"Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. But soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, at the bottom of each breath, there is a hollow place that is filled with longing. We become seekers without knowing what we seek."
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Novelists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesTravel writersEnvironmentalists from the United StatesNaturalists from the United States
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Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen (22 May 1927 – 5 April 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction.
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