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"In 1973 Peter Matthiessen accompanied biologist George Schaller to Nepal in a study of Himalayan blue sheep and to search for the rare snow leopard. Matthiessen hoped, as well, to meet a revered Tibetan lama at an ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. Having recently lost his wife to cancer, and facing dangerous winter snowfalls and hazardous mountain terrain, he struggled with grief, regret, and fear while he attempted to better understand and practice Zen and Tibetan Buddhist teachings he had studied for several years. Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978) describes this personal pilgrimage as a search for self-transformation and enlightenment. As he traced his journey toward these geographical and spiritual goals, he portrayed habits that made it difficult to change and intense experiences that disclosed the possibility of a radically different way of being"--
List of contents
Introduction: A literary genre and some questions about self-transformation; 1. The origins of the genre: John Blofeld and Lama Govinda; 2. Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard and Nine-Headed Dragon River; 3. In a Zen monastery: Ambiguous failure and enlightenment; 4. Thomas Merton and Christian and Jewish pilgrims in Buddhist Asia; 5. Walking the Dharma on Shikoku and in India; 6. Trekking and tracking the self in Tibet; 7. Life-changing travels in the Tibetan diaspora; 8. Encounters with Theravada Buddhism; 9. Searching for Buddhism after Mao; Conclusion: Theories of no-self, stories about unselfing, and transformation.
About the author
John D. Barbour is Professor of Religion Emeritus at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he taught from 1982 to 2018 and served as Martin Marty Chair of Religion and the Academy and Boldt Chair in the Humanities. He has written four scholarly books, including Versions of Deconversion (1994) and The Value of Solitude (2004), and also Renunciation: A Novel (2013).
Summary
A gripping exploration of thirty notable travel memoirs, each recounting a journey to a Buddhist culture. These Western travel narratives, the best known of which is Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, describe journeys and religious experiences that often led to self-transformation and are interpreted through the Buddhist concept of 'no-self'.
