The Moment

In his book 'The Snow Leopard', Peter Matthiessen experiences a moment of Zen-like inspiration whilst high in the dusty plateau beyond the Himalayas in the Dolpo region of north-western Nepal.

He attempts to put this experience into words.

"My foot slips on a narrow ledge: in that split second, as needles of fear pierce my heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret of true being. In this very breath that we now take lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us, what one lama refers to as "the precision and openess and intelligence of the present". 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."

Now, there's more than a faint whiff of cannabis spiced hippiness floating around this statement, and others like it in the book - elsewhere he has a number of digressions about his experiences with LSD. But such cynicism is deflated by Matthiessen's compelling honesty about both his search for this wisdom to constantly live in the 'now', and his equally constant weaknesses that prevent him from doing so.

But that's not my point.

It took Matthiessen more day thirty days of hard trekking beyond the Himalayas into the Tibetan plateau with only a fellow misanthrope and biologist, George Schaller, to attain this momentary insight. And this was back in 1973, when such insights, I reckon, were far easier to come by.

Try it today. In your office. Amidst your desk clutter and your email inbox or at home with nappies to be changed and the electrician coming around at 11 to fix the wiring on the toaster. The continual, irritating pressures of modern life don't allow for much communing with wolves and lammergeiers (a type of eagle, incidentally) and resplendent moments of piercing insight.

But you knew that already. And it's not my point either.

Farthest Dolpo in 1973 was, as Matthiessen puts it, 'like travelling back in time, a hundred years or more'. As their sojourn continued they were reduced to eating tsampas morning, noon and night, they couldn't get kerosene for love nor money, and had to cook using dried yak shite as fuel. They also used up all their candles which meant that when darkness fell, they had no light to read by, which, I suspect, for Matthiessen was probably the greatest hardship of all. The result is that he ended up thinking. And thinking a lot. About a lot of things. As there was feck all else to do. And, as I said, he had to trek thirty days in far flung Nepal in 1973, to achieve this.

So, at the end of this remarkable book, I came away, not enlightened, nor despairing of this life, but rather envious, envious of all that he experienced, and the knowledge that I never will.

And that is my point.