"I meditate for the last time on this……" — Peter Matthiessen
"I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me - S-A-A-O! - then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free."
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Peter Matthiessen
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35 Quotes by Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen has 35 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of…
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Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had…
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Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being.
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This world is painted on a wild dark metal
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There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before…
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My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending.
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Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when…
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The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension,…
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I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black…
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Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure…
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Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time,…
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In the clearness of this Himalayan air, mountains draw near, and in such splendor, tears come quietly to my eyes…
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A friend to all is a friend to none.
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