Introduction
You often feel trapped by modern distractions and crave a deeper connection to wild nature and authentic spiritual meaning. You might search for stillness in a noisy world, yet struggle to reconcile the demands of daily life with a longing for transcendent truth.
Peter Matthiessen addresses this tension by recounting a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile expedition into the remote Dolpo region of the Himalayas alongside field biologist George Schaller. The central idea is that a physical journey through harsh mountain terrain can intertwine with a spiritual quest to observe elusive wildlife and attain inner peace.
The book blends rigorous ecological tracking with Zen philosophy and Tibetan Buddhist practice. As you read, you will explore how outer landscapes mirror inner transformation.
- How do you balance scientific inquiry with mystical awareness?
- What can the habits of remote wildlife teach you about human suffering?
- How does the discipline of high-altitude trekking quiet the restless mind?
1. Northward and Westward
The expedition begins with a journey through Nepal's ecological crisis, setting the stage for an exploration of Buddhist philosophy, Sherpa ethics, and the convergence of modern physics with ancient Vedic unity.
Peter Matthiessen joined George Schaller to walk over two hundred and fifty miles from Pokhara around the Dhaulagiri peaks to Dolpo. George Schaller wanted to confirm whether the bharal is closer to a goat than a sheep by observing them during their autumn rut, near Shey Gompa where the lama forbade hunting. Where bharal are numerous, snow leopards are also expected to appear. Only two Westerners had laid eyes on the Himalayan snow leopard in the past twenty-five years.
Conservation and Ecology
Nepal faces a severe ecological crisis due to rapid deforestation, soil erosion, and livestock grazing. With primitive agriculture and steep terrain, Nepal suffers from extreme erosion as forests are cut down for food and fuel. Peasants burn livestock dung instead of returning it to the soil as manure, causing soil to compact, turn to dust, and wash away during the monsoon floods.
Asia is 15 to 20 years behind East Africa in conservation attitudes. Pakistan has only 3 percent of its territory left in forest.
Sherpas and Tibetan porters embody a profound spiritual calm and lack of selfishness rooted in Buddhist karma. Because of their belief in karma and Mahayana teachings, Sherpas serve selflessly without bitterness, focusing on the action itself rather than the reward or attainment. Despite heavy loads and wretched pay of about one dollar a day, the Sherpa porters help the travelers cheerfully and take care of them first when conditions get rough. The porters carry up to eighty pounds braced with a tump line.
Buddhist Philosophy and Zen
Sakyamuni Buddha formulated the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path to cure human suffering through inner transformation. Sakyamuni realized that existence is inseparable from sorrow caused by craving, and peace is attained by extinguishing craving through the Eight-fold Path, meditation, and achieving prajna or transcendent knowing. Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini in the sixth century B.C. and ended his days at Kusinagara at age eighty after attaining enlightenment near Gaya beneath a pipal tree.
You must follow disciplined steps along the path:
- Pay right attention to understanding, intentions, speech, and actions
- Maintain right livelihood, effort, and mindfulness
- Practice right concentration through sitting yoga to unify the self
Zen Buddhism discards dogmatic scriptures and intellectual constructs to focus entirely on direct apprehension of the infinite in the present moment. Founded by Bodhidharma in A.D. 527 when he carried the teaching from India to China, Zen encourages followers to ignore sectarian disputes and intellectualizing, returning instead to intense meditation to realize one's true Buddha-nature. When Sakyamuni held up a single lotus flower in silence, Kasapa smiled in complete understanding of the unified nature of existence.
You can apply direct realization through simple rules:
- Kill the Buddha and ignore intellectualized dogmas
- Eat when you eat, sleep when you sleep
Inner Search and Science
Psychedelic drugs can clear away past emotional residues and point toward the inner garden, but they remain a dream and cannot replace disciplined inner work. While hallucinogens like mescaline and LSD provide profound visions that shatter mental armor, they act as an artificial chemical mist that ultimately maintains the separation of the ego from true experience. The author experimented with yajé or ayahuasca in Peru and used phenol alkaloids like LSD and mescaline for a decade alongside Deborah Love before realizing drugs were only a temporary magic show.
Modern physics converges with ancient Vedic and Buddhist insights by viewing the universe not as isolated objects, but as an undivided web of energy and processes. Both mystics and modern physicists recognize that sensory reality is an illusion or Maya, and that all matter and time are merely temporary aggregations of a pervasive universal energy. Einstein noted that intuition was crucial to his thinking and that his theory of relativity could be readily explained to Hopi Indians whose language treats time and space as a single field. Four billion years duration represents only one day in the existence of the Creator according to Asian sages.
2. Mountain Mysticism and Practice
High-altitude trekking demands physical endurance while opening the mind to meditation, mantra recitation, and the confrontation of fear and death through disciplined spiritual awareness.
Spiritual Practice and Meditation
Meditation serves not to answer eternal questions, but to obliterate the ego and intuit the true nature of existence as dynamic emptiness. By clearing intellect, emotions, and senses, the individual self dissolves into a formless flux where dualities like life and death, past and future, lose meaning. This state of rest and void is the foundation of the universe and true nature.
The author compares this inner stillness to Zen paintings of the sennin, ancient mountain sages who dance and read pure white scrolls.
- Seek realization through inner stillness achieved in sitting yoga
- Displace the ego by filling being with the object of concentration
- Empty out the mind to return to the pure stillness of a seashell or flower petal
Facing terror and making peace with death requires active mental discipline, such as the Tantric practice of embracing what one most fears. Trusting life ultimately means making peace with death. By forcing oneself to look over precipices or meditate on repulsive or terrifying things, one overcomes the terror of death and realizes the holiness of all creation.
The Tibetan poet-saint Milarepa made a headrest of his mother's decayed corpse in her fallen hut and lay upon it for seven days in deep samadhi.
- Force oneself to look over the precipice when facing vertigo
- Pay minute attention to small details of the present moment
Reciting a mantra with each step anchors the mind in the present moment and invokes universal compassion. Intoning the sacred mantra dedicated to the Great Compassionate Bodhisattva helps maintain vibrant awareness, treating the present moment as if it were the last.
Phu-Tsering constantly chanted the mantra during difficult mountain treks, and the author adopted it for each step on the trail.
- Recite OM MANI PADME HUM one word for each step while walking
Tantric Buddhism integrates all aspects of human existence, including physical and sensual desires, into the path of spiritual growth. Rejecting the pessimistic fear of desire, Tantra teaches the non-duality of all experience. Everything from sensual union to difficult physical trials can dissolve the illusion of separate identity when approached with detached awareness.
The author reflects on how historical Tantric practices embraced extreme rites like chöd to break down mental barriers.
Wildlife and Mountain Disciplines
Advanced yogic disciplines can alter physical weight and gravity through intense mental concentration on breath and wind energy. The traditional practice of lung-gom permits adepts to glide along mountain ledges with uncanny swiftness and certainty. It involves suppressing normal consciousness while keeping eyes fixed on a single distant point.
The author watches local B'on-pos pass effortlessly over a terrifyingly narrow, precipitous cliff ledge in a trance-like state.
- Neither speak nor look from side to side when practicing wind-concentration
- Keep eyes fixed on a single distant object
The snow leopard is exceptionally rare, solitary, and equipped with natural camouflage that makes it virtually impossible to spot even at close range. Snow leopards inhabit high altitudes from 5,000 to 18,000 feet. They are solitary hunters with pale misty gray coats, enormous paws, and thick tails used for balance and warmth.
George Schaller spent years of searching and saw only two adults and one cub before finally filming them in Pakistan in 1970 and 1976.
Credible footprints and sighting reports suggest an unknown primate species inhabits the deep, impenetrable Himalayan cloud forests. Despite skepticism from many scientists, reports of large, broad primate footprints and reddish-brown hairy figures align with accounts of the yeti, distinct from bears or langurs.
British mountaineer Eric Shipton photographed clear yeti footprints on Everest in 1951, convincing George Schaller of the animal's existence.
High-altitude mountain crossings require careful gear management, physical stamina, and adaptation to extreme weather conditions. Crossing Himalayan passes involves extreme physical exertion, risk of snow blindness, and unpredictable weather that can trap travelers without adequate food or fuel.
The expedition successfully carries loads over the Kang La pass at nearly 18,000 feet, enduring snowstorms and steep ice slopes.
- Cut thin willow wands to mark the trail across snowfields
- Carry sleeping bags and emergency gear on high altitude crossings
3. At Crystal Mountain
Sacred mountains like the Crystal Mountain draw people from far and wide not through scientific metrics like altitude or the modern urge to conquer, but through an invisible, subtle magnet of religious devotion. In winter, the peak's powerful shape makes it appear to be forging through the blue sky. Pilgrims undergo untold hardships to worship at the center of this sacred power, ignoring scientific altitude facts in favor of a purely religious attitude.
In summer, pilgrims from all over Dolpo and beyond come to make a prescribed circle around the Crystal Mountain and attend a holy festival at Shey Gompa.
Reaching the sacred Crystal Mountain and the monastery at Shey reveals the living reality of Tibetan Buddhism, embodied by the crippled lama Karma Tupjuk and explored through rigorous meditation and ecological observation of blue sheep and wolves.
The Kalachakra Tantrism of Tibetan Buddhism splits peaceful Buddha aspects into wrathful counterparts, personifying the disintegrating forces of the cosmos to teach detachment from worldly existence. Deities like Avalokita are also perceived as Mahakala, the Lord of Death, who wears skulls and human skins to terrify those clinging to samsara while liberating those who can die to their past to be reborn. The Kagyu sect established by Lama Marpa and transmitted to Milarepa retained this pantheon, emphasizing meditative discipline over ritual.
Sacred Mountains and Monasteries
The ascetic disciplines of the Karma-Kagyu sect mirror Zen Buddhism by discarding metaphysical speculation and religious trappings in favor of the direct, steep Short Path of prolonged solitary meditation. This intuitive experience over priestly ritual represents the pure essence of Buddhism. The Crystal Monastery's affiliation with this sect provides a powerful setting for your personal meditation practice.
At minus 12 degrees Centigrade, you maintain a daily morning routine of sutra chanting outside your tent in freezing temperatures:
- Drag down parka into sleeping bag to warm it before dawn
- Sit up in meditation posture
- Perform a sutra chanting service for about forty-five minutes, including Kannon and Heart Sutras
High-altitude hermitages perched on sheer canyon cliffs provide the ultimate isolated environment for spiritual practitioners to pursue total mental detachment. Tsakang consists of small stone structures plastered to the rock wall where solitary monks live under vows of silence, facing extreme elements and panoramic views of snow and sky. You visit Tsakang and meet two bronze-skinned monks, a youth patching boots and an ageless man, who maintain absolute calm and silence.
True spiritual realization is embodied in the joyful acceptance of reality, perfectly demonstrated by an incarnate lama living a crippled existence in total isolation. Karma Tupjuk, recognized as the tulku reincarnation of the Kagyu lineage, chose a hermit's life. Despite being crippled by arthritis for a decade, he radiates profound happiness and deep equanimity.
When asked by the interpreter if he is happy living alone on the mountain with twisted legs, the fifty-two-year-old Lama laughs heartily and throws his arms wide to the sky, declaring it wonderful especially since he has no choice.
Ecology and Meditation at Shey
The Himalayan blue sheep, or bharal, exhibits an evolutionary riddle by straddling the morphological and behavioral fence between true sheep and true goats. While looking very like a sheep, bharal share goatlike skull bones, dewclaws, and leg markings. Observing their rutting behavior, such as vertical tail-raising, rump-rubbing, and head-on crashing rather than sheep-like shoving, helps clarify their ancestral lineage.
George Schaller observes mixed herds near Shey to document male-on-male mounting, urine-checking, and head-butting clashes among a population estimated between 175 and 200 animals.
Asian timber wolves roam the high plateau in packs, acting as apex predators that severely restrict the movement and local distribution of foxes, snow leopards, and blue sheep. The presence of a five-member wolf pack explains the absence of fox signs at lower altitudes and forces blue sheep to remain close to steep river cliffs rather than graze in open country. A five-wolf pack is observed hunting and playing on the barren hills near Shey, relentlessly chasing a blue sheep across snow patches and steep rocks before the animal barely escapes onto a narrow ledge.
The ultimate purpose of meditation and wilderness immersion is not seeking future enlightenment, but cultivating continuous mindfulness and undivided attention in the unextraordinary present moment.
By stripping away modern distractions, letters, and comforts, the mind clears like a bell, allowing you to realize that the self, mountains, rivers, and the universe are completely interconnected in the immediate present. You repeatedly find that attempting to capture or retain the beauty of Shey through notes fails, because true being lies simply in doing one thing entirely at a time, such as taking a tin cup into your hand.
You train the mind through concrete actions:
- Regulate breath during meditation until breathing becomes nearly imperceptible
- Empty the mind of past and future concerns
- Pay strict attention to ordinary, present-moment actions and physical sensations without clinging to thoughts
4. The Way Home
Crossing the high Himalayan passes requires grueling physical effort, careful navigation of freezing rivers, and coping with unpredictable weather conditions. You scale the 16,900-foot eastern pass and descend through icy canyons.
The grueling return journey across freezing high passes brings encounters with illness, medical help, and unwavering companions like Tukten, culminating in George Schaller's sighting of the snow leopard and a return to the present moment.
Matthiessen, Tukten, and Dawa cross the Namdo Pass and Bugu La while dealing with freezing river crossings, missing bridges, and Dawa's sudden dysentery and internal bleeding. The altitude recorded at the summit cairn by GS is 17,500 feet, and the Bugu La stands at 16,575 feet. Four days pass as you cross three high passes.
Encountering a Japanese mountaineering expedition at Murwa provides unexpected medical assistance for a sick porter. At Murwa, Dr. Eiji Kawamura and his team treat Dawa with bright blue pills and provide preventive doses to Matthiessen and the sherpas. The Japanese expedition recently climbed the Kanjiroba peak, which reaches 23,000 feet.
Tukten exemplifies a calm, uncomplaining acceptance of hardship that serves as a living embodiment of spiritual principles. Tukten happily warmly wears spare clothes provided by Matthiessen without ever asking for them, cheerfully manages camp duties despite being robbed at Ring-mo, and dances joyfully at Saldang. Sherpa tradition views the yeti not merely as a wild creature, but as a man-creature linked to ancient religious guardians. Tukten demonstrates the yeti's call by crying out Kak-kak-kak KAI-ee! in the Zuwa Gorge.
Leopard Sightings and Return
True spiritual freedom and the realization of paradise exist only in the present moment, stripped of future expectations. Matthiessen experiences moments of transcendent peace while walking the trails and reflecting on his experiences, despite his earlier anger and despair. Re-entering civilization after months in the wilderness brings a jarring transition marked by bureaucratic checks, urban noise, and bittersweet farewells. Matthiessen pays off his sherpas at the Jumla airstrip, where Dawa draws his name for the first time, and later says goodbye to Tukten outside a Kathmandu hotel. Eleven days pass during the walking time from Murwa to Jumla, and the distance to the Bodhinath stupa from Kathmandu is four miles.
George Schaller's return trek through a severe blizzard ultimately results in a rare sighting of a snow leopard. On December 10, a snow leopard jumps up ahead of GS in patchy snow near the eastern arm of Phoksumdo Lake. Snow depth reaches three inches on December 8, and GS arrives in Jumla on December 15. Six snow leopards are estimated for the Shey-Saldang-Phoksumdo region.
Recommendations by wildlife ecologist Rodney Jackson and Dr. George Schaller resulted in the establishment of the Shey Wildlife Reserve in Nepal. Dr. Schaller's recommendation leads to the creation of the 160-square-mile reserve. Wildlife ecologist Rodney Jackson conducts a snow leopard survey in the Langu River region of Mugu, west of Dolpo, during the winter of 1976-77, covering an area of approximately 200 square miles. The maximum number of snow leopards left in Nepal is estimated at 120, while international import and export bans reduce the value of a leopard pelt to a hunter to 10 dollars.
Despite legal protection, snow leopards and musk deer face severe hunting pressures in regions like Mugu due to traditional practices and unregulated trade. During Jackson's stay in the region, local hunters kill two out of three local snow leopards and wound the third, complaining that they destroyed six or seven just two years prior. Trade in musk deer pods serves as a vital income source while local hunting traditions outlast waning Buddhist influences.
10 Key Ideas
- Peter Matthiessen undertook a 250-mile Himalayan expedition into the Dolpo region with field biologist George Schaller to track elusive wildlife and pursue inner peace.
- Nepal suffers from an extreme ecological crisis driven by rapid deforestation, soil erosion, primitive agriculture, and livestock grazing.
- Sakyamuni Buddha formulated the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path to cure human suffering through inner transformation.
- Sherpa porters and Tibetan porters embody a profound spiritual calm and lack of selfishness rooted in Buddhist karma.
- Zen Buddhism discards dogmatic scriptures and intellectual constructs to focus entirely on direct apprehension of the infinite in the present moment.
- Meditation serves not to answer eternal questions, but to obliterate the ego and intuit the true nature of existence as dynamic emptiness.
- Tantric Buddhism integrates all aspects of human existence, including physical and sensual desires, into the path of spiritual growth through disciplines like chöd.
- Reciting the sacred mantra OM MANI PADME HUM with each step anchors the mind in the present moment and invokes universal compassion.
- The snow leopard is an exceptionally rare, solitary, and naturally camouflaged predator that inhabits high altitudes from 5,000 to 18,000 feet.
- True spiritual freedom and the realization of paradise exist only in the present moment, stripped of future expectations and modern distractions.