The purpose of our life is to help others through it. Peter Matthiessen More Quotes by Peter Matthiessen More Quotes From Peter Matthiessen When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present, and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. Peter Matthiessen children past ideas Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being. Peter Matthiessen simplicity simple secret You do your best work when you're not conscious of yourself. Peter Matthiessen self-conscious best-work consciousness In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience. Peter Matthiessen writing fiction ideas I like to hear and smell the countryside, the land that my characters inhabit. I don’t want these characters to step off the page, I want them to step out of the landscape. Peter Matthiessen smell land character Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr's The Windward Road. Peter Matthiessen love-life curiosity writing It is said in Java that the tiger's hearing is so acute that hunters must keep their nose hairs cut lest the tiger hear the breath whistle through their nostrils. Peter Matthiessen cutting listening hair The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-in-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. Peter Matthiessen meditation-practice enlightenment events Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came. Peter Matthiessen air joy water The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension, and once again, the warm tears freeze upon my face. These rocks and mountains, all this matter, the snow itself, the air- the earth is ringing. All is moving, full of power, full of light. Peter Matthiessen rocks light moving My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending. Peter Matthiessen eye feelings book The mystical perception (which is only "mystical" if reality is limited to what can be measured by the intellect and senses) is remarkably consistent in all ages and all places. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux...have the mind screens knocked away to see there is no real edge to anything, that in the endless interpenetration of the universe, a molecular flow, a cosmic energy shimmers in all stone and steel as well as flesh. Peter Matthiessen perception real mind Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all. Peter Matthiessen clear simplicity simple In zazen, one is one's present self, what one was, and what one will be, all at once. Peter Matthiessen self It's a simplification to say that the men [during Stone Age] went to war to maintain their dominance over the women. The men would help dig agricultural ditches because they were superb farmers. That was very heavy lifting work. But then they just preened themselves, and put bird-of-paradise plumes [in their hair], and smoked dope. Peter Matthiessen dope men war I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black or white, every last one is pretty pink on the inside and they are all impossible. Peter Matthiessen skin-color black white Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions? For in this pure action, this pure moving of the bird, there is no time, no space, but only the free doing-being of this very moment -now! Peter Matthiessen eye feet moving I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority. Peter Matthiessen inferiority used fiction 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 sunset dark rivers 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. Peter Matthiessen rocks nature time
