The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.
Interpretation
Conservation reflects a higher level of civilization compared to exploiting natural resources.
In this quote, Peter Matthiessen emphasizes that true advancement in society is measured by our ability to conserve and protect the environment rather than by our tendency to exploit and damage it. He suggests that what was once considered progress, namely the exploitation of natural landscapes, is actually a misguided view, and that a civilization's worth is better judged by its commitment to sustainability and ecological preservation.
In practice
In an environmental summit when discussing sustainable practices.
Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions? For in this pure action, this pure moving of the bird, there is no time, no space, but only the free doing-being of this very moment -now!
Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?
I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me - S-A-A-O! - then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free.
The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was.
And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.
Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia; all force tends to persist
It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.
Believe nothing,_x000D_ _x000D_ No matter where you read it,_x000D_ _x000D_ Or who has said it,_x000D_ _x000D_ Not even if I have said it,_x000D_ _x000D_ Unless it agrees with your own reason_x000D_ _x000D_ And your own common sense.
I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.