An Appointment With Buddha At the Top of The Mountain. 

An appointment with Buddha at the top of the Mountain. 

“No matter how spectacular the valleys are, the mountains will always attract us! “―Mehmet Murat ildan

An Appointment With Buddha At the Top of The Mountain.

There’s a great parable about two monks who were told if they study long and hard enough, they’ll be able to― one day, have an appointment with Buddha, at the top of the Mountain. 

And you know, they want that; so they start studying, working very hard…then that one day came; they look at each other, and said, “I think we’re ready.”

So they pack up their stuff and begin to climb up this mountain.

But halfway up the mountain trail, one of them breaks its leg; and now they’re forced to spend the night resting.

The one who wasn’t injured looked after the other; cared for him and whatnot―all the while hoping his companion would make a full recovery by tomorrow morning, so they could both, keep their appointment with Buddha, at the top of the mountain.

Well, the morning came in, (and you’ve guessed it) the one who broke his leg isn’t doing so well. He has a fever.

Now the task is far more difficult, given It’s not so simple to simply leave him, to go on a guaranteed appointment with Buddha, at the top of the mountain.

“No matter how beautiful the summit is,” observes the Turkish playwright, Mehmet Murat ildan, “you will return to the valley.”

Now imagine being in such situations, what would you do?

It’s a choice we all face every single day.

Do we leave our broken other, to keep our appointment at the top of the mountain, or do we return to the valley?

So when we have more people who would leave their broken other to keep their appointment at the top of the mountain; that’s when you know we have created a culture that would give rise to cruelty.

As Zen Buddhist teacher, Dōgen frames it, “To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.”

And so when we have more people who would realize that caring for their broken other is the summit, then we’ll cultivate a culture and society that promotes more compassion. And like I’ve mentioned before, it’s a choice we’re all faced with on a daily.

This leaves us with another question, which is:

Do we work for what we want, or do we work with what we’re given?

Oftentimes we can find ourselves in a similar dilemma, but then we also realize that working for what we want, a lot of times,―becomes a training period for working with what we’ve been given.

Thank you for reading.

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