High in the hills, where the morning mist still clung to the rocks, a young
rishi named Saumya toiled up a steep stone path. Sweat stood on his brow.
His staff struck the stones, his breath came hard, and his legs ached with
every upward step.
Above him, on a flat shelf of rock at the very summit, sat his teacher — an
old sage with a long white beard, perfectly still, looking out over the
valley as though he had grown there like the mountain itself.
"Master!" Saumya called up between breaths. "You sit so quietly at the top!
Why must I struggle so, climbing and climbing, while you do nothing at all?"
The old sage smiled and beckoned him on. When Saumya finally stumbled onto
the shelf and collapsed beside him, gulping the thin sweet air, the teacher
spoke.
"Look back down the path you climbed."
Saumya looked. The trail wound far below, switchback after switchback, all
the way to the green valley floor.
"While you were down there," said the sage, "what carried you upward? Your
legs. Your effort. Your steady, climbing work. If you had sat still on the
valley floor and tried to 'rest your way up,' you would still be sitting
there. For the one who is climbing, effort is the path. Work is the means.
There is no other way up the hill."
He gestured around them at the still summit.
"But now look at me. I have already climbed. I reached this peak long ago. If
I kept striving and straining up here, where would I go? There is no higher
rock to reach. For the one who has arrived, stillness is the path. To rest is
the means. My quietness now is not laziness, child — it is the very thing
this summit is for."
Saumya wiped his face and gazed out over the world.
"So the climbing was not wrong?"
"The climbing was exactly right," said the sage. "And so is the resting. Each
belongs to its own stage. The danger is only this: do not sit still at the
bottom and call it wisdom, and do not keep frantically climbing once you have
reached the top. Know which stage you are in, and do what that stage asks."
They sat together as the mist burned away, one who had arrived and one still
arriving, both exactly where they should be.
