N O T H I N G N E S S
1
I met my first wise man, an ancient monk but of no discernible religion, on—yes—a mountaintop.
I say ‘man’ but with grey hair to his waist, little facial hair, a pure and pleasant brook-like voice, and no obvious physical features in his skeletal thinness to give me any hints, he could easily have been a she. But I am male, and nostalgic enough to want to discover a ‘wise man’ as of old times, so my wishful thinking settled on male. Though perhaps, reaching this age and clarity of mind, gender no longer matters much to him. Or her.
When I read a trendy, almost-joking article about some old hermit living in the hills, I discerned within the hipster jargon that there might be something more relevant and more authentic to this mountain person. The writer wasn’t particularly insightful, the story was short and only vaguely interesting. But a couple comments the writer said gave me a feeling… I felt the person she wrote about was more than just an eccentric hermit to joke about and dismiss. Something, some invisible seed within the writer’s words, struck me. Sparked an urge I couldn’t let go of over the next few days.
Being a prolific mover and traveler, I’m always only a few hours away from being prepared to ‘just go’. Finally, awake and restless before dawn one morning, the urge simmering in me boiled over. I had to jump out of bed and Just Go.
I loaded my backpack with tent and sleeping bag, food and water, bear-bangers and toilet paper. I drove for a few days across beautiful country, toward this hermit’s last-reported habitation.
Driving alone, without radio or music blaring, gives you open space to think… and to wonder about the craziness of your motives and actions. What was I doing, what was I looking for, what did I want from this person I was heading toward?
I was not expecting to find any particular wisdom from him, and especially not any kind of ‘mastery’. But I hoped for it.
I yearned to find mastery, to see that it could exist in any human being. I yearned to find some person who was living proof of what I was searching for, in anyone and in myself. But I also felt this was an unrealistic quest, and I did not expect to ever find such a person.
I’ve met, and read the words of, so many who are touted as being modern-day masters. And it’s always been disappointing; I’ve found those who shill it for the money, for fame, for their own ego-stroking, to control others, or simply to reinforce their own self-delusions of divinity or grandeur.
And I’ve found those who do indeed possess uncommon wisdom and inner peace, nothing false or bad to be said about them—and yet who have not attained the almost other-worldly mastery of which I seek.
I know there have been true masters throughout the ages, and there are undoubtedly a few scattered sparsely around the planet today. But I haven’t personally met one who manifests my admittedly puritanical insistence of what a master truly is:
Entirely human, yet… clearer than the rest of us. An advanced human, someone whose being has progressed far past the clouded minds, uncertain actions, daily fears and desires and problems the rest of us stumble through. Someone who feels beautiful, divine to be around, no matter what they look like. Someone… timeless, like they are existing in this present world but are not a product of it, nor a product of any time past or future.
I could say dozens more things like that, I guess, describing something that I want to feel is possible, real, but whose palpability remains a ghost. A mixed-up tangle of hopeful delusions, unclear possibilities, crushed dreams that won’t entirely die, wondrous states of being that are desired desperately but just won’t jibe with the reality of this modern, busy, loud, over-populated and over-used, injured and dying, but still beautiful world.
Yes, that’s what I’m driving toward.
Still heading toward hope and clarity and freedom and beauty and peace, through a world that is steadily losing what I’m trying to find.
2
Once on foot, my trek through the hills and forests was pleasant but is not what I wish to focus on here, so no stories. I have been an avid hitchhiker, backpacker, and seeker, so to be alone in the forest, encounter deer and bear and cougar and lynx and badger, the dangers and beauty of these are not unknown to me. To camp with a small fire, eat my own-caught fish, and listen to no music or voice other than wind in the trees, warbling birds and babbling water, this is family, to me.
After two days of walking and two nights of camping, on the third morning the trail along the valley bottom, beside a pleasant creek, inclined to a slow uphill grade. It meandered through thinning forest and finally broke out above the timberline, where small scrub trees, straining against the thinner air and meager nutrients, could only struggle to a few feet in height for their lifetimes. And higher, even those scrubs disappeared, leaving gentle swales topped by hardy high-altitude grasses and mosses for my path to wend around and over.
The trail dipped down into a shallow, dry creek bed, where I found fossils of ancient clams and ferns embedded in the rocks and pebbles. And past that, in a flattened bowl-shaped field formed where the bases of three mountain peaks came together, in the distance I espied a sparse herd of some deer-like creatures, perhaps elk or mountain sheep, grazing. Sometime during my half hour of walking toward them, they vanished while I wasn’t watching them; escaping me, obeying their wildness, running down some tangled, natural highway well familiar to them but hidden to my distant view.
A few small-house-sized boulders littered this end of the field, erratics tumbled along and finally abandoned by lumbering glaciers. One of them was peppered through with huge fossil snails, the size of my fist and larger. A boulder near it was aggregated with fossils of ancient sea plants.
The trail inclined more steeply, past the grass line, where now only the hardiest of lichens grew, clinging dry and tight to the rock. In the deep forest you feel hidden, seeing only what’s near you, what’s behind the next tree, around the next bend; up here, into the alpine, the closeness dissolves. You become part of the vastness, the openness, the distance.
In the mid-afternoon I crested the peak of the hermit’s mountain. And stopped, and looked, and turned around in a slow circle, drinking in… everything. The majestic ridges and verdant valleys serried with each other to faraway horizons.
I fully expected to find nothing, other than myself and these rocks scraping high into the blue. Still, I walked along the craggy ridge path, toward some lump up ahead that seemed less sharp and less dark than the jagged rock around it…
…And he was there.
Kneeling, unmoving, the light breeze waving through his hair and rustling his loose but thick mound of patched robes.
3
It didn’t seem auspicious or poignant, approaching him. Just… easy. Quiet. Natural. I slowly and carefully picked my way, alternating glances at him and at the rocky steps in front of me. At each glance his stillness felt more pronounced, the closer I came.
His body was rooted to the stone beneath him like he’d been a solid part of it forever. Yet his presence seemed as light as the air around him, part of it also. His eyes were focused on me, clear as a hawk’s yet calm and quiet as the sky. He wasn’t moved or startled by my appearing, his countenance didn’t change even a tick, and yet he seemed entirely ‘here’ and cognizant of me.
“Hello,” I finally opened, about twenty feet away, though my walking toward him and speaking out loud felt in somewhat violent discord to his serenity on this mountaintop.
I didn’t know what to expect from him in response, he was sending no signals; would he berate me for interrupting his solitude? Ignore me, remaining stoic and silent? Act wise and superior?
His face crinkled into a smile of gentle joy, as if I were no interruption.
“Come, sit, welcome,” he said, with kind eyes and a voice pure as a child’s, and warmth toward me as if I were his own family and visited him every day. I felt immediately accepted and at ease, welcomed like the closest friend.
“Thank you,” I said, maybe a little dumbly. Despite his invitation I stood there for a moment, reaching inside for some kind of bearing, adjusting myself to something I hadn’t encountered before. I guess I wanted to look at him for a while before getting busy with my gear and figuring out how to sit down. I’ve sat down a million times before, of course, but this time, strangely, I didn’t know how to do it properly.
He didn’t seem to need any adjustment to my presence; he sensed my immobility and his words effortlessly nudged me into moving:
“That is a large load you carry,” he smiled, looking at my pack.
Groan; was he trying to make some wise spiritual metaphor already? He looked at my body and my limbs.
“You are strong,” he said.
He looked at my strained, sweaty face.
“And you are exhausted, after hiking all this way.”
No, not making some overused, hackneyed metaphors. Just looking at me. Taking his time. Seeing each thing. Saying it clearly.
“It is rocky here,” he patted the ground, “but if you fold your bedding it will be comfortable for you to sit down.”
So obvious, everything he says. You almost want to shout, “Jeez, I know that!” like a little child is in front of you, telling you something you’ve known for decades but they’re saying it as if they’re telling you something entirely new. But it’s being said by a skin-and-bones old man, with that skin weathered into a thick cowhide covering those gnarled bones, who looks like he’s been kneeling on these rocks, with no padding, for years in the elements.
I started talking, rambling on as I unfurled my backpack, describing my trek through the forest, not knowing what to say but wanting to fill this silence. Silence that felt normal while hiking alone, but feels oddly uncomfortable now that I’m near such a quiet person.
As I unstrapped my bedding and pulled out a few items, he seemed to have a curious appreciation for even the smallest thing, exclaiming over a strap buckle’s operation and wanting to study a water bottle and delighting in flicking a fire-starter. He was enjoying each item as would a child who had never seen it before, and my hands could not grasp an item without him motioning it over to examine.
This detailed process slowed me down, stilled my nerves, brought me intimacy and ease with him as we shared items, touched hands, and exchanged voices and looks between us.
What a mixture of face in front of me. Wrinkled beyond count by the years and elements, yet still fresh, animated and open as a baby’s, yet wise, grounded and deep as the earth’s core. There was so much in there; just being near his face seemed to knock everything that was false out of me.
When I was finally seated on my bedding and leaning comfortably back on my pack, I took a deep, tired breath, smiled and looked at him… and all the things I came to ask, to find, seemed somehow surreal and silly, and I didn’t know where to begin.
This tiny old person, solid and real as the stone around him, had blown the flaky stuffing right out of me. I had to grin at myself and my sudden loss of purpose.
“I feel silly for coming here, now,” I said. I looked at him and just laughed, helplessly. “All these things I wanted to say, so much stuff I came here to ask you. Now I feel like I’m imposing on you and just being… ridiculous. I guess you get people like me often enough, wanting to talk their troubles out with you?”
He smiled again, focused on me intently, and I expected something wise to come out of his mouth.
“Do you have an orange?” He asked simply.
Oh, my blindness; he’s sitting here with nothing, and seems so self-sufficient, and I came here so caught up in what I thought I was looking for, that it didn’t even dawn on me to be observant to his needs.
Yet since the moment I’d arrived, he’d been observant to mine! First, to my initial doubts in meeting him. Then to my hesitation. Then to my tiredness. Then to my comfort on the rocky ground. Then, for my nervousness and disconnect, he’d warmed and friendlied the air between us by going through each item of my pack with me.
And now—it just struck me—I sense he’s even observed my wilting self-esteem and asked me to give him something so I can feel helpful, better about myself. I feel like he wouldn’t even have mentioned food, unless he was doing so to help me.
This is a strange and wondrous new kind of person to my experience.
I fished out my last orange and held it forth to him. He received it with both hands, studied it like he’d studied the other items in my pack, turned it slowly around, seeing it like I’ve never seen an orange. Or possibly anything.
“Ah,” he said, “this is the best orange in the world.”
Then began the most amazing deconstruction and enjoyment of a piece of food I have ever witnessed. He spent literally an hour with that orange, with the patient peeling, the separation and study of segments, and the slowest and most complete satisfaction of nibbling and experiencing each segment and each drop of juice.
I began to comment once, but he unhurriedly held up a hand to politely silence me.
So I reclined further back, gave him privacy for his orange experience, peered wistfully at the far blue mountains, closed my eyes to feel the sun shining on my face, and tried to forget where I was, for a while.
4
Tap Tap Tap.
Or rather, Thwak Thwak Thwak.
A hand was whacking my forehead, and none too gently. I awoke hazily, hardly knowing where I was. Colors and shapes un-blurred as I blinked him into focus. He was still kneeling in the same position, looking peacefully over me.
“Walk down the trail,” he spoke, so quietly yet so certainly. “There is snow in the shade. Put some in your mouth, melt it fully, warm it, then swallow it. Wash your face with it. It is much better than the bottled crap you brought. Then return and we may talk.”
Bottled crap? I brought the most expensive purified glacier water… but the twinkle in his eye gives away that he’s teasing. He bowed his head, resting, dismissing me to my ablutions.
I sauntered down the trail while chewing a carrot, the crunching helping to wake me up. At a tempting viewpoint I stood and peed, looking across the mountain peaks and down at the hazy green valleys below. A raven glided by in the breezy silence, tilting its head to glance me over, but didn’t make a sound. Another flapped by, catching up, ignoring me.
The breeze was warmer than when I’d hiked up earlier, and smelled of pines it had blown through in distant forests. I breathed deeply. I could breathe so fully here, and during one deep in-breath my body yawned and shrugged enormously of its own volition.
Look. Just look. Breathe. Just breathe.
A little farther down I reached the few snowy patches still ribboning the shadow-side of the mountain. It’s cold and granular, spring corn-snow. I palmed some into a snowball, took a small bite, let it melt in my mouth. What taste! Tap water never tasted this good, the purest bottled water never this pure. Even the snow out here, packed with life. I rubbed some between my hands and slapped the granular slush over my face and through my hair. And never did a shower or sink refresh me so.
I gazed out over the valleys and peaks again. The mystique of him has worn off; I’m sober and awake and reality is the beautiful world around me, not enlightened masters.
Old man, I’m searching, yes, but I’m not a blind believer. I’m not a follower. I won’t be your follower either, even if you’re an honest-to-God true master.
Hiking back up, toward my own doubt, I wonder if there’s anything he can possibly say that will help me leave this mountain a different person than I was coming to it.
5
While I was gone he’d taken the liberty of rummaging through my backpack and had a few items and more food laid out at his knee. The orange peelings were arranged into an impromptu art piece on a stone.
“This is the first orange I have eaten in more than two years. And it is the first meal I have eaten in more than one week, since my last visitor. This is the best orange in the world.”
This took my wind away, and humbled me. He was welcome to anything I had. I looked down upon him, trying to think of the next thing to say.
“Perhaps you should go, now,” he then said, startling me.
“I am sorry if someone wrote an article about me and you believed an unknown stranger’s words. If you journeyed all this way simply on that basis, you must be far gone, despairing of finding your answers anywhere else.”
He was crushing me with each sentence.
“I have nothing to teach you, nothing to help you with. I live here to leave behind thoughts and ideas and wisdom. I really do not think about the things you will be asking me, about life and existence and your true path. I have nothing to share with you.”
This was not exactly exemplifying the enlightened wise person the magazine article gushed about.
I’m sore and exhausted after my three-day walk to get here, and all that’s waiting for me… is a considerate man, yes, but either a faker, or someone who doesn’t seem to care to try.
“Well…” I let out a long sigh, the tired soul escaping from deep within my marrow.
I sat down on my backpack. I didn’t have the energy to feel angry or despairing, to explain or to make small talk. This wasn’t something I could debate and try to pull out of him. He simply wasn’t what I was looking for, and he was admitting this kindly.
Not his fault; I’d constructed my own hopes into making him someone I thought I desperately wanted to meet. My disappointment wasn’t turned toward him, rather it was toward this final joke dissolving my last fumes of effort to find some answer to my life’s emptiness.
I fished the water bottle and some crackers from my pack, and looked around. You could see for miles. Maybe hundreds of miles, in every direction. Stunning to see. No wonder he wants to stay here. But I’d thought that someone living up here would inherit some divine wisdom, through seeing and hearing and experiencing whatever Natural Creator is all around him. I’m not finding any answers, but even these few minutes on this peak, scraping the blue sky, have moved me. Oh, to have the courage to survive out here, like he has. He’s got to be tough, whatever else he may or may not be.
Munching a cracker I turned back to speak to him, I think to apologize for coming and to offer to leave him most of my food.
Then I was struck straight through, so that I almost recoiled;
How he was looking at me!
Before, it was with the same infinite calmness and kindness, though he didn’t seem to evince any discernible interest in why I’d come. But now… he still hasn’t moved, only his eyes have changed.
What a quiet explosion of energy in them! What presence! What clarity! What humanity! With only a tiny alteration of his pupils, like turning on a switch to illumine a city, he’s somehow… opened. Some universe within him now flows unfiltered across to me, and I feel some primal unknown within me is being received, with crystal clarity, into him.
Just his pupils? No filling me with talk, no trying to convince me of anything, no spouting of wisdom… he doesn’t move or speak, he just alters those two tiny black dots in his eyes, and the universe changes?
This is a master. I have no doubt, just as I have no doubt about the sky and mountains.
What to say? Who needs to say anything? Am I going to dribble out mindless encomiums?
He suddenly grinned, gently nodding his head over and over. I couldn’t take my eyes away.
And still he said nothing.
Maybe I was just tired. But I could not help it, I wept, to be in this presence.
6
“I see that you are unhappy with your life, and you are searching deeply for an inner awakening,” he said after a while.
“But I also see that your role in awakening is not to become an old man sitting alone on a mountain. You like to be with people, to be working with people, helping people, being active in the people world. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “I work with counseling people, I interact with them on a very personal level with their problems, and I love doing this. But still… I still feel dissatisfaction, this lack of fulfillment. Even some hypocrisy, like I’m an imposter, because I’m trying to help people but I have my own emptiness. This emptiness… at times I feel no hope for me, or for people, or for the planet. It’s like I’ve found the things I love and enjoy, yet I don’t feel joy even when I’m doing them. I’m searching for something and I can’t even name or describe it. But inside me… I just feel there is something better waiting. Maybe something more authentic, wonderful, a more true life to live, I don’t know. I have no idea what it is, or how to see it.”
I wanted to say a thousand things about my life, my unhappiness, my searching in hundreds of futile directions. But the answer was staring me in the face, and I wanted to drink that in, not dwell in my failed history.
“You have it,” I said. “I can see you’ve arrived at what I’m looking for. You are so at peace, not an ounce of turmoil in you. No doubts, no fear, no confusion, no noise. I think you could be walking down the middle of city traffic, horns honking and people yelling… and you wouldn’t lose this thing you’ve found. You’re so content with your world, so quiet, so joyful. I’m amazed. I’ve never seen this in anyone, to this extent.”
I looked at the ground, then up at him.
“You found it, you’re in it… and I’m a million miles away from it,” I said. “I’m so unhappy… because I can see it, but I don’t know how to have it.”
He seemed to naturally intuit exactly when to switch gears, and said, “So these are the ideas banging around in your head. You have read such pretty spiritual statements a thousand times in a thousand books, and you have repeated them to others during your intoxicating debates on spirituality. Yes?”
This with a smile, knowing he was piercing through my layers of modern spiritual-culture.
I admitted, “Yes, I can certainly talk the talk about spirituality. Meditation. Religions. Self-help classes. Life coaches. Read widely. Practiced whatever I could. Yeah, I know. So commercial. So packaged.”
I thought carefully about my past life, my questing.
“And to be fair, much of it helped. There is some truly helpful knowledge out there. I used to be an empty, despairing wreck, but I’ve learned many life tools and they have genuinely helped. I’m much better than I was years ago.”
And I thought honestly about the person I am now.
“But there’s still this emptiness. I feel my own void, every day. Something really missing.”
I shrugged. “Even with that, I seem to be coping fine. I probably always will cope just fine.”
Those piercing eyes of his sharpened even more.
“Is ‘coping just fine’… living? To you?” he asked.
I looked at him for a moment.
Then, damn me, I cried again.
And it felt perfectly natural and accepted in his presence, again.
Journey continues on the next page.