The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  Belief in the tulku principle is a relatively recent tradition, made retroactive: thus, the Dalai Lamas, who did not exist until the sixteenth century, are considered to be tulkus of Chen-resigs. Karma Tupjuk is regarded as the true reincarnation of certain great lamas of the Kagyu lineage, from the Indian sage Tilopa to the Lama Marpa, and from Marpa through nine centuries to Tuptok Sang Hisay. Like Milarepa and many other Kagyu-Karma-pas, he has chosen a hermit's life of solitary meditation, which being the "Short Path" to true knowledge is therefore the supreme form of existence. But to renounce the world in this way requires the ultimate discipline, as well as exceptional power and inner resources, and my admiration is mingled with regret that, by comparison, my own dedication is halfhearted and too late.

  Long ago, Karma Tupjnk retreated to Tsakang, where he expects to pass the remainder of his life. Until ten years ago, he liked to walk around the mountain, but since that time he has become crippled by what appears to be arthritis, and moves painfully on twisted legs on two crutch canes. Even so, he seems cheerful, open, natural, and strong, and as he talks, he smiles at Crystal Mountain, which sails on the western sky over our heads.

  The monastery must be very old, the Lama thinks, much older than the present buildings, to judge from the age and number of the prayer stones; most of the prayer flags in the Dolpo region are printed on ancient wood blocks kept at Shey. A thousand years ago, the old scripts say, a great yogin named Drutob Senge Yeshe18 arrived here on a flying snow leopard to convert to Buddhism a wild folk ruled by a dread mountain god. Aided by snake-beings, the mountain god resisted this conversion, but the snow leopard reproduced itself one hundred and eight times, and the mountain god was overcome. Drutob Senge Yeshe made the mountain god a Protector of the Dharma and transformed an undistinguished summit into this crystal mountain that is sacred throughout all of Dolpo and beyond.

  The Lama displays the long horn of a Tibetan antelope, which he brought back years ago from the northern plain of Tibet known as the Khang. The Sikkim stag whose antlers adorn Shey Gompa is also a creature of the Khang, he says, as is a certain "horse-like" animal—presumably the wild ass. As for the argah (Ovis ammon: the best-known race is the Marco Polo sheep), such animals were here just a few years ago—he points at the Somdo mountainsides above the village. I wanted to bellow all this news across the valleys to GS. Sao, as the snow leopard calls itself, he has seen often on these trails below Tsakang, which got its name from the red color of its clay. The smaller hermitage, on the cliffs farther north, is called Dölma-jang or the Green Tara—"goddess of girls," Jang-bu informs me. (The Green Tara is an honorary name of the Nepali princess who, with another wife, the White Tara, made a Buddhist of Sron Tsan Gampo, the great seventh-century long of Tibet.) A solitary trapa lives at Dölma-jang, but he has gone away to beg for food. Dölma-jang, which hides the meditation cave of Drutob Senge Yeshe, is thought to be the oldest building in the region. Last year a fine statue of the Green Tara was stolen from that hermitage by wandering Kham-pas, which helps to explain why the people at Shey were so wary of our presence.

  Rising painfully, the Lama hobbles out upon a stone platform that overhangs the cliff and squats to urinate through a neat triangular hole, into the ravine; as if to enjoy this small shift in his view, he gazes cheerfully about him, his tulku pee drop sparkling in the sun upon the stone.

  Presently we are led into the gompa, through small dark rooms full of barley, oil, red peppers, and the like, all given to Karma Tupjuk by his people. The lamasery owns farmland at Saldang, worked by share-croppers who bring it half the produce, but most of its tea and yak butter and tsampa come as offerings. Karma Tupjuk mounts a log ladder to a room on the second floor that contains a brazier and some large copper pots and urns. He removes the top from a canister of water, laying it down on a pile of dung chips while rinsing his hands. Then he enters the the little prayer room that looks out over the snows through its bright blue window. On the walls of the prayer room hang two fine thankas, or cloth paintings, and the altar wall has figures in both brass and bronze of Karma-pa, the founder of this subsect, as well as Dorje-Chang, Sakyamuni, and Chen-resigs. Surprisingly, a large statue of Padma Sambhava occupies the very center of the altar, which is heaped with offerings of highly colored cakes, wax-paper flowers, and brass goblets full of barley grains. On both sides are shelves of ancient scrolls, or ''books," as well as thankas (the old thankas on the wall are in poor repair, and these rolled-up ones must be even more decrepit). The walls all around are crowded with frescoes and religious paintings, and each comer is cluttered with old treasures, all but lost in musty darkness. Lighting incense, the Lama opens a small trunk and takes out sacramental cakes, which he presents in silence, with a smile.

  NOVEMBER 13

  The last fortnight has been clear and warm, day after day, but early this morning there were wisps of cloud which could mean a change in weather. On these last mornings, just an hour after sunrise, sun and moon are in perfect equilibrium above the snows east and west. High cirrus in the north, seen yesterday foretold a drop in temperature: it is —11° Centigrade this morning. The wind on Somdo mountain has hard bite in it, and the lizards have withdrawn into the earth.

  From sunrise to sundown I move with the Shey herd which has been joined in recent days by the band of rams. The herd is up at snow line, to the eastward; this Somdo summit must be close to 17,000 feet. Climbing, I traverse the slopes with my zigzag technique stopping and stooping and otherwise signaling to the browsing sheep that I am but a harmless dung-seeker, like other Homo sapiens of their acquaintance. By the time I arrive at snow line they have started to lie down; I reach a lookout knoll perhaps 150 yards away. The animals will feed again in the midmorning, then rest through the noon lull, then feed intermittently until sundown.

  A little past ten, the sheep begin to browse, at the same time paying close attention to the other animals. Though now and then two females chase each other, the activity is mostly among the males—male mounting male, and rampant rump-rubbing, and some mild shoving. There is a "pairing" that becomes apparent when one spends the entire day with a single group: the males that test each other, shove, mount, butt, and rub, also seem to feed and rest together, and furthermore, are very like in size of horn, development of black display markings, and dominance position in the herd; these trial confrontations and approaches are almost never between mismatched pairs.

  Nibbling the snow patches and pawing up dust before settling gracefully, bent foreknees first, in the warm sun of a hollow, out of the wind, the animals have let me come so close that I can admire their orange eyes and the delicate techniques of horn-tip scratching, as well as the bizarre activities centered upon the hindquarters of both sexes: at this early stage in the progress of the rut, the recipients of rump-rub and urine-check pay little heed or none to their admirers. Meanwhile, the yearlings scamper prettily to stay out of the reach of itching adults. There has been no real fighting or advanced sexual display of the sort that is beginning to be seen in the western herds, although occasionally a male will approach a female slowly, his extended neck held low, in what GS calls "low-stretch" behavior, an overture to copulation. Since the Somdo herd has grown so used to me that I can observe it comfortably, without binoculars, it is a pity that I must leave before full rut

  Toward noon there comes cold wind from the south-east, quite disagreeable on this bare scree slope without cover, and getting chilled, I ease the herd downhill and to the westward, simply by crowding it a little, on the lookout for a rock or tussock shelter. The herd pauses for an hour or more on a flat ridge while I lie back snugly against my rucksack in a dense clump of honeysuckle, just above: directly below lies the Crystal Monastery, with the home mountains all around, the sky, and as the sheep browse, I chew dry bread, in this wonderful immersion in pure sheep-ness.

  In midafternoon, in a series of exciting flurries, I move the sheep farther downhill again to where GS, on his return from the Tsakang slopes, might study them without m
aking a long climb. Then Old Sonam, out hunting dung, scares the herd back toward the east. The animals are flighty now, and so I stalk them with more care, rounding the mountain and crawling upwind to a tussock within sixty yards of the small rise where they stand at attention, staring the wrong way. Now and then, a head turns in my direction; I stay motionless, and they do not flare. The creatures are so very tense that even the heavy horns bristle with life. No muscle moves. For minute after minute I watch the roughing of their coats by the mountain wind.

  Thinking to move them back toward the west, I sit up slowly, and all turn to look. But the contrary beasts, having fled so often for no reason, confound me once again. With a man popping up almost on top of them, they now relax a little, and begin to feed, as if the suspense of not knowing where I was had been what bothered them. They even start to lie down again. Cold and fed up with their lack of behavior, abandoning all hope of witnessing goatish outrages unknown to science, I shoo them rudely toward the village. This time they run a quarter mile, straight to a rock outcrop just east of the first houses.

  I descend the mountain to the Saldang path, turn west toward Shey. Already the path lies in twilight shadow, but the rocks on which the blue sheep stand, not thirty yards above, are in full sun. And now these creatures give a wild sunset display, the early rut that I had waited for all day. Old males spring off their rocks to challenge other males, and chase them off, and young males do as much for the females and young, and even the females butt at one another. Unlike the true sheep, which forges straight ahead, the bharal, in its confrontations, rears up and runs on the hind legs before crashing down into the impact, as true goats do—just the sort of evidence that GS has come so far to find. The whole herd of thirty-one joins in the melee, and in their quick springs from rock to rock, the goat in them is plain. Then one kicks loose a large stone from the crest, scattering the animals below, and in an instant, the whole herd is still.

  Gold-eyed horned heads peer down out of the Himalayan blue as, in the silence, a last pebble bounces down the slope and comes to rest just at my feet.

  The bharal await me with the calm regard of ages.

  Have you seen us now? Have you perceived us?

  The sun is retreating up the mountain, and still the creatures stand transfixed on their monument of rock.

  Quickly I walk into the monastery to tell GS he can study his Pseudois by poking his head out of his tent. But a note says that in the hope of photographing the snow leopard he will sleep tonight across the river near the Tsakang trail: with a creature as wary as this leopard, there is no place for two.

  If all else fails, GS will send Jang-bu to Saldang to buy an old goat as leopard bait. I long to see the snow leopard, yet to glimpse it by camera flash, at night, crouched on a bait, is not to see it. If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. If not, then somehow (and I don t understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it, in the same way that I am not ready to resolve my koan; and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappoiated. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain —that is enough.

  At supper the Sherpas, in good spirits, include me as best they can in their conversation, but after a while I bury myself in these notes, so that they can talk comfortably among themselves. Usually this means listening to Tukten, who holds the others rapt for hours at a time with that deep soft voice of his, his guru's hands extended in a hypnotizing way over the flames. I love to watch our evil monk with his yellow Mongol eyes and feral ears, and it is rare that I look at him when he isn't watching me. One day I will ask this yellow-eyed Tukten if, in some other incarnation, he has not been a snow leopard, or an old blue sheep on the slopes of Shey; he would be at no loss for an answer. At supper, he regards me with that Bodhisattva smile that would shine impartially on rape or resurrection—this is the gaze that he shares with the wild animals.

  NOVEMBER 14

  Crossing Black River, I climb the west slope trail, out of the night canyon, into the sun. In the matted juniper is a small busy bird, the Tibetan tit-warbler, blue-gray with a rufous cap, and an insistent call note, t-sip: what can it be insisting on, so near the winter?

  On this bright morning, under the old moon, leopard prints are fresh as petals on the trail. But perhaps two hundred yards short of the trip line to GS's camera, the tracks appear to end, as if the cat had jumped aside into the juniper; the two prints closer to the trip line had been made the day before. Beyond the next cairn, where the path rounds the ridge high above the river and enters the steep snow-covered ravine below Tsakang, more fresh tracks are visible in the snow, as if the snow leopard had cut across the ridge to avoid the trip line, and resumed the path higher up, in this next ravine. Close by one print is an imprint of lost ages, a fernlike fossil brachiopod in a broken stone.

  From Tsakang comes the weird thump of a damaru, or prayer drum, sometimes constructed of two human skulls; this instrument and the kangling trumpet, carved from the human thigh bone, are used in Tantrism to deepen meditation, not through the encouragement of morbid thoughts but as reminders that our time on earth is fleeting. Or perhaps this is the hollow echo of the cavern water, dripping down into me copper canister; I cannot be sure. But the extraordinary sound brings the wild landscape to attention: somewhere on this mountainside the leopard listens.

  High on the ridge above Tsakang, I see a blue spot where GS is tracking; I come up with him in the next hour. "It fooled me," he calls by way of greeting. "Turned up the valley just below the trip line, then over the ridge, not one hundred yards from where I was lying, and down onto the path again—typical." He shifts his binoculars to the Tsakang herd, which has now been joined by the smaller bands of the west slope. "I've lost the trail now, but that leopard is right here right this minute, watching us." His words are borne out by the sheep, which break into short skittish runs as the wind makes its midmorning shift, then flee the rock and thorn of this bare ridge, plunging across deep crusted snow with hollow booming blows, in flight to a point high up on the Crystal Mountain. Blue sheep do not run from man like that even when driven.

  The snow leopard is a strong presence; its vertical pupils and small stilled breaths are no more than a snow cock's glide away. GS murmurs, "Unless it moves, we are not going to see it, not even on the snow—those creatures are really something." With our binoculars, we study the barren ridge face, foot by foot. Then he says, "You know something? We've seen so much, maybe it's better if there are some things that we don't see." He seems startled by his own remark, and I wonder if he means this as I take it—that we have been spared the desolation of success, the doubt: is this really what we came so far to see?

  When I say, That was the haiku-writer speaking," he knows just what I mean, and we both laugh. GS strikes me as much less dogmatic, more open to the unexplained than he was two months ago. In Kathmandu, he might have been suspicious of this haiku, written on our journey by himself:

  Cloud-men beneath loads.

  A dark line of tracks in snow.

  Suddenly nothing.

  Because his sheep, spooked by the leopard, have fled to the high snows, GS accompanies me on my last visit to Tsakang. There we are met by Jang-bu, who has come as an interpreter, and by Tukten, who alone among the sherpas has curiosity enough to cross the river and climb up to Tsakang of his own accord. Even that "gay and lovable fellow," as GS once said of Phu-Tsering, "hasn't the slightest curiosity about what I am doing; he'll stand behind me for two hours while I'm looking and taking notes and not ask a single question."

  Once again, the Lama of Shey lets us wait on the stone terrace, but this time—for we are here by invitation—the aspirant monk Takla has prepared sun-dried green yak cheese in a coarse powder, with tsampa and buttered tea, called so-cha, served in blue china cups in the mountain sun. The sharp green cheese and
bitter tea, flavored with salt and rancid yak butter, give character to the tsampa, and in the cool air, this hermit's meal is very very good.

  Takla lays out red-striped carpeting for us to sit upon, and eventually the Lama comes, wrapped in his wolf skin. Jang-bu seems wary in the Lama's presence, whereas Tukten is calm and easy and at the same time deferential; for the first time since I have known him, indoors or out, he doffs his raffish cap, revealing a monk's tonsure of close-cropped hair. Tukten does most of the translation as we show the Lama pictures from our books and talk animatedly for several hours. Lama Tupjuk asks about Tibetan lamas in America, and I tell him about Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche (rinpoche, or "precious one," signifies a high lama), of his own Karma-pa sect, who left Tibet at the age of thirteen and now teaches in Vermont and Colorado. For GS, he repeats what he had told me about the snow leopard and the argali, pointing across Black River at the slopes of Somdo.

  Horns high, flanks taut, the blue sheep have begun a slow descent off the Crystal mountain, in a beautiful curved line etched on the snow. The leopard is gone— perhaps they saw it go. Through binoculars, now and again, a ram can be seen to rear up wildly as if dancing on the snow, then run forward on hind legs and descend again, to crash its horns against those of a rival.