High on a mountain ledge, above the place where two rivers meet, an old
yogi named Devala had lived for sixty years. The villagers below knew
him as the man who never seemed afraid of anything.
One morning he came down the path — something he almost never did — and
sat among the people by the well. "Tomorrow at dawn," he said gently,
"I will leave this body. I wanted to say goodbye, and to show you that
there is nothing to fear."
A young mother began to cry. "But you will die!"
"I will leave," Devala corrected, smiling. "There is a difference. A
traveller who has packed carefully and knows the road does not fall off
a cliff in the dark. He simply walks out the door in the morning light."
"How can you not be afraid?" asked an old man.
"Because I have practised," said Devala. "For sixty years, every day, I
have steadied my mind until it stopped wavering like a flame in the
wind. I have kept my heart full of love for the Shining One. And I have
learned to gather my life-breath and rest it, steady and bright, at the
point right here —" he touched the place between his eyebrows — "like
lifting a lamp to light the way. When the moment comes, my mind will not
panic and scatter. It will already be looking at the One it loves."
At dawn the next day, a few villagers climbed quietly to his ledge. The
morning sun was just touching the snow-peaks, turning them gold. Devala
sat upright, very still, his eyes half-closed, his face turned a little
upward. His breathing slowed. There was the smallest smile on his lips,
the look of someone who sees a face he has loved and waited for. And
then, between one quiet breath and the next, he was simply gone — not
fallen, not struggling, but as though he had stepped through an open
door into a brighter room.
The young mother, who had climbed up too, found that she was no longer
crying. The peace on the old yogi's face had passed into her. "He
wasn't afraid," she whispered.
"No," said the old man beside her. "He had practised the way home so
many times that when the day came, his feet already knew it."
