The Snow Leopard, written by Peter Mathiessen, is the chronicle of his and his friend and field biologist’s months-long journey deep into Nepal’s Himalayan range. G.S. is there to study sheep populations and behaviors, but both are taking advantage of the circumstance and aim to catch a glimpse of the legendary high-altitude feline.

It’s immediately apparent, within the first pages of the book, that Peter is a spiritualist and that this journey, as so many are, is equally an internal one. The day-by-day account of the perilous trek through both brutal and enchanting conditions, matched with Peter and G.S.’s knowledge of the fauna that lives in this remote area of the world, make for an exhilarating read. All of a sudden, you’re walking alongside them on the 6-inch ledge of the world’s tallest mountains. You’re haggling with sherpas, speaking to Himalayan Lamas, eating yak meat, drinking Arak, and riding the ups and downs of a true adventure.

Here are 117 quotes that stuck out as. Enjoy!

1. 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. 

2. “How wondrous, how mysterious! I carry fuel, I draw water.” - P’ang Chu-Shih

3. Ecstasy is identity with all existence.

4. To become one with whatever one does is a true expression of the Way.

5. Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, which must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterrupted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same.

6. “Man has closed himself up, so he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake

7. “To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being, he has failed to realize his life’s meaning.” - Carl Jung

8. Many paths appear, but once the way is taken, it must be followed to the end. 

9. “One plods along in a state of amazement, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping.”  - Chongyam Trumpa

10. (He) refuses to believe that the western mind can truly absorb nonlinear eastern perceptions; he shares the view of many in the West that Eastern thought evades “reality” and therefore lacks the courage of existence.

11. “All the way to heaven is heaven,” Saint Catherine, and that is the very breath of Zen, which does not elevate divinity above the common miracles of every day.

12. And then, almost everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence to life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology. Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaninglessness, for no amount of “progress“ can take its place. We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now are full of dread.

13. “Nothing exists but atoms and the void,“ so wrote Democritus. And it is “void “that underlies the Eastern teachings – not emptiness or absence, but the uncreated that proceeded all creation, the beginningless potential of all things.

14. The physicist seeks to understand reality, while the mystic is trained to experience it directly.

15. “I am everywhere and in everything: I am the Sun and stars. I am time and space and I am he. When I am everywhere, where can I move? When there is no past and future, and I am eternal existence, then where is time?” - Evans Wentz

16. “Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.” - Carl Sagan

17. Meditation represents the foundation of the universe to which all returns.

18. Milarepa discovers the decayed corpse of his mother, no more than a mound of dirt and rags in her fallen hut; shaken by grief and horror, he remembers the instruction of his guru, the Lama Marpa, to embrace all that most fear or find repugnant. The better to realize that everything in the universe, being inseparably related, is therefore holy. And so he makes a head rest of the sad remains of the erstwhile White Garland of the Nyang (name of his mother) and lies upon them for seven days, in a deep, clear state of samadhi. This Tantric discipline to overcome ideas of “horror,“ often performed while sitting on a corpse or in the graveyard in the dark of night, is known as chöd.

19. When one pays attention to the present, there is great pleasure in awareness of small things.

20. (Peter meditates) The earth twitches and the mountains shimmer, as if all molecules had been set free: the blue sky rings.

21. Nen Is mindfulness, attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as if this present moment were one’s last.

22. One intuits truth in the zen teachings, even those that are scarcely understood.

23. Where could that vast smile reside if not in my own being?

24. (Peter speaking about satori) To poke a finger through the wall is not enough-the whole wall must be brought down with a crash!

25. The earth is nudging me. And still I do not see.

26. Simplicity is the whole secret of wellbeing.

27. The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible.

28. My head has cleared in these weeks free of the intrusions – mail, telephones, people and their needs – and I respond to things spontaneously, without defensive or self-conscious screens. Still, all this feeling is astonishing: not so long ago I could say truthfully I had not shed a tear in 20 years years.

29. “Is it the flag that moves? Is it the wind? Neither,” said Hui-Neng, the sixth Ch’an Buddhist patriarch of China. “It is your mind.”

30. Buddhist have adapted and adopted local deities rather than eradicate the old religions, so that even the most pernicious demon might be sanctified as a “protector of the Dharma.”

31. The only real time is that of the observer, who carries with him his own time in space. In these mountains, we have fallen behind history.

32. And of course it is this clinging, the tightness of panic, that gets people killed: “to clutch,” in ancient Egyptian, “to clutch the mountain,” in Assyrian, were euphemisms that signified “to die.“

33. After a pause, he warned me, “expect nothing.” The Roshi (Peter’s Zen teacher) was pleased that there would be but two of us-a condition of true pilgrimage. He instructed me to recite the Kannon sutra as I walked among the mountains, and gave me a Koan (Zen Paradox, not to be solved by intellect, that may bring about a sudden dissolution of logical thought and clear the way for direct seeing into the heart of existence): All the peaks are covered with snow – why is this one bare?”

34. Childhood is full of mystery and promise, and perhaps the life fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained.”

35. I lie sleepless, shouting hopelessly, as the exalted dog in the house above, crazed by the pale tents in the moonlight, barks unceasingly from midnight until dawn, without the smallest loss of tone or volume.

36. The great sins, so the sherpa say, are to pick wildflowers and to threaten children.

37. Because we cannot speak over the river, we merely smile, and he puts his sickle down and lifts his hands, placing his palms together in simple greeting. I do the same; we bow, and turn away.

38. As one of the townsmen says, a little sheepishly, “I am a Buddhist, but I walk around the prayer stones the wrong way.”

39. I also dread the snow in the high passes that might trap us in the treeless waste beyond. These fears just worsen matters, but there’s no sense pretending they are not there.

40. All day I have thought about the eerie trance state of these people as they passed me on the ledge, and wonder if this might be a primitive form of the Tantric discipline called Lung-Gom, which permits the adept to glide along with uncanny sweetness and certainty, even at night. “The walker must neither speak, nor look from side to side. He must keep his eyes fixed on a single distant object and never allow his attention to be attracted by anything else. When the trance has been reached, the normal consciousness is for the greater part suppressed, it remains sufficiently alive to keep the man aware of the obstacles in his way, and mindful of his direction and goal.

41. One of the four cardinal sins in the monastic order of the Buddha-after unchastity, theft, and killing-was laying claim to miraculous powers.

42. Sukyamuni once dismissed as of small consequence a feet of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had wasted 20 years of his human existence in learning how to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.

43. I hate this black ravine; thick clouds are moving north, with thread of snow, and already the porters are pointing toward the past, shaking their heads. Yet I feel calm, and ready to accept whatever comes, and therefore happy.

44. Tantra concerned itself with the totality of existence, the apprehension of the whole universe within men’s being. All thoughts and actions, including the sex energies, were channeled into spiritual growth, with the transcendence of all opposites the goal.… All things and actions were equal, interwoven, from the “lowliest” physical functions to the “highest” spiritual yearning, and even consumption of dead human flesh and filth was recommended as an ultimate embrace of all existence.

45. As I learn more about this man (G.S, Peter’s hiking companion), I see that such acts are not bad manners but the intense respect of a private soul for the privacy of others. On a hard journey, with no respite from each other, such consideration (extended also to the Sherpas) is far more valuable than “good manners,” which sometimes hide a mean spirit beneath, and may evaporate when things get rough.

46. At the snowfields depot there is nothing but snow and silence, wind and blue. I rest in the warm sun, enveloped in the soft shroud of white emptiness; my presence in such emptiness seems noticed, although no one is here.

47. My anger is wasting energy I badly need, and realizing this, it is easy to put aside.

48. Simultaneously, I am myself, the child I was, the old man I will be.

49. The spell of silence on this place is warning that no man belongs here.

50. The last Japanese character written in this life by Soem Roshi’s venerable teacher, and the last words spoken, was the word for “dream.”

51. As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest Mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds.” - Rabbi Nachmann of Bratzlav

52. Mahakala, or The Great Time, the Lord of Death – the Tantric personification of the disintegrating forces of the cosmos, often depicted wearing skulls and human skin, brandishing darts, and stamping upon copulating humankind. Mahakala will liberate those who can die to their past in order to be reborn, and terrify those who cling to the worldly existence of Samsara, the thirsting and quenching and thirsting anew that is symbolized by the priest’s skull cup full of blood.

53. In its ascetic disciplines and spare teachings, which discouraged metaphysical speculation in favor of prolonged and solitary meditation, Karma-Pa (a form of Tibetan Buddhism) is almost identical to that of Zen, which also emphasizes intuitive experience over priestly ritual and doctrine. Both have been called the “short path” to Liberation, and although this direct path is difficult and steep, it is also the pure essence of Buddhism, which all religious trappings cut away.”

54. On my way here, (the Crystal Monastery) I entertain visions of myself in monkish garb attending the Lama in his ancient mysteries, and getting to light the butter lamps into the bargain; I suppose I had hoped he would be my teacher. That the Gompa (small temple) is locked and Lama away might be read as a karmic reprimand to spiritual ambition, a silent teaching to this ego that still insists upon itself, like the poor bleat of a goat on the north wind.

55. In the small chamber inside one stupa are two rows of ancient prayer wheels, five to a row, set up in such a way that 10 rounds of Om Mani Padme Hum may be turned simultaneously by the visitor; each wheel represents the wheel of dharma, first set in motion by the Buddha, and also the rotation of the universe.

56. There is so much that enchants me in this spare, silent space that I move softly so as not to break a spell.

57. Condemned by cold to spend 12 hours in my sleeping bag each night, I find myself inclined to my Zen practice.

58. At the head of the ravine, the trail crosses an icy stream and climbs up to the hermitage, which is perched on a ledge against great cliffs of blue and red. A smaller hermitage, more isolated still, sits on the corner of a precipice still farther north. Such locations are traditional for spiritual pursuit in the Tibetan region, “proudly isolated on summits beaten  by the wind, admits wild landscapes, as if bidding defiance to invisible foes at the four corners of the horizon.

59. This hermitage is a true Gompa, which is not really a monastery but “a dwelling in the solitude,” located wherever possible against a cliff that overlooks the lake or stream, and often inhabited by a solitary monk.

60. One day I shall meditate in falling snow.

61. Though I am blind to it, the truth is near, in the reality of what I sit on–rocks. These hard rocks instruct my bones in what my brain could never grasp in the heart Sutra, that “form is emptiness, and emptiness is form”– the void, the emptiness of blue black space, contained in everything. Sometimes when I meditate, the big rocks dance.

61. The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not.”

62. Regard as one, this life, the next life, and the life between,” wrote Milarepa.

63. Once Sonam was an infant with red cheeks, like Sunny Poti. Now she works close in the last light, as cold descends under a faint half moon. Soon night will come, and she will creep through her narrow door and eat a little barley; what does she dream of until daybreak, when she goes out on her endless quest for dung? Perhaps she knows better than to think at all, but goes simply about the business of survival, like the wolf; survival is her way of meditation.”

64. Sunrise, illuminating my thin tent, transforms it from an old refuse bag of brown plastic to a strange womb like balloon. True, it remains a wretched tent, stained, raggedy, and sagging, yet I find I have grown fond of it, for it is home.

65. “They’re ought to be a leopard scat out on the next point – it’s just that sort of place they choose.” And there it is, all but glowing in the path, right beneath the prayer stones of the stupa – the jewel in the heart of the lotus, I think, unaccountably. And nod at my friend, impressed. “Isn’t that something? “GS says, “to be so delighted with a pile of crap? “

66. Perhaps, in the days left to us, we shall never see the snow leopard but it seems certain that the leopard will see us.

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

68. This view is my first and last in my present incarnation of the old B’on Monastery called Samling, for the deep gorge Black Canyon is impassible, and the way over the mountains blocked by snow.

69. The snow across the river close, and the rocks and peaks, the serpentine Blackstream, snows, sky, stars, the firmament – I’ll ring like the bell of Dorje-Chang. “Now! Here is the secret! Now!”

70. I keep on climbing.

71. Blue and white or the celestial colors of the B’on Sky God, he was seen as an embodiment of space and light, and the creatures of the upper air become B’on Symbols – the Griffin, the mythical Garuda, and the dragon.

72. There is also a custom called “air burial, “in which the body of the deceased is set out on a wild crag such as this one, to be rendered and devoured by the wild beasts; when only the bones are left, these are broken and ground down into powder, then mixed into lumps of dough, to be set out again for passing birds. That all things return into the elements, death into life.

73. I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched.

74. Also, I love the common miracles – the murmur of my friends that evening, the cost of food, the hardship in simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do.

75. Gradually my mind has cleared itself.

76. That we talk little here, I am never alone; I am returning to myself.

77. Glimpsing one’s true nature is a kind of home going, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon – the home going that needs no home, like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad, it turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.

78. When we arrive, the Lama of Shey is inside chanting sutras, But his attendant sits outside, still cutting and sorting the small store potatoes; he is an aspiring monk, or Trapa, who is clear gaze makes him look much younger than he is.

79. Familiar things, losing the form assigned to them, begin to spin, and the center does not hold, because we search for it outside instead of in.

80. Lighting incense, the Lama opens a small trunk and takes out sacramental cakes, which he presents in silence, with a smile.

81. A note says that in the hope of photographing the snow leopard GS will sleep tonight across the river near the Tsakang Trail: with a creature as wary as this leopard, there is no place for two. If all else fails, GS will send Jang-Bu to Saldang to buy an old goat as leopard bait. I long to see the snow leopard, yet to glimpse it by camera flash, at night, crouched on a bait, is not to see it. 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 then the not-seeing, I am content. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain – that is enough.

81. I love to watch our evil monk with his yellow Mongol eyes and feral ears, and it is rare that I look at him when he isn’t watching me.

82. At supper, Tukten regards me with that Bodhisattva smile that would shine impartially on rape or resurrection – this is the gaze that he shares with the wild animals.

83. From Tsakang comes the weird thump of a Damaru, or prayer drum, sometimes constructed of two human skulls; this instrument and the Kangling Trumpet, carved from the human thigh bone, are used in Tantrism to deepen meditation, not through the encouragement of morbid thoughts but as reminders that our time on earth is fleeting.

84. The snow leopard is a strong presence; it’s vertical pupils and small steeled breaths are no more than a snow cock’s glide away. GS murmurs, “unless it moves, we are not going to see it, not even on the snow – these creatures are really something.“ With our binoculars, we study the barren ridge face, foot by the foot. Then he says, “You know something? We’ve seen so much, maybe it’s better if there are some things that we don’t see.”

85. Cloud-men beneath loads. A dark line of tracks in snow. Suddenly nothing.

86. The Lama of the Crystal Monastery appears to be a very happy man, and yet I wonder how he feels about his isolation in the silences of Tsakang, which he has not left in eight years now and, because of his legs, may never leave again. Since Jang-Bu Seems uncomfortable with the Lama or with himself or perhaps with us, I tell him not to inquire on this point if it seems to him impertinent, but after a moment Jang-Bu does so. And this holy man of great directness and simplicity, big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way at Jang-Bu’s question. Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belong to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high Sun and dancing sheep, and cries, “ Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!”

87. Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn’t that wonderful?

88. It is wonderful how the presence of this creature draws the whole landscape to a point, From the glint of light on the old horns of a sheep to the ring of a pebble frozen on the ground.

89. Perhaps I shall take a few shards of broken prayers stones; the river rocks will stay where they belong.

90. With the wind and cold, a restlessness has come, and I find myself hoarding my last chocolate for the journey back across the mountains, forever getting ready for life instead of living it each day.

91. The part of me that is bothered by the unopened letters in my rucksack, that longs to see my children, to drink wine, make love, be clean and comfortable again – that part is already facing South, over the mountains. This makes me sad, and so I stare about me, trying to etch into this journal the sense of Shey that is so precious, aware that all such effort is in vain; the beauty of this place must be cheerfully abandoned.

92. To strive for permanence in what I think I have perceived is to miss the point.

93. 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. To be anywhere else is “to paint eyeballs on chaos.“

94. Last night at supper, 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.”

95. GS feels that our journey has had the quality of adventure because we depended entirely on ourselves; that this is an old-fashioned expedition in the sense that we are completely out of touch with our own world, with our own century, for that matter.

96. Take care, oh pilgrim, lest you discriminate against the so-called lower functions, for these, too, contain the inherent miracle of being. Did not one of the great masters attain enlightenment upon hearing the splash of his own turd into the water? Even transparency, oh pilgrim, may be a hindrance if one clings to it. One must not linger on the Crystal Mountain.

97. I climb to my lookout, happy and sad in the dim instinct that these mountains are my home. But “only the awakened ones remember their many births and deaths,“ and I can hear no whisperings of other lives.

98. “Oh servant, where dust thou seek me? Lo! I am beside thee. I am neither in the temple nor in the mosque, neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in yoga, nor in renunciation. If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see me. Thou shalt meet me in a moment’s time.” - Songs of Kabir

99. “Do not be amazed by the true dragon.” - Dogen Zenji

100. “No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.” - D (Peter’s ex-wife)

101. “The flower grows without mistakes. A man must grow himself, until he understands the intelligence of the flower.” - D

102. Had I stayed at Shey until December, the snow leopard might have shown itself at last. These doubts fill me with despair. In worrying about the future, I despoil the present; in my escape, I leave a true freedom behind.

103. Where for want of unfrozen air in which to bathe, I vilified the Sun that dodged my tent. I seem to have lost all resilience, not to mention a sense of humor-can this be the dread of the return to lowland life?”

104. The path I followed breathlessly has faded among stones; in spiritual ambition, I have neglected my children and done myself harm, and there is no way back. Nor has anything changed. I look forward to nothing.

105. At Raka it was dead of winter, at Murwa near winter, in Rohagon the deep autumn; in the valley that leads down to Tribikot, the walnut trees are still in leaf, and green ferns grow among the copper ones along the watercourses, and I meet a Hoopoe; swallows and butterflies flit through the warm air. And so I travel against time, in the weary light of dying summer.

106. Near blinded by the old dead scale on the new eye. It is difficult to adjust because I do not know who is adjusting; I am no longer that old person and not yet the new.

107. With the past evaporated, the future pointless, and all expectation worn away, I begin to experience that now that is spoken of by the great teachers.

108. All animals and wayfarers are Tukten’s friends, and listen to him carefully, yet he rarely speaks except when spoken to, and never seems to speak too much; without obtruding, he becomes the center of each situation, so naturally does he belong where the moment finds him.

109. Coming up towards the lightless huts, I set myself for dogs. But there is Tukten’s silhouette, And I am touched; he has watched me come across the valley, and now stands waiting on the track, as if taking the evening air.”

110. This is the last Buddhist village we shall see, and even here, the faith is dying out; the prayer walls are ancient, and no one has added a new stone in many years. For this is the Kaliyuga, the dark age, when all the great faiths of mankind are on the wane.

111. I feel bad, all the more so because the Sherpa’s clothing is an adequate, and Tukten’s  especially: what little he had was stolen at Ringmo on his way back from Jumla. He is happy to wear whatever I can spare him, though not once has he asked for it. Tukten never seems to suffer, a true Repa.

112. “I think the yeti is a Buddhist.” When I ask him if he means a holy man, a hermit with strange powers, a Naljorpa, he just shrugs, refusing with uncustomary stubbornness to explain further.

113. Tukten says, “He excepts his life, and will go on wandering until it ends.”

114. Without ever attempting to speak about it, we perceive life in the same way, or rather, I perceive it in the way that Tukten lives it. In his life, in the moment, in his freedom from attachments, in the simplicity of his every day example, Tuktwn has taught me over and over, he is the teacher that I hoped to find: I used to say this to myself as a kind of instinctive joke, but now I wonder if it is not true. “When you are ready,” Buddhists say, “the teacher will appear.” In the way he watched me, in the way he smiled, he was awaiting me; had I been ready, he may have led me far enough along the path, “to see the snow leopard.”

115. Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined – how is it that the safe return brings such regret?”

116. In the gaunt, brown face in the mirror – unseen since last September – the blue eyes in a monkish skull seem eerily clear, but this is the face of a man I do not know.

117. From a thief I buy an antique image, in painted clay, of an 11-faced Avalokita, head split apart in his great distress at the debased condition of mankind.