"To the repentant thief upon the cross, the soft Jesus of the modern Bible holds out hope of Heaven: 'Today thou art with me in Paradise.' But in older translations, as Soen Roshi points out, there is no 'today,' no suggestion of the future. In the Russian translation, for example, the meaning is 'right here now.' Thus, Jesus declares, 'You are in Paradise right now'--How much more vital! There is no hope anywhere but in this moment, in the karmic terms laid down by one's own life."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 310)

"Someone once said that God offers man the choice between repose and truth; he cannot have both."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 303)

"GS remarked that this was one of the best trips he had ever made, 'tough enough so that we feel we have really accomplished something, but not so tough that it wiped us out entirely.'"

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 259)

"The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 257)

"If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. if not, then somehow (and I don't understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it, in the same way that I am not ready to resolve my koan; and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feelt hat way. I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain--that is enough."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.249)

"In another life--this isn't what I know, but how I feel--these mountains [the Himalayas] were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one's own true nature is a kind of homegoing."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 239)

"Eternity is not remote, it is here beside us."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.233)

"The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no 'meaning,' they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, thre is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 218)

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are evey one sole heirs as well as you."

-Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation

quoted in Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 217)

"One of the four cardinal sins in the monastic order of the Buddha--after unchastity, theft, and killing--was laying claim to miraculous powers. it is related that Kakyamuni once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had wasted twenty years of his human existence in learning how to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 158)

"Something is listening, and I listen, too: who is it that intrudes here? Who is breathing? i picka fern to see its spores, cast it away, and am filled in that instant with misgiving: the great sins, so the Sherpas say, are to pick wild flowers and to threaten children. My voice murmurs its regret, a strange sound that deepens the intrusion. I look about me--who is it that spoke? and who is listening? Who is this ever-present 'I' that is not me?"

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.141)

"Fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained. It is just at the moment of seeming fulfillment that we sense irrevocable betrayal, like a great wave rising silently behind us."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 138)

"Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by air pollution and the glare of artificial light; for my children's children, the power, peace, and healing of the night will be obliterated."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 126)

"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 inseperable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.118)

"The mountains had been a nural field of activity where, playing onthe 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."

This same mountaineer [Maurice Herzog], 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."

-Maurice Herzog, Annapurna (1953)

quoted in Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pgs. 117)

"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."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.117)

"Meditation represents the foundation of the universe to which all returns, as in the stillness of the dead of night, the stillness between tides and winds, the stillness of the instant before Creation. In this 'void,' this dynamic state of rest, without impediments, lies ultimate reality, and here one's own true nature is reborn, in a return from what Buddhists speak of as 'great death.'"

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.94)

"To live with a saint is not difficult, for a saint makes no comparisons, but saintlike aspiration presents problems."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg.79)

"Whether joyful or dark, the drug vision can be astonishing, but eventually this vision will repeat itself, until even the magic show grows boring...Drugs can clear away the past, enhance the present; toward the inner garden, they can only point the way. Lacking the temper of ascetic discipline, the drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life. 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."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 48)

"The one danger of the mystical search: there is no way back without doing oneself harm. Many paths appear, but once the way is taken, it must be followed to the end."

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (pg. 46)