Comments on the Bodhisattva of Compassion in The
Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen
[103] Phu-Tsering [. . .] is wearing his amulets outside his shirt,
but tucks them away, embarrassed, when I ask about them; they were
given him by his lama, he murmurs, feeling much better when I show
him that I, too, wear an "amulet," a talisman given to
me by the Zen master Soen Roshi, "my lama in Japan." He
admires this smooth plum pit on which a whole ten-phrase sutra is
inscribed in minute characters, and is awed when I tell him that
the sutra honors the most revered of all those mythical embodiments
of Buddhahood called Bodhisattvas, the one known to Phu-Tsering
as “Chen-resigs” (literally, sPyan ras gzigs), who is
the Divine Protector of Tibet and is invoked by OM MANI PADME HUM.
In the Japanese sutra inscribed upon this plum pit, this Bodhisattva
is Kanzeon or Kannon (in China, Kuan Yin; in southeast Asia, Quon
Am). To Hindus He is Padmapani, and in Sanskrit, He is Avalokita
Ishvara, the Lord Who Looks Down (in compassion). Like all Bodhisattvas,
Avalokita represents "the divine within" sought by mystics
of all faiths, and has been called the Lord Who is Seen Within.
Like most good Buddhists, Phu-Tsering chants OM MANI PADME HUM each
day, and in time of stress; he also clings to fear of demons, and
is frightened by the dark. Walking behind GS one night in eastern
Nepal, he chanted this mantra so incessantly that GS longed to throw
[104] him off the cliff. But the faithful believe that the invocation
of any deity by his mantra will draw benevolent attention, and since
OM MANI PADME HUM is dedicated to the Great Compassionate Chen-resigs,
it is found inscribed on prayer stones, prayer wheels, prayer flags,
and wild rocks throughout the Buddhist Himalaya.
Pronounced in Tibet Aum—Ma-ni—Pay-may—Hung, this
mantra may be translated: Om! The jewel in the Heart of the Lotus!
Hum! The deep, resonant Om is all sound and silence throughout time,
the roar of eternity and also the great stillness of pure being;
when intoned with the prescribed vibrations, it invokes the All
that is otherwise inexpressible. The mani is the "adamantine
diamond" of the Void—the primordial, pure, and indestructible
essence of existence beyond all matter or even antimatter, all phenomena,
all change, and all becoming. Padme—in the lotus—is
the world of phenomena, samsara, unfolding with spiritual progress
to reveal beneath the leaves of delusion the mani-jewel of nirvana,
that lies not apart from daily life but at its heart. Hum has no
literal meaning, and is variously interpreted (as is all of this
great mantra, about which whole volumes have been written). Perhaps
it is simply a rhythmic exhortation, completing the mantra and inspiring
the chanter, a declaration of being, of Is-ness, symbolized by the
Buddha's gesture of touching the earth at the moment of Enlightenment.
It is! It exists! All that is or was or will ever be is right here
in this moment! Now!
I go down along the canyon rim and sit still against a rock. Northward,
a snow cone rises on the sky, and snowfields roll over the high
horizon into the deepening blue. Where the Saure plunges into its
ravine, a sheer and awesome wall writhes with weird patterns of
snow and shadow. The emptiness and silence of snow mountains [105]
quickly bring about those states of consciousness that occur in
the mind-emptying of meditation, and no doubt high altitude has
an effect, for my eye perceives the world as fixed or fluid, as
it wishes. The earth twitches, and the mountains shimmer, as if
all molecules had been set free: the blue sky rings. Perhaps what
I hear is the "music of the spheres," what Hindus call
the breathing of the Creator and astrophysicists the "sighing"
of the sun.
Before me on a simple stone I place this plum pit, minutely inscribed
to the Lord Who is Seen Within:
Kanzeon! Devotion to Buddha!
We are one with Buddha
In cause-and-effect related to all Buddhas
And to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.
Our true Bodhisattva Nature is Eternal, Joyful, Selfless, Pure.
So let us chant each morning Kanzeon, with Nen!
Every evening Kanzeon, with Nen!
Nen, Nen arises from Mind.
Nen, Nen is not separate from Mind.
Kanzeon is Kannon or Avalokita. Cause-and-effect is karma. Dharma
is the great wheel of Universal Law set in motion by Sakyamuni Buddha;
and Sangha is the community of Buddha's followers, past and present.
"Eternal, Joyful, Selfless, Pure" are the qualities of
nirvana in which the Dream-state, "the Many," of samsara,
is transmuted into Awakening, "the One." Nen is mindfulness,
attention to the present with a quality of vibrant awareness, as
if this present moment were one's last. Mind is Universal Mind of
which individual minds are part, in the way of waves; the waves
do not derive from water, they are water, in fleeting forms that
are not the same and yet not different from the whole.
• • •
[118] The stupa is a monument, shrine, and reliquary that traditionally
derives from the Buddha's tomb, but has come to symbolize existence.
On a square red base (signifying earth) sits a large white dome
(water) with a sort of spire (fire) crowned with a lunar crescent
(air) and a solar disc (space); such structures guard the approaches
to towns and villages throughout the Buddhist Himalaya. Larger stupas
may enclose a room decorated with mandalas and iconographic paintings:
the inner west wall of the Tarakot stupa, for example, portrays
three Bodhisattvas, while on the east wall are three Buddhas. One
is a Buddha of past ages (the light-giver, Dipankara), another the
historical Buddha (Sakyamuni), the third the Buddha-to-come (Maitreya,
who exists at present as a Bodhisattva but will be reborn as the
Buddha in a future age)
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