“The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of present, nothing-but-the-present,… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“A true experience of prajna corresponds to “enlightenment” or liberation—not change, but transformation—a profound vision of his identity with universal life, past,… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks,… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present,… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“I sit in meditation…and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In what is now known as Bodh Gaya…a Buddhist temple stands beside an ancient pipal, descended from that bodhi tree, or “enlightenment… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith.… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all. — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“...experience was static in the valley; it was older than time itself, for time was a thing of but two generations, dated by moons… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it “has no patience with… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
For some time I watch the coming of the night? Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful but it can never be sculpture. Captive to… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “I was there!”-surely that is… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
