Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography

Chapter 6: A Pilgrimage to Fashion a Zen Self

Like Heat-Moon, Matthiessen begins a journey in grief, leaving for a two-month trek through the Himalayas not long after his wife dies of cancer. But unlike Heat-Moon, who sets out with no plan other than to drive the blue highways of America in a loop, Matthiessen intends to make a religious pilgrimage to the Crystal Mountain in Inner Dolpo, Nepal. A student of Zen Buddhism, he hopes to visit the Lama of Shey, the most revered of all the rinpoches, the “precious ones” of Tibetan Buddhism. To go step by step across the greatest mountain range in the world, Matthiessen believes, will be “a true pilgrimage, a journey of the heart.” In The Snow Leopard, his award-winning account of his journey, Matthiessen embeds a text of grieving and recovery within a journalistic account of his Zen pilgrimage. The book blends description of a Tibetan world that few Westerners have ever entered and research about Zen into an adventure narrative filled with physical hardships, brushes with death, difficulties with weather, and “treacherous natives ”—adventures enough to make a Hollywood movie. But the main action, less suitable for a movie, unfolds in Matthiessen’s heart and mind as he travels, seeking acceptance of death and a meaning for his future life. For the epigraph to book , “Westward,” Matthiessen uses a passage about pilgrims from the Lama Govinda’s book The Way of the White Clouds: “Just as a white summer cloud, in harmony with heaven and earth freely floats in the blue sky from horizon to A Pilgrimage to Fashion a Zen Self Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard 6 upv.allister.000-000.cx2 8/9/01 2:10 PM Page 125 horizon following the breath of the atmosphere—in the same way the pilgrim abandons himself to the breath of the greater life that . . . leads him beyond the farthest horizons to an aim which is already present within him, though yet hidden from his sight” (). By immersing himself in a Zen culture and then undertaking a pilgrimage in Tibet, Matthiessen hopes to go beyond horizons that he knows; by giving up control, by attempting to feel free and ready to pursue whatever lies ahead, Matthiessen hopes to discover the aim present but hidden within him, a life purpose to help him move through mourning. Like Barich and Heat-Moon, Matthiessen at the time of departure wishes to convert pain, anger, and depression into a new story. His journey seems less escapist than Barich going to the racetrack or Heat-Moon driving the blue highways, in that Matthiessen chooses a quest linked to his spirituality. Trekking through the Himalayas— talking, reading, thinking, writing—Matthiessen confronts directly the relations between human culture, the self, and nature. He recognizes the difficulties he has in shedding psychological defenses and entering the world “wholly present” because he is an American, and a man. At the end of his pilgrimage he perceives that, like a snake shedding its skin, he is “no longer that old person and not yet the new” (). The literary act that describes his journey and his grief work will become ultimately that new skin, elegantly showing what the journey teaches, also demonstrating what it costs. Questions emerge with this journey and its construction into narrative: Can a Westerner truly absorb Eastern precepts, gain enlightenment, and convert Zen principles into a lived Zen life? Does the journalistic and autobiographical act conflict with the lived life? If the geographic setting is crucial for Matthiessen’s self-creation, can he return successfully to life in the United States? And, as with Heat-Moon, do the lessons of the road transfer? The spiritual forces surrounding the word pilgrimage have never had potency in American culture. Even the most noted religious pilgrims in American history, those early settlers at Plymouth Rock, did not follow the normative pattern of leaving, journeying to a sacred place, and returning home. In Protestant Christianity and American Catholicism, pilgrimage is largely absent compared with Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, whose followers are urged to visit holy places; Muslims are in fact obligated, if physically and financially able, to Refiguring the Map of Sorrow 126 upv.allister.000-000.cx2 8/9/01 2:10 PM Page 126 make at least one visit to Mecca. In this country, people routinely use pilgrimage in a secular, usually diminished way, as when a group goes on a “pilgrimage” to Hollywood...