Eyes of the Snow Leopard
EYES OF THE SNOW LEOPARD
By the time Aaron found Ronin sitting outside the dojo with a cup of coffee, he had been thinking about the incident for most of the day.
He dropped into the chair beside him. “I heard something today.”
“That happens occasionally at Harvard.”
Aaron ignored him. “I was standing outside molecular biology. Two pre-meds were talking. One of them looked half dead. He said, ‘You sure have to work hard for recognition and success.’”
Ronin took another sip of coffee.
“That was it,” Aaron continued. “Recognition and success. He’s going to medical school, and he didn’t say anything about medicine. Nothing about healing, curing disease, becoming a great physician. Nothing. Recognition and success.”
“And that surprised you?”
Aaron thought about it. “No. That’s what’s so strange. A week ago I probably wouldn’t even have heard it.”
Ronin smiled slightly.
“It’s happening all the time now,” Aaron continued. “I hear things differently. People say something and suddenly I can see the assumptions underneath it. Someone talks about getting into the right graduate school, and I can almost see the status system behind the words. People argue politics, but half the time they aren’t arguing about the same reality. They’re defending different maps. Someone says something is obviously true and now I immediately wonder: obvious to whom? Based on what?”
His excitement increased as he talked. The change in him was exhilarating. It was as though Ronin had given him another sense, one that allowed him to perceive a layer of reality that had always been present but invisible. Things that had once seemed inexplicable now became almost obvious. He could see the machinery underneath them.
Ronin watched him for a moment. “Careful.”
Aaron laughed. “I knew you’d say that.”
“You’ve discovered a tool,” Ronin said. “And because the tool is powerful, you are beginning to think the man holding it is powerful.”
Aaron frowned, then smiled. “I am.”
“Yes.”
There was something irritating about the simplicity of the answer. Aaron had begun to recognize this technique. Ronin rarely knocked a student down when the student was perfectly capable of walking into the wall himself.
Still, the excitement remained. Aaron looked across the parking lot toward the university beyond it. “For the first time in my life, some things that used to seem completely irrational make sense. I can see the machinery.”
Ronin’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. What?”
Ronin took another drink. “Just remember that seeing someone else’s cage does not prove that you have escaped your own.”
That slowed him.
Aaron looked again toward Harvard, and the conversation he had overheard that morning returned to him. “The student bothered me for another reason. I was him. Not literally. I never wanted to be a doctor. But recognition. Success. Being somebody. I understood exactly what he meant.”
“And now?”
“Now I can see it.”
“That isn’t the same as being free of it.”
Aaron nodded. He understood the distinction, but something else had begun bothering him, something harder to identify. He sat quietly for a while, trying to find the words.
Finally he said, “So what?”
Ronin waited.
Aaron turned toward him. “Seriously. Suppose I become very good at this. Suppose I learn to see the assumptions, recognize the cargo, understand why people believe things that make no sense outside their worldview. So what?”
He gestured toward Harvard. “Those things gave people direction. Maybe it was borrowed direction, but it was direction. Get the degree. Get into medical school. Make money. Become important. Buy the house. Get recognized. Win.”
Aaron paused.
“I can see through it now, Ronin. But there’s nothing behind it.”
“A vacuum.”
“Yes.”
The word fit. “I’m not depressed. I’m not even lost exactly. In fact, I feel stronger than I did before. Freer. Like I’ve gotten rid of something I didn’t know I was carrying. But freedom from something isn’t the same as knowing what to do with the freedom.”
“No.”
“So what replaces it?”
Ronin looked at him for a moment. “Why do you assume it has to be replaced?”
Aaron frowned.
“You’re still thinking like the Cargo Cult.”
“That’s insulting.”
“It was intended to be.”
Aaron waited.
“The Cargo Cult wanted cargo,” Ronin said. “So they built the runway, the tower, the radios, the airplanes. They performed all the right actions. And every action made sense within their map.”
“But the map was wrong.”
“More precisely, the map failed to correspond adequately to the reality that produced the cargo. They weren’t stupid. They weren’t even aimless. They were extraordinarily purposeful.”
Aaron saw where this was going.
“They knew exactly what they wanted,” Ronin continued. “They just didn’t understand what they were doing.”
Aaron looked toward Harvard. “And you think that student is doing the same thing.”
“I think you should be careful before laughing at the islanders.”
“I’m not laughing at them.”
“Good. Because their runway is easier to see.”
Aaron smiled despite himself.
Ronin continued. “Recognition is real. Wealth is real. Status is real. They can get you things. Money can buy comfort. Status can provide security and influence. Recognition can open doors. A young man with wealth, status and ability will probably have more choices than one without them.”
“So there’s nothing wrong with pursuing them.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you have to distinguish between using something and serving it.”
Aaron became still.
“If you want money because you want to buy a house, build a company, educate your children, travel the world—fine. Money is a tool directed toward an objective. But if accumulating money becomes the objective itself, when do you have enough?”
Aaron shrugged. “Never, I suppose.”
“Recognition?”
“The same.”
“Status?”
Aaron nodded.
Ronin put down his coffee. “Then you have constructed a goal that continually retreats as you approach it.”
Aaron smiled. “The jackass and the corn cob.”
“Exactly.”
A farmer hangs the corn a foot in front of the animal’s nose. The jackass walks because the corn is always almost within reach. The mechanism works precisely because the animal never gets what it is pursuing.
Aaron looked toward the university again. “Harvard is a very sophisticated corn-cob factory.”
“That may be a little unfair to Harvard.”
“A little?”
“Very little.”
Aaron laughed.
“But don’t make the opposite mistake,” Ronin continued. “There is nothing noble about poverty, obscurity or failure. Rejecting wealth because other people worship wealth merely makes you dependent upon them in another direction.”
Aaron considered that. “So the issue is freedom.”
“Now you’re getting closer.”
“Freedom to choose where you aim.”
Ronin nodded. “Human beings come with drives. Desire. Fear. Sexuality. Competition. Attachment. Curiosity. The need for security. The need to belong. The urge to matter. You don’t become free by pretending those things aren’t there.”
“The human paradigm.”
“Yes. Think of it as pressure in a hose. The pressure is there. The question is where you point it.”
Aaron was quiet.
“And if you don’t choose?”
“Someone else points it for you.”
“Your family. Your class. Harvard. Advertising. Your friends. Your enemies. Your culture. They will all be happy to tell you what deserves your life.”
Aaron stared across the Yard.
Recognition and success.
The words sounded different now.
“So freedom isn’t having no direction.”
“No.”
“It’s becoming capable of choosing direction.”
“Better.”
Aaron leaned back. “But that still leaves my question.”
“Which one?”
“Where do you point the hose?”
Ronin smiled. “Now we’ve finally reached the interesting problem.”
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Ronin asked, “Have you seen The Last Samurai?”
Aaron stared at him. “That’s your answer?”
“Have you?”
“Of course.”
“What did Algren want at the beginning of the movie?”
Aaron thought about it. Nathan Algren had been a soldier without a war worth fighting, haunted by what he had done and disgusted by much of what surrounded him.
“Mostly he wanted to get drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because he couldn’t live with himself. He was angry. Disgusted. Broken.”
“And what changed him?”
“The Japanese.”
“That says nothing.”
“The village. The samurai. Katsumoto.”
“Closer.”
Aaron reconstructed the movie in his mind. “The way they lived.”
Ronin waited.
“The discipline. The training. The way they did ordinary things. Everything had form. Purpose.”
“What does Algren say about them?”
Aaron searched his memory. “Something about their dedication to perfection.”
Ronin nodded.
Aaron began to see it. “He wasn’t just learning swordsmanship.”
“No.”
“He was refining himself.”
“Yes.”
“Toward what?”
Ronin shrugged. “Perhaps that is the wrong question.”
Aaron looked annoyed.
“Think about Katsumoto,” Ronin said. “At the end, the Emperor wants to know how he died.”
Aaron remembered.
“And Algren’s answer is essentially: I’ll tell you how he lived.”
The sentence remained between them.
Ronin leaned forward. “That is a very different measurement of a human life.”
Aaron said nothing.
“Not what did he accumulate? Not how many people knew his name? Not what office did he hold? Not even: Did he win?”
“He didn’t win.”
“He won.”
Aaron looked at him.
Ronin let the contradiction sit there for a moment.
“All men die, Aaron. Very few live as Katsumoto lived. That was what Algren saw. Katsumoto and his men possessed something Algren had lost—a sense of purpose so deeply embedded in the way they lived that they were willing to die for it.”
Aaron was quiet.
“And more than that,” Ronin continued, “they didn’t suddenly discover it when death arrived. They practiced it every day. In the way they trained. The way they worked. The way they attended to ordinary things. They lived in such a manner that, when the moment came, they were already prepared to commit themselves completely.”
“To something greater than themselves.”
“Yes.”
Aaron looked down at his hands.
“So meaning isn’t the reward at the end.”
“Perhaps meaning is something expressed in the manner of living.”
“And purpose?”
“That requires direction.”
“Toward what?”
Ronin smiled. “You want me to hand you another map.”
Aaron caught himself.
“Damn.”
“Yes.”
“So I have to decide.”
“You have to become capable of deciding.”
Aaron looked at him sharply.
Ronin continued. “There are things you cannot genuinely choose while remaining exactly the person you are. Courage is useless as an abstraction. So is honor. Compassion. Truth. Justice. Beauty. Duty. You may admire them, quote them, put them on a wall. But serving a higher value may eventually demand something from you.”
“Sacrifice.”
“Sometimes.”
“Even your life.”
“Sometimes.”
Aaron thought again of Katsumoto.
“He had refined himself until he was capable of doing that.”
Ronin nodded. “Now you understand why the training matters.”
Aaron looked at him. “Karate.”
“Among other things.”
“It isn’t really about fighting.”
“It is absolutely about fighting.”
Aaron laughed.
“But fighting is a very deep thing,” Ronin continued. “You can see things in the dojo that are difficult to see anywhere else. Fear. Hesitation. The reluctance to commit. The mind wants to act, but something holds back. You begin the technique, then doubt it halfway through. And the moment is gone.”
Aaron knew exactly what he meant. Ronin had caught him doing it many times.
“That hesitation is not confined to fighting,” Ronin said. “You carry it with you.”
Aaron’s smile disappeared.
“The purpose of training is not to make you reckless. It is to strip away the hesitation that prevents complete action once action has been chosen. That takes time. Years, perhaps.”
“So Katsumoto—”
“Had practiced commitment long before the moment required his life.”
Ronin picked up his coffee again. “Training changes the instrument. Attention changes it. Discipline changes it. Experience changes it. If you are fortunate, suffering changes it. Slowly you become capable of things that were previously impossible for you.”
“And that gives life meaning?”
“No.”
Aaron frowned.
“Nothing automatically gives your life meaning. I am telling you that meaning and purpose require capacities. You cannot serve truth if you cannot tolerate discovering that you are wrong. You cannot serve another person if every desire must come after your own. You cannot stand for something if fear controls you. You cannot choose freely if you cannot see the forces choosing for you.”
Aaron sat very still.
“So the Cargo Cult matters.”
“Of course it matters.”
“Because you can’t choose your direction if you can’t see the map directing you.”
“Yes.”
“And seeing the map gives you freedom.”
“The possibility of freedom.”
Aaron smiled. “You never give anything away completely, do you?”
“No. I’m not giving you answers. I’m pointing.”
There was a long silence.
Then Aaron asked, “What did you choose?”
Ronin did not answer.
“You heard me.”
Ronin looked away toward the road.
Aaron smiled. “You ask me who I am. You put me in a goddamn Cargo Cult. You strip every identity I have off me, and now suddenly you’re shy?”
Something changed in Ronin’s face. The humor disappeared, and Aaron immediately sensed that he had stumbled into territory Ronin rarely entered.
“Years ago,” Ronin began, “I was probably close to where you are now. I had discarded a great many things. Some wisely. Some not. I understood more than I had before—or believed I did. I could see contradiction, hypocrisy, foolishness. I became very good at seeing the maps other people were trapped inside.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It should.”
Ronin looked down at his coffee. “There is a seduction in that. The man with eyes in the land of the blind possesses something enormously valuable. But sight alone does not tell him what deserves his life.”
Aaron listened.
“You can spend your entire life exposing illusions. You can become brilliant at explaining why everyone else is wrong. But eventually you confront the same question.”
Ronin looked directly at him.
“What will you do with your sight?”
Aaron felt something shift.
Ronin continued. “I had spent years trying to understand what the martial arts were pointing toward. I knew the words. Mushin. Zanshin. The Void. I could explain them. I could quote people who had spent their lives studying them.”
“But?”
Ronin smiled faintly.
“One afternoon I was walking through Griffith Park.”
Aaron waited.
“The zoo was being rebuilt, or part of it was. Some of the animals had been moved into temporary enclosures. I came to a cage that was too small.”
“What was in it?”
“A snow leopard.”
Aaron looked at him.
“It was a very large animal. At least that’s how I remember it. Maybe memory enlarged it over the years. But there was something different about it from the other animals.”
Ronin stopped, searching for language.
“It wasn’t pacing. It wasn’t performing for the people watching it. It wasn’t cowering. It was simply there. Completely there. Power without display. Alertness without agitation. Stillness that wasn’t passivity.”
He looked at Aaron.
“Then it looked at me.”
The quality of Ronin’s voice had changed. Aaron had heard him discuss martial arts, death, philosophy and fear without hesitation. Now he seemed to be trying to describe something for which he had never found adequate words.
“The eyes,” Ronin said.
“What about them?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Try.”
Ronin smiled faintly. “You sound like me.”
“I learned from the best.”
Ronin looked away again. “There was no request in them. No need for approval. No uncertainty about what it was. It wasn’t comparing itself with anything. It wasn’t trying to become something in the eyes of anyone watching. It was completely itself.”
Aaron felt a chill. Ronin was no longer describing an animal.
“At that point in my life,” Ronin continued, “I was still fighting everything—other people, institutions, ideas, myself. I thought strength meant winning.”
“And the leopard?”
Ronin looked directly at him.
“The leopard wasn’t trying to win anything.”
Aaron sat motionless.
“I had spent years trying to understand the mind-state of the martial artist. I could describe it. I could quote people. I could talk about mushin, zanshin, the Void. That animal didn’t know any of those words.”
Aaron understood before Ronin finished.
“You experienced it.”
“Yes.”
“An operational definition.”
Ronin smiled. “Exactly. For perhaps a few seconds, I saw what I had been trying to understand for years.”
Aaron considered the animal as Ronin had described it: the power, the stillness, the complete absence of performance.
“You wanted to be like the leopard?”
“No.” The answer was immediate. “I wanted that quality of being.”
“And that became your ideal?”
Ronin considered the word. “Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
“Because an ideal can become another corn cob.”
Aaron smiled.
“If I spent my life trying to become the snow leopard, I would merely have found another image to chase.”
“Then what did it give you?”
Ronin was silent for several seconds.
“A glimpse.”
“Of what?”
“Of something I knew was possible.”
Aaron waited.
“Not possible for me to become an animal. Possible for a human being to approach that quality of presence. To become less divided. Less governed by fear, vanity, applause, anger. More completely what he is. More capable of acting without all the noise.”
“The Void.”
“Perhaps.”
“And then?”
Ronin looked at him. “Then you return to the world.”
Aaron thought of The Last Samurai.
“To do what?”
“That depends upon what you find worthy of serving.”
Now Aaron understood the connection.
The snow leopard was not Ronin’s purpose. It could not tell him what cause was just, whom to love, what obligation to accept, or what sacrifice might someday be required of him. It showed him something different: a quality of being from which such choices might be made more freely.
“You refine the instrument.”
“Yes.”
“So that it can serve something beyond itself.”
Ronin nodded.
Aaron was quiet for a long time.
Then another question occurred to him.
“Did you achieve it?”
Ronin laughed.
“I still haven’t.”
The answer surprised Aaron more than anything else Ronin had said.
“Don’t make the mistake of turning me into something I’m not,” Ronin continued. “I become angry. I have known rage. I’ve been betrayed. I’ve been hurt. I’ve lost people I loved. I’ve wanted revenge. Whatever you imagine I am, I am still a man.”
Aaron said nothing. Ronin had never spoken to him this way before. There was no lesson-master standing above the pupil now. There was simply an older man telling a younger one something that had cost him years to learn.
“I am not the snow leopard,” Ronin said. “But when something pulls me far enough away from myself, I remember the eyes.”
“The eyes of the snow leopard.”
“Yes.”
“And that brings you back?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it merely shows me how far I’ve drifted.”
Aaron considered that. “It’s like a compass.”
“Something like that.”
“No.” Aaron became animated again. “A gyroscope.”
Ronin looked at him.
“A compass points toward something outside you. A gyroscope tells you when you’ve moved away from your orientation.”
Ronin considered the distinction and nodded. “Better.”
Aaron began to understand why the memory had survived all these years. Rage could move a man. Betrayal could move him. Fear, grief, humiliation, desire, applause—all could pull him away from himself. The eyes did not tell Ronin what decision to make. They reminded him of the condition from which he wanted to make it.
“And then you realign.”
“When I can.”
Aaron looked at Ronin for a long time. He felt unexpectedly moved. Ronin had not simply given him another intellectual tool. He had shown Aaron something private, perhaps even sacred: an image he carried within himself when everything else became uncertain.
For once Aaron respected the gift enough not to make a joke.
After a while he said, “Eyes of the Snow Leopard.”
Ronin smiled. “Yes.”
Aaron looked back toward Harvard.
Recognition and success.
He understood the student differently now. The young man was not foolish because he wanted them. Aaron wanted some of the same things. Probably always would. The error lay in allowing those desires to answer a question they could never answer.
What is worth living for?
No amount of recognition could answer that. Neither could money, status, pleasure or victory. They might be useful. They might even be good. But they were terrible masters because none contained a natural stopping point.
More.
The corn remained one foot ahead.
Aaron stood and picked up his bag.
“I think I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Aaron laughed. “Of course I don’t.”
He started away, then stopped.
“Ronin. Did you ever see the leopard again?”
“No.”
Aaron nodded. For some reason, that made the story better. One encounter. One image. A few seconds in the life of an animal that had no idea what it had transmitted to the man standing outside its cage.
Aaron turned to leave.
“Aaron.”
He looked back.
Ronin was watching him. For an instant Aaron saw something in his instructor’s expression that he had not noticed before. Not coldness. Not severity. Something quieter.
Stillness.
Ronin said, “Eyes of the Snow Leopard.”
Aaron smiled.
“Eyes of the Snow Leopard.”
He walked away across Harvard Yard.
The eyes belonged to Ronin. Aaron understood that now. The snow leopard was not another ideal for Aaron to imitate, another map to inherit, another corn cob to chase. Ronin had not told him what he should become or what purpose he should serve.
He had pointed.
As Aaron crossed the Yard, the students around him hurried toward libraries, laboratories, interviews, practices and meetings. Nothing about them had changed. Nor was there necessarily anything wrong with what they were doing. Degrees mattered. Careers mattered. Achievement mattered. The mistake was asking those things to provide an answer they could not provide.
A week earlier Aaron might have asked which path would take him furthest. Which achievement would distinguish him. Which victory would prove that his life had been successful.
Now those questions seemed incomplete.
Freedom meant that he could begin choosing where to aim the enormous forces already alive within him. But freedom itself was not meaning, any more than removing the blindfold told you where to walk.
Somewhere beyond freedom lay the harder question.
What was worthy of the limited years of a human life?
Aaron thought of Katsumoto. A man who had practiced commitment long before commitment demanded everything from him.
He thought of the snow leopard. Power without display. Alertness without agitation. Stillness without passivity.
And finally he thought of Ronin.
The old man had not answered the question for him.
He had pointed.
Aaron understood that the search for purpose could not be separated from the person doing the searching. Some purposes required courage. Others demanded discipline, compassion, truthfulness, sacrifice. To recognize what was worthy was not enough. A man had to become capable of serving it.
The question that remained was therefore no longer simply:
What do I want?
Nor even:
What do I want to accomplish?
It was something more difficult.
What is worthy of my life?
And beneath it, inseparable from it:
What kind of human being must I become to serve it?
Aaron did not know.
For the first time, not knowing did not disturb him.
It excited him.