7
“I have no interest in talking about these spiritual matters,” he said.
His straightforward candor was so natural and unfiltered, it was both refreshing and completely non-offensive.
“It is all thoughts rattling inside the head, and making noise when spoken out into the air. I would ‘cope just fine’ in a big noisy city. But I am here because I enjoy experiencing the sounds of the mountains and sky more than the sounds of cities and busy people. I enjoy experiencing coming as close to quietness as a human can, and so I live out here where it is more harmonious to doing so. For me, talking and thinking have become coarse, compared to simply experiencing.”
He smiled.
“Of course, when there is a visitor, out of kindness and compassion for your addiction to speaking, I indulge.”
He paused, quiet for a few minutes, never in a hurry.
“There are regrets, prices, sufferings to every life,” he said.
“To mine, also. These sometimes feel overwhelming and unbearable when you are living an unfulfilled life, just coping fine. But when you enter this journey, when you finally immerse yourself in the search and begin to feel your toe dip into the deep ocean of discovering… then your sufferings and regrets quickly shrink to become small prices.”
He gestured around us.
“This would not make you happy, living here for years. It is beautiful for you to visit, but it is not your long-term path.”
His eyes became fierce, with force of life and with joy.
“But this is living, for me. This is my true love, being here, alone from humans yet entirely without loneliness.”
Again he was quiet.
What he was, and what he wasn’t, had so dispersed my preconceptions, my planned questions and conversations, that although I wasn’t any kind of master myself, I had the wisdom to shut up and allow whatever would happen, to happen, with him.
Minutes passed in silence, then half an hour.
“You have come for help,” he finally said, “as many others have come for help. But you were thinking you would find more words, more ideas to stuff into your backpack, to carry home and think about. You were hoping that a new collection of sentences would make enough sense to you to help with your inner search.”
More quiet.
“My other visitors became lost for words also, as you have. Somewhere along the talking and reading, they and you began to realize that the answers you seek… are not word-answers. I cannot say words and have them solve anything for you. And this is good. It opens a door for you to just experience.”
He remained quiet for a long while again. It was not the quiet of searching for an idea, rather he seemed to empty himself, as if by doing so he was allowing the right words to drop in, completely unbidden.
“I wish for you, too, to experience something while you are here. Such a happening may start you in the direction you wish. The books and the modern teachings of spirituality you have come to rely upon may have helped you in some ways, yes, but they have also stunted your growth in other ways.
“I will send you to a teacher. She is a little girl, about seven years old,” he said, impishly.
I hesitated, trying to figure this one out.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
He stayed with the impish look, having fun.
“You will. She will not teach. Rather, you will learn.”
His face didn’t change much, but I sensed he was laughing inside, enjoying his paradoxes and my befuddlement.
I sat, quietly. His just sitting, quietly, was wearing off on me.
“After your first teacher, this little girl, you may then be sent to your next teacher, and the next. You may visit as many as you like. If you allow yourself to be plucked away from your usual daily existence, allow new steps in your path, then each step will be an experience, far beyond simply thinking about words and ideas.”
I was hesitant to commit to any action. I had, after all—darn his perspicuity—simply come here looking for some words of wisdom, and then to return to my comfortable life and think about them. To commit to… actually changing things, doing things… well, longer-term upheaval is a little more serious.
“And you think these people can teach what I’m looking for?” I asked, stalling.
“No. They will not ‘teach’. They will be your teachers only through exemplifying each step of your journey. Whatever you can learn from each of them will be entirely your responsibility.”
More quiet.
“I am not a teacher,” he asserted kindly. “I can see you are already uncommonly clear and wise, among laypeople. I know that you would not place yourself in any traditional subservient role to a teacher, even to a person whom you acknowledge has attained what you are seeking. A teacher need not be in any position of dominance over you, yet can still help you unveil your self, whether you consider them equal or even lesser than you, in terms of what you have already learned.”
He looked down to the valley, and then he picked up a random stone.
“Make your camp down there. Place this where you can see it easily. Look at it and through it until you understand. Return here only when you can answer this question: What is home, to this pebble?”
“Is this a koan?” I asked. I didn’t want to sit in the forest, meditating on some ‘zen riddle’ for weeks or months until coming to ‘enlightenment’. I wanted to get moving, to stay real.
“No,” he said, “you are restless and you do not want to sit meditating on a mystical riddle for weeks. I am offering you something brief and illuminating, because this is what you need at this time. If you choose a path beginning with this first step I offer, you will shake off your old unhappy skin, and you will enter.”
“Enter what?” I asked.
He motioned for my hand, then dropped the pebble into my palm.
“First, enter this pebble.”
He looked at me, with silent punctuation.
“Your mind works well, so this will not take you long. Concentrate with all your being. If not tonight, you will certainly wake up with the answer in the morning.”
It was time to go. I felt this encounter had completed everything it needed to. Even though, on another level, nothing felt answered.
I packed my gear, left much of my food and a few incidentals for him, and prepared to leave, with just enough light left in the gloaming to see my way to the timberline below.
Before beginning my downward hike, I turned back to him and held up the pebble.
“What is home, to this pebble,” I stated, to make sure I’d remembered each word exactly as he’d said it.
It needed no fortifying and he said nothing, nor did his expression change. Peace, kindness, quietness.
During our short visit he’d said nothing I expected or hoped he’d say, yet he’d said everything right, somehow. So I was up for this first part of his challenge. He didn’t ask for days or months, he didn’t teach or preach, he didn’t pretend anything he wasn’t, he saw right through me, he was kind and clear from start to finish.
And infinitely powerful; he, just sitting there old and skinny and unmoving, was so much more powerful than me, with my size and muscles and relative youth.
Yes, I’ll listen to this person, and I will try what he suggests.
I walked carefully back along the trail, and as I was about to descend below the crest and out of his sight, I looked back. I wondered what he would think and feel, if anything, as I disappeared and once again left him to his aloneness.
I waved, but if he saw it he did not respond.
8
Under a friendly copse of quaking aspen that rimmed one arm of a small timberline lake, I made camp while the grass and forest and peaks around me faded to pitch-black under the darkling sky.
Stars appeared, shining more proudly through this thin, clear mountain air than ever they could through a smog- and city-lit night sky. For company I kindled a small fire in a safe sandy spot and, ever the healthy eater, still I broke form and roasted wieners. The best meal in the world is hot dogs roasted over a campfire in the woods, far from home.
Home.
What is home, to this pebble?
I’d placed it atop one of the larger stones I’d rolled into a circle to form my small fire pit. Now, having finished my late dinner—and roasted marshmallows, of course—and with a cup of juice to sip on, I sat on the sand, leaned back against a fallen log I’d dragged over, and considered my question.
I stared at the pebble and reflected on my question, as the pebble reflected the glowering red coals. All around me was darkness, pierced only by the dimly flickering coals in front of me and the stars above.
He’d said I would be able to understand this question in a short time, tonight or by morning, which means it must be a fairly obvious answer and this is not a trick question to mire me in long pondering. He was always direct, rather than mysterious, and I’m assuming that directness continues into this question.
He’d said he hoped I could experience something here, more than just talking out spiritual ideas, so it must be a somewhat experiential answer rather than intellectual. Rather than just words.
I think the same thing may happen here as happened when I met him: it began with talk, and evolved into an experience. So I’ll start with talking it out and see if it evolves into an experience. The first question that came to me was the most obvious one:
“Why a pebble?” I asked out loud.
After a moment the obvious answer came, and I spoke it out loud as well:
“It doesn’t matter.”
If he’d asked what is home to me, or to a bear, or to a bird, I’d get caught up in thinking about a house or a cave or a nest, city or country or continent. He wanted me to think in a different way about home, so he chose an object at random, an inanimate pebble that would have no ‘home’ as we know the word.
He meant what is home to anything; it must be the same answer for anything in the world.
Okay, that feels like a first step toward the answer.
He’d asked me to bring the pebble down here.
“What difference did that make?” I asked.
Was the pebble in its natural home on the mountaintop, then no longer home but in transit while I carried it, and now it is removed from its home, or maybe in a new home, as it sits where I placed it on the fire rock?
“No,” I said.
Those are my perspectives about where that rock is, where it comes from, where it’s being moved to. To that rock… it is always experiencing ‘home’, wherever it is.
“Ah!” I realized something: “He did not say where is home! He said what is home!”
He wants me to go beyond thinking of a place or a position, according to my viewpoint, as being home to anything. Get into the what, not the where. The eternal what, that is home to anything, wherever it is, at whatever time in its existence.
That’s step two.
The coals spat and fizzed in the darkness. A finger of flame shot up as something unburnt suddenly caught fire, and died again as that unlucky fuel was swallowed. I heard a nighthawk buzz as it swooped and flit somewhere far above, catching insects on the wing.
I looked up at his mountain peak, identifying its shape only by its deeper blackness where it speared into the starry night, and wondered if the old man spends the night up there too, or where he goes for shelter and warmth. Does he have a cave, what does he do in the winter? Is he looking down upon my small red circle of coals right now, is he even thinking about me at all?
I honestly did not think so. I did not imagine he was up there wondering about me, watching me, missing being here with me by my fire, talking about things. No. He’d said his joy was in coming as close to quietness as he could, to experiencing. It was not in thinking about things or talking with people.
I looked back at the pebble, barely able to see it as the coals dimmed.
‘First, enter this pebble’, he’d said, and he’d smiled.
Every word he’d said had a clear purpose, as if our entire visit was divinely orchestrated through him. Nothing was said speciously or lazily. Stop thinking that anything he said was just for effect, or to fill up the silence.
So, why ‘Enter this pebble’?
“What is inside this pebble?” I asked out loud.
What would I see if I entered it, other than the rock material it is made of? I imagined entering… and saw only darkness. No light, no air, no color, no life. No anything.
“Nothing,” I said.
Nothingness, is what he kept talking about!
And when he said ‘I have nothing to share with you’, he meant it in a different way than the way I took it! He was entirely direct… I just heard it wrong, my own thoughts imposed themselves over what he meant.
Ha!
He was offering me the very beginning of my journey. He was prodding me to experience where all things begin their journey. Where all things exist in their journey. Where all things go to in their journey. The beginning, the dwelling place, the home of everything.
“Wow,” I said, tilting my head back and gazing at the night sky again.
He was right. It happened fast. I had the answer, and I was certain of it. I had the word answer, at least. Deeper steps to go, for me to move beyond the word answer, but for now, this was enough. A place to begin. The place to begin.
After my quick elation, instead of feeling excited and wanting to stay up all night thinking about this, I suddenly felt very tired. I felt like I’d been riding on nerve-energy for the past week, and now I needed to let go of thinking. To not-think.
I stood up, threw a few cups of lake water on the coals, muddied through them with a stick until all hotspots and sparks were doused. Then I crawled into my tent, zipped the insect netting behind me, kept my flashlight on until I’d found and clapped the couple resourceful mosquitoes that had managed to hitchhike in with me, and finally I snugged into my sleeping bag.
I’d left the rain cover off the dome tent, so I lay on my back for a while and stared through the roof screen at the same stars the old man was probably kneeling beneath right now.
With the breeze to listen to, nothingness claimed me and I slept a dreamless sleep
9
Early.
The first sliver of sun peeks above an eastern mountain, and from it a pioneering slice of naked brightness streaks across the sky. I unzip my tent fly in the crisp, chilly air, fold the entrance flaps to the sides and tie them, lie on my stomach atop my sleeping bag, and witness the morning awaken around me.
Touched by the first rays, soft dew begins steaming off the grass, and a mist wisps over the lake. At the far shore a deer, having been invisible in the grey dawn, slowly materializes as the sun bestows color and contrast upon the land. The doe dips her head and daintily sips, then quietly wraiths with elegant, perfect steps back into the forest.
A gentle buzz begins, of insects rising and shining, birds warming up their voices for the day. Six inches from my face a red ant explores the tent zipper, antennae dabbing at each tooth and crevice as it forages along.
What is home, to these magnificently entwined details around me? To each thing and each happening, from the center of me to beyond the farthest star?
I pull out my notebook and write, pen lines slightly blurring on the morning-damp pages.
10
Smells of wood smoke, campfire coffee, and coal-roasted toast mingle with the green morning scents as I sit on my stump by the fire, warming my hands around my tin cup of coffee and nursing a conundrum:
I cannot return to the mountaintop.
I cannot wander up to tender my realization to the old man.
Don’t ask me why, it’s not clear even to me. But my feeling is to pack up and point my footsteps out of these mountains. Right now I don’t need or want more words, nor to see another human being. I need a walking solitude, to come closer to experiencing this nothingness that has always been my home, and yet which I’ve never consciously thought about until the old man asked me a ridiculous and life-shatteringly perfect question.
But I want to meet the rest of these teachers-who-are-not-teachers. If this first realization has wrought such seed of awakening in me, after only one night, what further steps are there along this path, and how will those evolve within me?
What comes next?
Yesterday I was hesitant to commit to any action, wanting some words of wisdom and then to return home. This morning… this morning the meaning of ‘home’ has expanded for me and I already feel a little different. I feel like cracking open the gates of my boundaries, looking a little further. Seeking, actively seeking, though I do not know exactly what.
And I feel something else—I don’t know why this feeling has crept up on me—healing.
Healing a little bit, just through being in his presence. Healing from what, I do not know either, but I expect that may become clear later on.
Traveling to these teachers now feels more than intriguing. Maybe even exhilarating. Yet how do I find them if I cannot climb back up and ask him directions to the ‘little girl’? Does he have a smartphone stashed away in his rags, can he text me GPS coordinates?
With my backpack awaiting me on the grass, I pondered what to do about this while I crunched my last few crackers, which he’d insisted I keep for myself. Then something odd snatched my attention away from airy conundrum and toward what’s solid in my hands:
Sandwiched between the final two crackers is a folded-up piece of paper, torn from my own mini-notepad. On it is scribbled a girl’s first name, a town name, and a country.
I smiled. Actually I burst out with a single laugh, Ha! Yes, everything was divinely orchestrated through him, and with his full awareness as it happened.
I poked around the lake shore and found a dry length of balsam fir, straight and strong, to use as a sturdy walking stick. I whacked and twirled it against a tree to scrape the crispy dead bark from it, and saw it was wonderfully worm-holed, little ‘nothingnesses’ tunneled throughout the wood.
My garbage is packed to leave with me, my campfire well-extinguished, the stones re-scattered, fire pit re-filled with sand. I leave behind only some flattened grass in the shape of a tent floor, and a few footprints, all to be dissolved soon after I’m gone, returning pristine form to the land.
I take a final look at the mountaintop, where a breath of wind carries a long tendril of dust off the ridge. Is anyone up there, anymore?
A jet trail chalks its white line across the blue canvas above, heading in the same direction I am, back to civilization.
I look at the pebble in my hand, then let it drop to the sand; when you realize a truth, and know it to be such with every cell in you, then you don’t need to weigh yourself down carrying reminders. Let the pebble stay with its kin.
Shouldering my lighter backpack, I begin walking. Two or three days listening to my footsteps and the clacking cadence of my worm-holed stick.
Walk, just walk.
Back toward people, and to prepare for my next step in this journey, to find a seven-year-old girl living a few thousand miles away.
And what did I write, early this morning?
Nothingness
How did you think you could exist
Without a place to exist IN?
I don’t mean around you, beneath your feet
I mean from your skin inward.
What’s below that?
What is it, that allows all?
That doesn’t fight with you
Doesn’t push you out
Allows everything else to exist in it, too
The air, the earth, the people, the mountains
The planet, the sun, the stars, the light, the gravity
What’s below all that?
What do they exist in?
What’s below your flesh and bones right now?
What’s allowing you to be in it?
What’s been here since before the first particle of matter formed in it
What will be here even after the last particle of matter dissolves?
Everything that exists
Can fight each other to dwell in it
But nothingness doesn’t fight any of it
It only allows.
Learn what nothingness is
Be like that, for a while.
Then you’ll see what else can exist in your life.
Nothingness, is the absence of motion.
For a deeper understanding of this part of your journey, read the NOTHINGNESS COMMENTARIES here (coming soon)
Journey continues into Chapter 2: SOMETHINGNESS