passive fatalism of which Eastern religions are so commonly accused but acceptance of each moment, resilience and serenity, calmness in action and intensity when calm. The yogi in seated meditation was called "the flame in the windless spot that does not flicker'' (A. K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism, New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
3. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism.
4. Altitudes in Nepal, based mostly on the nineteenth-century Survey of India directed by Sir George Everest and others, vary according to the map at hand, and in this book are regarded as approximate except where recorded by George Schaller's altimeter.
5. Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959); and Michel Peissel, Mustang (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1967). In 1974, the Kham-pas were finally subdued and resettled, following a major skirmish with Nepali troops that caused Dolpo to be closed once more to all outsiders.
6. (Tibetan) Book of Golden Precepts, ed. H. P. Blavatsky.J quoted in W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
7. P'ang Chu-shih ("Layman P'ang").
8. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
9. In Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.
10. C. G. Jung, Collected Works (Princeton: The Bollingen Foundation, for the Princeton University Press, 1954); XVII, chap. 7.
11. Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, A Sufi Fable (Boulder: Shambhala, 1971).
12. L. Austine Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism (London, 1895). Dorje (or vafra) is variously translated—thunderbolt, holy stone, the adamantine diamond—in effect, the distilled energy of the universe, cutting through every-thing without being affected.
13. Especially H. P. Blavatsky, various imaginative works, e.g., The Secret Doctrine.
14. Ma Tuan-lin, Non-Chinese People of China (ms. in Sterling Library, Yale University).
15. As quoted by A. David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (New York: Penguin, 1971); See Part II, 18.
16. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. See also George Curdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969).
17. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).
18. Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971, 1973). The "authenticity" of this shaman has been much debated, and the author has chosen to abet the obfuscation —no matter. If "Don Juan" is imaginary, then spurious ethnology becomes a great work of the imagination; whether borrowed or not, the teaching rings true.
19. It is not true, it is not true
that we come to live here.
We come only to sleep, only to dream.
—Anon. Aztec
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself,
and all the while,
A great wind carries me across the sky.
—Anon. Ojibwa
20. It is baroka to the Sufis: "Do you know why a Sheikh breathes into the ear of a newly born child? Of course you do not! You put it down to magic, prmutive symbols representing life, but the practical reasons, the deadly serious business of nourishing the inner consciousness, passes you by." A Sufi sheikh, quoted in Rafael Lefort, The Teachers of Gurdjieff (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968).
21. See Beniamin Whorf, "An American Indian Model of the Universe," International Journal of American Linguistics 16, 1950.
22. Lao-tzu, the Tao te Ching.
23. Rig Veda.
24. Werner Heisenberg, quoted by Lawrence LeShan in "How Can You Tell a Physicist from a Mystic?" Intellectual Digest, February 1972.
25. Lama Angarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds (Boulder: Shambhala, 1971).
26. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.
27. Carl Sagan, in I. S. Shklovsky and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1966).
28. Harlow Shapley, Beyond the Observatory (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967).
II NORTHWARD
1. Deborah Love, Annaghkeen (New York: Random House, 1970).
2. Adapted from Trevor Leggett, The Tiger's Cave (London: Bider, 1964).
3. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibet's Great Yogi; Milarepa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
4. In the absence of a meaningful vocabulary, one must fall back on nebulous terms, on grandiose capital letters, and on Sanskrit. But Sanskrit tenns are differently defined by Hindus and Buddhists, and even within Buddhism they blur and overlap a little, like snakes swallowing their tails in that ancient symbol of eternity: samadhi (one-pointedness, unification) may lead to sunyata (transparency, void) which can open out in a sudden satori (glimpse) which may evolve into the prajna (transcendent wisdom) of nirvana (beyond delusion, beyond all nature, life, and death, beyond becoming) which might be seen as eternal samadhi. Thus the circle is complete, every state is conditioned by each of the odiers, and all are inherent in meditation, which is itself a realization of the Way.
5. Lawrence LeShan, in The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist (New Yorfk: Grossman, 1974), has suggested that some such plane or trancelike state in which one becomes a vehicle or "medium," beyond thought or feelings, laid open to the energies and knowing that circulate freely through the universe, may be the one on which telepathy, precognition, and even psychic healing are transmitted.
6. Richard M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (Secaucus, N. J.: University Books, 1961).
7. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
8. Translated by Shimano Eido Roshi.
9. See D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957).
10. Saint Francis de Sales called mystical experience the immediate experience of the love of God.
11. The Maha Ati, quoted by Chögyam Trungpa in Mudra (Boulder: Shambhala, 1972).
12. In Ivan Turgenev, Virgin Soil.
13. Maurice Herzog, Annapurna (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1953).
14. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.
15. Edward Cronin, "The Yeti," Atlantic, November 1975. See also E. Cronin, J. McNeely, H. Emery, "The Yeti—Not a Snowman," Oryx. May 1973.
16. John Napier, Big Foot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973).
17. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1961).
18. See David Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage (Oxford: Cassirer, 1961).
19. Ibid.
20. David Snellgrove, The Nine Ways of B'on (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
21. John Blofeld, The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet. See also Lama Angarika Govinda, "The Significance of Meditation in Buddhism," in Main Currents of modern Thought. "The reflection is neither inside nor outside of the mirror, and thus 'things are freed from their "thing-ness," their isolation, without being deprived of their form; they are divested of their materiality without being dissolved'"—the mirror-teaching from the Atamsaka Sutra, attributed to Nagarjuna, an Indian sage of the first century a.d. who is also credited with the compilation of the Prajna Paramita Sutra, the fundamental text of Mahayana Buddhism.
22. See Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage.
23. A. David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (New York: Penguin, 1971). See also Lama Angarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds (Boulder: Shambhala, 1971), and Carlos Castaneda.
24 Quoted in Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).
25. "The Sufis regard miracles as 'veils' intervening between the soul and God. The masters of Hindu spirituality urge their disciples to pay no attention to the siddhis, or psychic powers, which may come to them unsought, as a by-product of one-pointed contemplation." Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Amo Press, 1970).
28. Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, I: Towards the Holy City of Lhasa (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1968).
27. A. Henry Savage Landor, In the Forbidden Land (New York, 1899).
28. H. E. Richardson and David Snellgrove, A Cultural History of Tibet (London: Weidenfeld, 1968).
29. Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage.
30. See Gerald Heard, The Human Venture (New Yodc: Harper & Row, 1955).
III AT CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN
1. David Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage (Oxford: Cassirer, 1961).
2. Lama Angarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds (Boulder: Shambhala, 1971).
3. David Snellgrove, Four Lamas of Dolpo (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).
4 L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895).
5. H. E. Richardson, "The Kama-pa Sect: A Historical Note," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, October 1958.
6. George B. Schaller, "A Naturalist in South Asia," New York Zoological Society Bulletin, Spring 1971.
7. V. Geist, Mountain Sheep (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
8. Ibid.
9. A. David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (New York: Penguin, 1971).
10. Ibid.
11. Lao-tzu, the Tao te Ching.
12. Malcolm Lowry, Hear Us, O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1961).
13. Thomas Traheme, Centuries of Meditation.
14 Ibid.
15. Respectively: Stoliczka's high mountain vole (Alticola Stoliczkanus) , (unnamed) vole ( Pitymys irene), (unnamed) shrew (Sorex avaneus).
16. See Robert Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness (New York: Grossman, 1973).
17. The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa (Secaucus, N.J.: University Books, 1975).
18. Snellgrove, Four Lamas of Dolpo.
19. Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Boulder: Shambhala, 1973).
20. Dogen Zenji, Shobogenzo (San Francisco: Japan Publications, 1977).
21. George B. Schaller (ms. in progress).
22. Bhagavad-Gita.
IV THE WAY HOME
1. Deborah Love, Annaghkeen (New York: Random House, 1970).
2. This story is a variation on a traditional account from Tukten's region.
3. Pawo Tsuk-lar-re Cho-chung III; cited in Sir Charles Bell, Tibet: Past and Present (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
4. Swami Pranavananda, in Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 54, 1956.
5. Yonah N. ibn Aharaon, in I. Sanderson, The Abominable Snowman (Radnor, Pa., Chilton, 1961), p. 458. Perhaps Sangbai-Dagpo has been confused here with Sar-bdag-po, or "Earth-Master," a local earth-spirit who is much feared and respected but so far as I know is not identified with the "man-thing of the snows." Sanbahi' dag-po, the "Concealed Lord," is a name given by exoteric cults to Dorje-Chang, the primordial Buddha of the Karma-Kagyu-pas. See L. Austine Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895).
6. Dr. Schaller's recommendation to the Nepal government resulted in the creation of the 160-square-mile Shey Wildlife Reserve, which has not yet been given formal status as a national park. This is a pity, since evidence accumulates that the snow leopard may soon vanish from the country. A wildlife ecologist, Rodney Jackson, tells me that there may be less than 120 animals left in Nepal, most of them in the western region north of the Himalaya. In the winter of 1976-77, he conducted a snow leopard survey in the Langu River region of Mugu, west of Dolpo (he had been refused permission to enter Dolpo, which was closed to foreigners early in 1974), and although he never saw a snow leopard, he found evidence of five in a study area of approximately two hundred square miles. In this region there is little grazing and therefore no problem of leopard predation; also, the value of a leopard pelt to the hunter has been reduced to about ten dollars, due to the international import/export bans that are now taking effect. Yet the creatures are still hunted hard in Mugu, where the hunting tradition is stronger than the waning Buddhism, and trade in musk deer pods—sold mostly in Jumla—is a crucial source of local income. For both deer and leopard, the hunting technique is the implanting of poison-tipped spears in likely places—in the case of the nomadic leopard, the trails that it follows habitually on its wide hunting circuit. Though both musk deer and snow leopard are protected by law, there is no enforcement. Of three local snow leopards, two were killed, the third wounded, during Jackson's stay; local hunters complained that only two years before, they had managed to destroy six or seven.
INDEX
Abominable snowman: see Yeti
Afghanistan, 122, 159
Africa: East, 3, 14, 23, 103; North, 23
"Air burial," 237
Akbar (Mogul emperor), 172
Akshobhya Buddha, 232
Angkor Wat, 44
Animism, 55, 318-19
Annapurna, 3, 6, 13, 22, 27, 29, 50, 69, 87, 176, 242, 282, 326
Anu Sherpa, 297
Aoudad (Ammotragus), 205
Argali (Ovis ammon), 243, 252, 286
Arun Valley, 129-30, 206
Asan Bazaar, 5, 232, 331
Asia: Central, 34, 56, 123, 158, 159,196; North, 56; Southeast, 34, 107
Atman, 57
Augustine, Saint, 62
Australian aborigines, 57
Avalokita (Chen-resigs), 107-9, 112, 121-22, 1%, 198-99, 208, 244, 253, 318, 331
Ayahuasca 44
Balansuro River, 309
Bardo, 92-93
Bardo Thodol: see "Book of the Dead"
Bauli River, 145-47
Bear, moon (Asiatic black bear), 41, 142
Bengal, 22
Beni (Nepal), 31
Bering land bridge, 55
Bhairava (Nepal), 323, 326
Bharal (Himalayan blue sheep), 3, 60, 99, 102-3, 201-2, 203-7, 220-22, 233-34, 246-49. 258-59, 262r-63
Bheri River, 50, 68, 82, 117, 120, 125, 127, 132, 134, 213, 231, 235, 290, 295, 305-6, 309, 314
Bhotes, 20, 232, 282
Bhutan, 20, 198
Bible, 102, 310
"Big Bang" theory, and Rig Veda, 64
Bigfoot, 130; see also Sasquatch; Yeti
Bimbahadur (porter), 26, 53, 76, 88, 90, 101, 103, 106, 125, 127
Black River (Kanju River), 193, 200, 203, 209, 216, 220, 228-29, 231, 236, 250, 252, 255, 258, 262
B'od, Land of, 146, 178,194, 231, 331
Bodh Gaya (India), 4, 19-20
Bodhi ("enlightenment") tree, 19, 232
Bodhidharma, 35, 94, 178
Bodhinath (Nepal), 327, 331
Bodhisattvas, 34, 107, 109, 121, 123, 135, 174, 196,198, 280, 324
B'on religion, 53, 122-23, 142-43, 146, 150-52, 200, 237
"Book of the Dead," Tibetan (Bardo Thodol), 60, 93-94 122
Borges, Jorge Luis, 43
Brahmaputra River, 30, 196
Brahmins, 309
Buddha, 17-19, 34-35, 67, 93, 109, 121-23, 158, 199-200, 280, 326, 332; see also Sakyamuni
Buddhism, 20, 33-35, 53, 56, 62, 67-68, 94, 122-24, 138, 150-51, 166, 171, 196-97. 199, 243, 318; Hinayana, 34; Mahayana, 34, 122, 208; Tantric, 34, 56, 122, 171-72. 196, 250; Zen, 5, 35, 45, 56, 62, 94, 111-12,123, 197, 208
Bugu La, 297, 299, 301, 306
Calcutta, (India), 12
Cambodia, 44
Camus, Alb
ert, 118
Capra, (goat), 205, 262-63
Caprini (sheep and goats), 204-7, 262-63
Catherine of Siena, Saint, 62-63
Central Asia: see Asia
Ceylon, 34
Chang (beer), 125, 149, 235, 276, 277, 278, 281, 331
Chetri, 20, 309, 320
China, 30, 34, 88, 107, 121, 122, 159, 178, 197, 199, 205
Chiring Lamo, 277, 281, 286, 288, 289, 293, 300, 304, 309
Chirjing, 275-77, 279
Chod, 96, 122, 171
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, 252
Christianity, 34, 113
Churen Himal, 77, 95, 103, 312
Cosmic radiation, and cosmogony, 66
"Crazy wisdom," 88, 118
Crystal Monastery (Shey Gompa),3-4, 60, 62, 97, 144, 181, 192-94, 197, 203, 235, 241-45, 247, 252-53, 264-65, 271, 274; see also Tsakang hermitage; Tupjuk, Lama
Crystal Mountain, 3, 68,117, 134, 191-92, 197, 200, 209, 217-18, 228, 233. 236, 238. 243, 251-52, 254, 258, 263, 264, 272, 298, 308, 311, 328
Dalai Lama, 60, 172,197,242
Damaru: see Prayer drums
Dansango (Nepal), 321, 324
Danyen: see Musical instruments
Darbang (Nepal), 33, 36
Dawa Sherpa (camp assistant), 26, 33, 39, 54, 76, 81, 87, 96, 105, 125, 149, 163-64, 168, 170, 172, 176, 180-81, 191. 200. 260-61, 272, 277, 281, 287, 289, 294-97, 300, 304, 313, 314, 317, 319, 321, 323-24, 325-27, 331
Deer, musk, 85
Democritus, 65
Dharma, 109, 121, 150,178,197, 199, 243, 253
Dharmsala (India), 59
Dhaulagiri, 3, 29, 32, 49-50, 68, 75, 76, 82, 88, 101, 118, 121, 139, 176, 206, 312, 314, 326
Dhauliyas, 84, 138, 318
Dhorpatan (Nepal), 20, 28, 32, 50-51, 53, 59, 62, 75, 81, 84, 90,127, 133, 145, 181, 282
Dipankara, 123
Dolma-jang hermitage, 244, 258
Dolpo, 3-5, 31-32, 59, 88, 100, 126, 133, 136, 177, 191, 196-97, 200, 212, 242-43, 282, 300, 310, 331
Dorje-Chang (Vajradhara), 199, 236, 244, 263
Dravidians. 17, 55
Dream-travel, 57
Drutob Senge Yeshe. 243, 253
Dunahi (Nepal), 127, 133, 134, 155, 162, 182
Durga Puja, 37-38, 39