The Snow Leopard Quotes
"The meeting and parting of living things is as when clouds having come together drift apart again."
"Man is modifying the world so fast and so drastically that most animals cannot adapt to the new conditions."
"The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization—absolute and unconditional—of its own particular law."
"The Universe itself is the scripture of Zen, for which religion is no more and no less than the apprehension of the infinite in every moment."
"Ecstasy is identity with all existence, and ecstasy showed in his bright paintings."
"Old mists may be banished, that is true, but the alien chemical agent forms another mist, maintaining the separation of the 'I' from true experience of the One."
"Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience."
"We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread."
"In the ancient intuition that all matter, all 'reality,' is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled."
"The cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center."
"I am everywhere and in everything: I am the sun and stars. I am time and space and I am He."
"In the Book of Job, the Lord demands, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hath understanding! Who laid the cornerstones thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
"What the Buddha perceived was his identity with the Universe; to experience existence in this way is to be the Buddha."
"Today science is telling us what the Vedas have taught mankind for three thousand years, that we do not see the universe as it is. What we see is Maya, or Illusion."
"But no voice tells me I am and I rise from the mute ground and get on the horse and ride back down the mountain."
"To live with a saint is not difficult, for a saint makes no comparisons."
"The sword light on the peaks brings back the snows of Courchevel, in the French Alps, where we went skiing just a year before D died."
"I saw that it was better to be true than to be strong. . . . I was saved and I had won my freedom."
"Tomorrow begins the trek into the north. By the Jang Pass, we cross the Dhaulagiris to the Bheri River; we ascend the Suli Gad and the Phoksumdo River, and by the Kang Pass cross the Kanjiroba Range to Crystal Mountain."
"In the glory of sunrise, spiderwebs glitter and greenfinches in October gold bound from pine to shining pine."
"A day so fine for travel is also fine for harvesting potatoes. The new porters refuse to depart, nor will they give up the pay advanced to them to buy food."
"In the clear night, bright stars descend all the way to the horizon, and before dawn, a band of black appears beyond the peaks, as if one could see past earth’s horizon into outer space."
"The mountain sky is bare—wind, wind, and cold. Because of the cold, the Tamangs squashed into the Sherpas’ tent, but in the night gusts, the tent collapsed, and at daybreak all are singing from beneath it."
"From deep in the earth, the roar of the river rises. The rhododendron leaves along the precipice are burnished silver, but night still fills the steep ravines where southbound migrants descend at day to feed and rest."
"The path continues down into the oaks. A thousand feet below is a mountain meadow, and here by a herdsman’s shed of stone, we wait for Jang-bu."
"The Dirty Kamis, in the great tradition of porters all around the world, will go no farther; no doubt they are daunted—I am, too—by the sight of the precipitous trail up the mountain face across the river."
"I was sitting in the shadows of a hut, outside of which the figure of a friend was sitting with a dog beside a rock. Then everything became vibrant, luminous, and plastic, as in psychedelic vision."
"The trail ascends the torrent called Seng Khola, under looming cliffs, and in this gloom, in the roar of the gray water, I half expect the visage of a mountain god to peer over the knife edge of the rim."
"In early afternoon, when the downpour ends and the sound of the brook is audible under the oaks, the pony man appears, sniffing the weather."
"Last night, for the first time in my life, I was conscious of hallucinating in a dream."
"Tibetans say that obstacles in a hard journey, such as hailstones, wind, and unrelenting rains, are the work of demons, anxious to test the sincerity of the pilgrims and eliminate the fainthearted among them."
"I emerge in a new world and stare about me. A labyrinth of valley mounts toward the snows, for the Himalaya is as convoluted as a brain."
"In the great hush, the clouds draw apart, revealing the vast Dhaulagiri snowfields. I breathe, mists swirl, and all has vanished—nothing! I make a small, involuntary bow."
"How much dignity the moon has lost, now that man has left his disrespectful litter, his cute golf balls!"
"The moon retains its mystery for the dogs of Tichu-Rong, which howl in awe at its first appearance."
"Not caring to venture out into the streets when such brutes are abroad, I follow the custom of the town, standing on the roof edge and urinating into the mud street, in daybreak light."
"In the terraces are four kinds of millet-like grains, not quite familiar, such as might have been grown millennia ago by the people of the Middle East."
"They are big handsome silver-brown creatures, one of the most beautiful of primates, with frosted faces and an expression so entirely detached as to seem disdainful."
"The yeti is described most often as a hairy, reddish-brown creature with a ridged crown that gives it a pointed-head appearance."
"From deep in the earth, the roar of the river rises."
A strong argument against the existence of both sasquatch and yeti (and the whole world-wide phenomenon called "Bigfoot") is that man’s expeditions in pursuit of these elusive creatures have all failed.
"The Nepal government takes yeti seriously, and there is a strict law against killing them."
"I understand much better now Einstein’s remark that the only real time is that of the observer, who carries with him his own time and space."
"The flood carries eroded stone down from the glaciers, and the deep canyon it has carved across the ages, with its extraordinary layers of folded rock, is remarkably hot and dry, almost xerotic."
"I am bathed by feelings, and unexpectedly I find myself near tears, brought on this time by the memory of an early-morning phone call from the hospital, in the last week of D’s life."
"In the snow mountains—is it altitude?—I feel open, clear, and childlike once again."
"Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one’s own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound."
"Already the snow has lost its edge, and I break through here and there on the ascent."
"In a dream I am walking joyfully up the mountain. Something breaks and falls away, and all is light."
"Today the thin air and heavy load bother me less than the shining snow."
"In early afternoon, our friends reach camp with their bad tidings: at Shey, there are no porters and no food."
Do not be heavy," Soen Roshi says. "Be light, light, light—full of light!
"I admit to him that I didn’t care much for the note and offer to say why, but he anticipates my objections."
"The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not."
"The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence."
"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins."
"I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence."
"If only they would fly apart, consume us in a fire of white light. But I am not ready, and resist, in fear of losing my death grip on the world, on all that provides the illusion of security."
"The same fear—of loss of control, of 'insanity,' far worse than the fear of death—can occur with the hallucinogenic drugs."
"Belief in the tulku principle is a relatively recent tradition, made retroactive."
"But to renounce the world in this way requires the ultimate discipline, as well as exceptional power and inner resources."
"The monastery must be very old, the Lama thinks, much older than the present buildings."
"A thousand years ago, the old scripts say, a great yogin named Drutob Senge Yeshe arrived here on a flying snow leopard."
"Rising painfully, the Lama hobbles out upon a stone platform that overhangs the cliff and squats to urinate through a neat triangular hole, into the ravine."
"All is the same. The mountain withdraws into its stillness, my body dissolves into the sunlight, tears fall that have nothing to do with 'I.'"
"In other days, such union was attainable through simple awe."
"To be anywhere else is 'to paint eyeballs on chaos.'"
"The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times."
"The sun is gone by midafternoon, when this primordial woman fills the mountain dusk with her wild cries, calling her black dzo, scaring off wolves."
"It is wonderful how the presence of this creature draws the whole landscape to a point."
"We’ve seen so much, maybe it’s better if there are some things that we don’t see."
"I am moved from where I used to be, and can never go back."
"In worrying about the future, I despoil the present; in my escape, I leave a true freedom behind."
"In the autumnal melancholy I remember France, in the years that I lived there, still in love with my first wife."
"And now, in different ways, those life-filled creatures are both gone. I hurry with the river."
"The sun reveals itself, pouring out of a ravine."
"In an icy stream, I wash away the Murwa dust."
"The sun here is already gone, and since Tukten and the others are so late, it seems sensible to remain here with the herdsmen."
"The season is turning rapidly from near winter to late autumn."
"All my life, I have hurried down between these walls, the sun crossing high over my head."
"I keep on going, high on all the oxygen of lower altitudes."
"The wind cave is passed, and the upside-down falls."
"Probably it would be best to wait for Tukten; I cannot."
"The valley woods shelter herdsmen and their fires."
"I am too restless, I cannot wait here in this gorge when sun still shines on the trail."