In his first summer, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for
near an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came
and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying,
birdsong and sweet smell of privet and rose. The child was not
observing; he was at rest in the very centre of the universe, a part of
things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the
primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour
through.
Ecstasy is identity with all existence, and ecstacy showed
in his bright paintings; like the Aurignacian hunter, who became the
deer he drew on the cave wall, there was no "self" to separate him from
the bird or flower. The same spontaneous identity with the object is
achieved in the bold sumi paintings of Japan -- a strong expression of
Zen culture, since to become one with whatever one does is a true
realization of the Way.
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. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder,
the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life 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, The Snow Leopard (1979), p47 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)
