Last night I had a curious dream about Kanchenjunga. I was looking at the mountain and it was pure white, absolutely pure, especially the peaks that lie to the west. And I saw the pure beauty of their shape and outline, all in white. And I heard a voice saying — or got the clear idea of: “There is another side to the mountain.” I realized that it was turned around and everything was lined up differently. . . .

There is another side of Kanchenjunga and of every mountain — the side that has never been photographed and turned into post cards. That is the only side worth seeing.

(AJ 152–53)

Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever great surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action.

(AJ 296)

And the Buddha pointed to the earth and called it to witness that it did not belong to Mara, because he had just obtained enlightenment on it.

(AJ 341)

When great Nature sighs, we hear the winds

Which, noiseless in themselves,

Awaken voices from other beings,

Blowing on them.

(ii.I. WCZ 38)

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

(IEW 91)

Polonnaruwa with its vast area under trees. Fences. Few people. No beggars. A dirt road. Lost. . . . Distant mountains, like Yucatan.

The path dips down to Gal Vihara: a wide, quiet, hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. . . .

Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. . . . All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya . . . everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.

(AJ 233, 235–36)

I occasionally meet my own kind of Zen master, in passing, and for a brief moment. For example, the other day a bluebird sitting on a fence post suddenly took off after a wasp, dived for it, missed, and instantly returned to the same position on the fence post as if nothing had ever happened. A brief, split-second lesson in Zen . . . the birds never stop to say “I missed” because, in fact, whether they catch the wasp or not, they never miss.

(HGL 563)

The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.

(MZM 92)

[Chuang Tzu’s] respect for the wholeness of reality which cannot be seized in a definition. The real meaning of nature. One must respect nature before one can rise out of it to be a person.

(HGL 614, italics Merton’s)