Ben Howard, emeritus professor of English at Alfred University, had a letter editor published in the Nov. 24 issue of The New Yorker.
Howard’s letter concerns a new biography of the novelist, naturalist, and Zen Buddhist teacher Peter Matthiessen. In True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (2025), biographer Lance Richardson contends that in The Snow Leopard (1978), Matthiessen’s acclaimed narrative of his expedition to the Himalayas, the author moves between the “seemingly incompatible” modes of modern science and Zen “with startling ease.”
In his letter Howard, a poet, essayist, and lay-ordained Zen practitioner, takes issue with that contention, noting that Zen Buddhism “far from incompatible with the scientific method: each discipline is grounded in open, empirical inquiry and is free of preconceptions and traditional dogma. Not long before Matthiessen left for the Himalayas, he met with his teacher Eido Shimano Roshi, at Dai Bosatsu Zendo. Shimano advised his student to ‘expect nothing.’ Although the way of Zen is experiential rather than quantitative, Shimano’s advice shares with modern science an animating spirit of unhindered discovery.”
Howard taught English literature, imaginative writing, classical guitar, and Buddhist meditation at Alfred University for 37 years before his retirement in 2006. His most recent book is The Absolute Moment: Essays on Western Zen.