The Great Chinese poet, Du Fu, once said:
“The nation falls into ruins, but rivers and mountains remain.”
How apt for these times, where the dominant narrative for centuries, if not millennia, has been divide, subdue and conquer, only for nations to fall into ruin.
Mountains remain, to be sure, and these Holy Lands have a lot to say. Stories, myths, whispers, secrets… Ancient bellows and sacred song.
Wild mountain medicine.
Not only is each mountain a formidable force, standing stoic against the elemental batterings of time, but each mountain is dynamic and teeming with life, from ridgeline to valley, in it’s own unique way.
Some lush and forested, with flowing streams and the sweet flitter of songbird; others with a soft blanket of snow cloaking alpine foliage; some seemingly desolate, like dry bones, rugged and scarred. In the midst of all these landscapes, life finds a way.
The breath of the wild, filling all places.
When our approach is that of a humble student, sincere in our intent to listen and learn, we might just find this wild mountain medicine seeping into the cracks of our consciousness. The qualities and personalities of each mountain are but a portal into ourselves; mirrored representations of our wild and deep psyches…
Dappled sunlight through fresh spring vegetation
Silhouette of antlered stag amongst misty woodland orchard
Golden hues at the summit as sun rises on clear skies over eastern horizon
Glistening dew drops by their thousands resting on lime green moss
Inaccessible shadowed caves nestled upon vertical cliff face
Thick dark purple clouds blanketing vertebraed ridgeline
Icy afternoon breeze as an eagle glides out west
Fragrant perfume of decomposing humus in damp evening forest grove
Axis mundi, bridging this world and the other…
Earth and sky, yin and yang; yanantin-masintin; life death and rebirth.
“And while I stood there, I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw:
For I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.”
- Black Elk | Black Elk Speaks
The mountain has many faces…
The old Chinese proverb comes to mind, that there are many paths up the mountain, but the view from the top is all the same.
While its sentiments towards enlightenment -however you might define that- can be appreciated, we might know that the view from the top is not always the same. Greek philosopher Heraclitus might illuminate the point with his classic proverb:
”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
Replace river with mountain, and you might catch on. The mountain is dynamic, mysterious; just as we are. The teachings from the mountains are many, and while we can never know them in their entirety, as Black Elk shared, at times we see more than we can tell, and ways of understanding more than what we merely see.
If one is receptive enough, attentive enough, one might just catch glimpse of it.
The song of the mountain.
Despite the ever flowing activity, there resides a great paradox; deep reservoirs of stillness. The booming voice of silence. A vast expansiveness. The place from which all arises, and once again returns, in the primordial space of possibility and infinite potential.
There are many words that point to these ways of knowing: hollow bone, empty chalice, clear vessel, pure spirit, the tao. It’s within these spaces that we have an opportunity to see more things in a sacred manner; see ourselves in a sacred manner.
Our truths, our prayers, our vision, our calling. Our interconnectedness with the breath of the wild. Our own unique path from the base to the summit, back down to valleys, across bubbling streams, through ancient groves and shamanic rememberings.
Make no mistake, if a path has already been carved out, it’s not our unique path to take. As said by the old Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho: "Seek not the paths of the ancients; seek that which the ancients sought."
This is the way of the mountain…
