“Life begins before a soul is born and commences once again with the act of dying, and as in the Afro-Asian symbol… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“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
I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very… — 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… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing - if this must… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“free life” as described by a mountaineer: “The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr's… — 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
And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
You see ... a man like me, a cautious man, has his life all figured out according to a pattern, and then… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“The glee of it. The ecstasy of It. I can't speak about this It because I know no word. It is just… — 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
