Climbing Chamundi Hill (21 page)

“No, my dear. Death is no solution. Death only answers the paradox in one way. Your body dies so your spirit rules, and so forth. That's shallow. No, the positive solution is to realize that you brought your two companions into being through your own efforts. You must realize that your consciousness created them: home and world, one and many, good and bad. What is truly real, my friend, is void. Infinite consciousness is void. When you obtain that knowledge, you will see that you never left home, that you were always ruler of the whole world, that this desert is a lush forest, that the forest was always a desert. You are not yet ready, boy.”

“How will I know when I am, sir?”

“Turn around, boy, and look at your companions now!”

Kundadanta turned around quickly, but the two were gone. In their place he saw his seven brothers, smiling, with their wives at their side. It was impossible to say whether they were alive or dead, whether
they had been there all along, or not. He felt a loss of bearing, as though he had no place to stand. Then he heard the holy man.

“Just be patient, my boy. Take your time, and keep the right course. Eventually you will know.”

I stood still, quietly gathering my thoughts. The story was not about moksha, or spiritual liberation, and I could not understand why he told it just then. I wanted to ask him, but the old man had moved ahead very rapidly and disappeared behind the banyan tree. How did he manage to move so fast? By the time I reached the bend in the path, walking past the scrubby bushes, it felt as though I had not seen him in eons. I turned the corner, and the old man was now seated on the ground, perfectly still, as though he had been here in meditation since the rocks formed. Behind him and up the mountain the terrain had changed drastically from the trees and scrub below. There was no vegetation at all, just a vast bowl-shaped plateau of rocks and boulders, the steely brown of volcanic basalt under the gray, cloudy sky. From his spot in front of a rock, the old guide calmly watched me approaching.

“Sir,” I said, feeling a strange reverence that had not been there earlier, “can you finally clear my confusion? Would you please teach me the truth?” That was not quite what I had intended to ask; it came out sounding so grand, but an earnest feeling followed the words.

He looked at me seriously and gestured for me to sit down in front of him. I approached but remained standing. “What is the truth, sir?”

“Sit down.”

His response sounded too mundane, so out of proportion with the gravity of the moment. It felt like a distraction, a delay. “Please just tell me what it is!”

“Sit down,” he whispered.

I bent over then, partially facing him, and sat down.

The minute I came to rest on the ground, I realized the truth. My inner thoughts and great expectations evaporated, and I emptied out. The field of rocks suddenly crystallized into a vivid, eloquent image of merely what it was—an empty field of rocks. It was filled with a soft but clear light that emanated from the ground and the rocks. I felt the slow descent of relief and a surge of joy that completely defied pleasure. As I dissolved before every minute detail of every little stone, my consciousness at the same time expanded to embrace the entire mountainside.

“That's all there is!” What an astounding, simple fact. “That's all there is!”

I did not experience a fullness of Being, there was no Divine Presence, no grace. Instead, everything was completely empty of anything other than what it simply was. But at the same time everything was perfectly full. “All just is—supreme suchness, nothing more, nothing less. Bliss.”

Every notion I had ever entertained about moksha and nirvana, about discipline and salvation, absented itself. There were no hopes or plans, no worrying or fearing. It had always been there, simple—not majestic—just the way it filled all of space, which was perfect. I turned my head toward the old man, whose features disappeared into the landscape around him. Then I realized that he was blurry because of the tears in my eyes. It was cold. I put on my shoes and stood up. The steps up the mountain were behind me, leading toward the west.

“Listen,” he whispered, although I heard every syllable. “This is high enough for today. Don't go any farther.” I turned again to look at the steps, and he continued, “Going farther will do you no good right now.”

“But I'm so close to the top! And Shiva's huge bull is just around the corner…”

“That makes no difference. It's better that you turn back now—in fact I want you to run down the mountain. Don't walk.” I kneeled down next to the old man, who was now in deep trance. “Why do you want me to run? That makes no sense.”

“Go!”

Before the word stopped booming around me, I was already down several steps. It was as though those first few steps never existed, as if I had been blown by a powerful percussion. Then I found myself hurtling down the mountain at a ridiculous speed, eyes glued to every step that rushed at me. The steps were uneven in height and depth, some were slippery and others were jagged, and I had a tiny fraction of a second to decide which was coming up next. I accelerated, leaned forward into a near stumble, no longer sure what kept me going. I felt the old man's eyes, but what could he do? Clutching the cane more firmly, I increased my speed. As I watched the shifting pattern of steps, always looking two ahead of my landing feet, the vegetation of the mountain became a green blur framing my field of vision. I gave myself over to the force that pushed—or was it pulling?—me down the mountain and suddenly realized something strange.

Because I was looking ahead of where my feet landed, something else must have been guiding them to the right spot! The perfect placement of each of my steps had nothing to do with planning or intention, or even the fear of falling.
Cheetahs don't have to plan their cuts, and impalas don't have to design their landings! The biologist in me screamed, “It's natural, you fool! Let go!” But that thought flashed and disappeared in the space of two steps. In its place I was back on the roof in Pune, realizing that mind was just riding piggyback on something else; it doesn't have to be in control because it isn't in control. At that very instant the steps disappeared. I kept going down, furiously, faster than ever, but the steps were gone, and my mind stopped scripting everything. Then the agent dissolved and running just happened on the northern slope of Chamundi Hill as the young biologist finally gave himself a break and let go, like a tired passenger leaning into his seat on a streaking train.

Strangely, all the motion now was taking place around me, and it was all uphill. The green blur of the landscape resolved into individual bushes, trees, and boulders; everything on the northern face of the hill was frantically running upward. “Hey, what's up there? Why are they running up?” Then I remembered—“Shiva! Shiva's up there, and they're all running up to be with Shiva.” That made me laugh. Nims, tamarinds, banyans, and a myriad of bushes were jostling past me to get to him. What a riot. Faster and faster, everything moved in Shiva's direction, a parade, a race, a great stream of beings crushing up the mountain to God. Then the stories with their characters passed by: the weaver and his friend, Sangayya floated by with his eyes wide open in amazement, the women with their suitors, snakes, demons, sorcerers, thieves—all rushing up leaving a trail of cool microclimates in and out of which I sprinted.

Suddenly I could see the bottom of the mountain, the ground was starting to rush at me, and at the foot of the path was a tiny figure, a man. It was Rony, and he was
waving something in the air in my direction—a postcard. Then I got to him and stopped.

“There you are! It's a card from your mother! You got a note from your mother, you lucky devil!” I couldn't speak. I just stood there, leaning on my knees and panting, watching my feet reattach themselves to my legs. “Hey, as you were whiling away the whole day on the mountain, I've been busy, pal. I went back to the hotel and got you some fruit, and there was this postcard for you. How did you like the old man with the stories?”

I bolted upright. “What did you say?”

“I said, how did you like the old man with the stories?”

“No, not that. What did you say before that, about the day on the mountain?”

“You mean ‘as you were whiling away the whole day on the mountain'?”

“Yes! That's it!

“Well, that's what I said. What about it?”

Suddenly I understood the meaning of the last story, and all of them. I saw the meaning of the entire journey I had been through with the guide! That phrase my best friend had used—those innocuous, slightly judgmental words—that was one of my mother's favorite phrases. Every time she used it, I would cringe. I took the card from Rony's hand and looked at it. It featured one of those brilliant sunrises over the Sonora Desert—a standard Tucson postcard. On the back my mother wrote in her small and neat handwriting: