Course Title: Buddhist Memoirs Involving Deep Healing: Peter Matthiessen and Ellen Korman Mains
Instructor: Jerry Webster
Brought to you by Odyssey
October 22, 2025 - November 19, 2025 (5 Sessions)
Wednesday, 6:30PM ET - 8:30PM ET
Virtual via Zoom
Course Description: Great art and fruitful meditation require techniques that dive into vast dimensions of human existence. Join instructor Jerry Webster to study two Buddhist memoirs of the journeys that ultimately lead to deep healing for their authors and others. In The Snow Leopard, winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Peter Matthiessen journeys to the remote mountains of Nepal with field biologist George Schaller. Their outward goals are to study the Himalayan blue sheep and glimpse rarely seen snow leopards. Mathiessen’s inner quest is to meet and communicate with a particular Tibetan lama. Besides battling the harsh conditions on the trek, Matthiessen struggles inwardly with the recent death of his wife, thus melding each day for him into a mix of intense outward and inward emotional experiences. In order to make these extremes workable, he must bring in his Buddhist spiritual teachings and practices into the heart of his everyday life.
Ellen Korman Mains has a different spiritual aim as she describes in her book Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey Into the Holocaust. Her parents, deeply traumatized by the Holocaust, never shared their personal experiences of that tragedy with her. Through Mains ’determination to dig up her parents ’past, along with encouragement from her Tibetan Buddhist teacher, she begins to explore these hidden stories as she journeys back and forth between Poland and the U.S. Hers is the story of her own poignant, personal path of healing that she mixes with her work with intergenerational communal trauma and healing. As with Matthiessen, Mains mixes Buddhist teachings and practices with her internal and external journey. Meditation Instruction and close readings of Matthiessen’s and Mains ’texts will be integral parts of this class. There will be experiential exercises using awareness practices from both texts.
This online class will be streamed live and recorded for later viewing.
*Top Rated Instructor*
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Johns Hopkins alumni, staff, faculty and their spouse or domestic partners are eligible for tuition remission for Odyssey lifelong learning courses. Select the correct ticket pricing during registration. If we cannot confirm your eligibility, you will be requested to pay the full registration price for the course. Eligibility details can be found here.
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