There was once a boy named Suka who lived at the foot of a great mountain,
and his grandfather, an old yogi, lived at the very top.
"How did you ever get used to climbing all the way up here?" Suka asked one
day, panting and red-faced, having scrambled up the steep path to visit.
"My legs are burning. I had to stop a hundred times."
The old yogi laughed softly. "When I first came to this mountain," he said,
"I climbed exactly as you climbed today. My legs burned. My chest heaved. I
stopped a hundred times and thought, *this is too hard, I will never manage
it.* Every single step was a struggle I had to force myself to take."
"So how is it different now?"
"I climbed it again the next day," said the old man. "And the next. And the
next, through all the seasons, for more years than you have been alive. And
something strange happened, little one. The path did not change — but I did.
My legs grew strong and sure. My breath learned the rhythm of the slope. And
one morning I realised I had reached the top without once thinking *this is
hard.* My feet simply knew the way. The climbing that had been a battle had
become as easy as walking across a room. Easier, even — it had become a
kind of joy."
He gestured at the bright air around the peak, the whole green valley spread
out below like an offering.
"Meditation is just so. When you first sit to join your mind to the quiet
Self within, every moment is effort. You drag the mind back, it bolts, you
drag it back again — your whole sitting is a struggle, like my first climb.
Do not be discouraged by that. It is supposed to be that way at the start.
"But sit again the next day, and the next, year after year, gently and
without fail — and slowly all the dust inside you is rubbed away, and the
sitting itself begins to change. The effort softens. The mind no longer
fights. And one quiet morning you find that touching that vast inner Self,
which once took everything you had, now comes to you *easily* — and brings
with it a happiness so wide and so deep that it has no edges at all."
Suka looked out over the valley, his burning legs forgotten.
"So the hard part doesn't last forever," he said.
"No," said his grandfather, eyes shining. "The hard part is only the
climbing. And the climbing, my child, turns into flying."
