Denial/ Hinin/ 否認

Standing at the entrance of Mt Fuji’s 5th station, he took in the mountain. The top was lost in thick fog. It looked like the Goddess was visiting the mountaintop, with the clouds escorting her away from every human distraction. Unfazed, he put his 25 kg rucksack on his back and started to move towards the entrance gate. 

“So, you finally decided to go,” a soft voice whispered in his ears.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he replied to her familiar voice as his eyes were fixed on the invisible peak.

“I told you not to do such stupid things. You never listen!” 

“Neither do you!”, he answered between breaths, as another hiker passed him returning from the trek.

He was exhausted. “There is so much fog and rain up there. I returned from station 6.”

“Did you hear him?” she said in a higher pitch.

“Does it matter?” he said coldly while looking down and moving forward.

There was an eerie silence for a moment, cut short by her authoritative voice: “But you should not be doing it. Period!”

“You can’t say that to me!” he retorted with an equally loud tone.

Finally, at the end of the gravel road, there was a small hut on the mountainside which would be his resting place for the night. It had the feel of something as old as humankind that had outlasted everything around it. Worn wood, warm light, the smell of old timber and damp stone. Exactly the solace he needed.

An old man welcomed him and served him a delicious meal. He retired into his warm and cosy cabin. The drizzle continued outside. He started to sort out his luggage and chart out his plans for an early morning climb.

“You look worried!” she whispered again.

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“I am not sure about when I should start. Ideally at 3 in the morning, but it’s quite dark at that time. 4 would be dawn, but it’s late. It’s also raining and windy. Foggy when not raining. Will be all alone. Don’t want to venture above the 7th station in darkness.”

“Start somewhere between 3 and 4. Sun will be out around 5”, she suggested.

“Hmm… “, he muttered and kept packing his bag silently.

“Are you afraid of the unknown?” she interrupted again.

“I trust my mountaineering experience, but a mountain is a mountain, and she demands respect.”

“So, what would you do tomorrow if you are not sure?”

“I climb up the mountain.” 

“You want to suffer.”

“I want peace.”

“How will the mountains give you that?”

“They are my solitude. They are temples I pray at. They are me. They don’t leave me high and dry!”

Anger/Ikari/怒り

The alarm buzzed at 2 AM, and he jumped in his bed. He at once checked his clock and then removed the curtains.  The wind was blowing hard, but it was not raining. He went out to gauge the chill around. It was tolerable. The sound of wind was screeching through the empty spaces of the mountain in absolute dark. Maybe the Goddess was praying! 

He finally managed to get his boots on the trail at around 3:30 AM. It was still pitch dark and windy with intermittent fog.

“Are you scared?”

“No,” he said, irritated. “What is there to be scared of?”

“Why are you always so angry?” she pressed.

“You better tell me that.”

“You will never understand me.”

“I wish I could have understood you,” he blurted. “There would have been less suffering. I…”

 “Watch out!” she interrupted.

A big board blocked the further access to the trail.

“THE CLIMBING SEASON IS OVER. IT IS TOO DANGEROUS TO MOVE BEYOND THIS POINT,” it read.

He escaped from a small space nearby and continued moving across a narrow track, crushing bushes under his boots.

Bargaining/ Torihiki/ 取引

Climbing at a slow, deliberate pace, he crossed the next station, where the main tracks merged into a single route toward the summit. The tree line had receded completely, leaving him exposed. The wind speed was increasing, bringing a deep, piercing chill. He put on another layer of fleece.

“Are you all right?”

“I am a bit worried!” 

“Why?”

“It is still dark; the wind is strong. Rockfall possible.” 

“Hmm! What is your bargain?” 

“What do you think?”

“Of course, you would not stop. Rebellious as always.”

“No. Calculated risk. Stopping is not an option.”

“You are going alone in pitch dark. What if you get hurt? “, she again pushed.

“Life is all about taking risks. You may fail, but that is it!” he defended.

He bit a granola bar, threw on a windcheater, and kept moving on a wide, zigzagging gravel track reinforced with concrete banking. The altitude had started to make its presence felt. He was eagerly awaiting sunrise.

A curtain soon started to lift in the East. The horizon was welcoming the sun. The twilight was giving way to absolute light.

Depression/Yokuutsu/ 抑うつ

“Light has been moving since the beginning,” she said softly.

“For 13.8 billion years, since the big bang, unfazed!” he blurted out breathless.

“Does it ever think of going back?”

He stopped. Hands on knees. Breathing. He looked up at the sky. He did not say anything.

The drizzle had started. The high winds were making them sharp and stingy on his face. He took shelter near a closed hut. He rested his back on the wall, kept looking at the horizon. 

“It can’t,” he said finally. “Light cannot Yearn.”

“Why not?”

“Its existence is beyond time.” He paused, catching his breath.

“To yearn, you should move away from a moment. Moving away requires time. A before and an after.” He was exhaling slowly, recovering from the exhaustion.  

“That ray of light falling on the mountain is a photon. Its birth and its death are the same instant. It has No before. No after. No distance from anything.” He said slowly, directing his finger to the mountain where the sunlight was illuminating its peak.

“It cannot mourn what it cannot remember.”, he said in a laboured tone as he stood up to move.

She was quiet.

“But we yearn,” he said in a lowered voice. “Only things that move through time can yearn.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

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The light kept illuminating the mountain unaware of his existence. He just stood there silently looking at the top – exhausted, cold, yearning.

He crossed the 8^th station and was closer to the crater of Mount Fuji. He was exposed in the open. The winds were becoming fiercer and drizzle turning into full-fledged rain.

“Would you reconsider moving any further?” her voice trembled. “I am truly worried.”

“It’s manageable,” he said as he wiped the freezing rain from his face using a damp towel.

“Your woollen cap is dripping water!”

“Yes! I can feel the wet weight. My hands and nose are itchy, and numb.”

“Your breathing has become so shallow.”

“My lungs are feeling the scarcity of air now,” he said in fractured, short sentences.

He paused, leaning heavily on his trekking poles. “The Goddess must be visiting the top of the mountain.”

“Surely She is.”, she replied softly as he ducked under the eaves of another closed hut, sipped some water, and gulped down another gel.

“Why is it so difficult to find God?”

He almost laughed — not unkindly.

He bent down mid stride and picked up two stones. One dark, almost black, the other one pale grey, veined with white.

He stared at the two stones – “Why is it difficult to find love?” – he asked her as he put the stones in his pockets and kept moving.

She waited.

“These two,” he said between breaths, “were once the same thing.”

A wind gust unsettled him off his feet. He somehow maintained his balance.

“Everything was once a singularity —- ONE” He stopped again to breathe, hands on knees.

“Before the time began, there was no separation. No distance. No you and I. Nothing apart from anything else.”

He looked up at the wall of grey clouds and rain above him.

“Then — the big bang moved everything away from everything in an eternity. Every particle in the universe is still running away from every other particle.” A short, hard breath.

“And yet — “

He brought those two stones back in his hands and made a fist.

“If these two particles shared the same state even once, — they stay connected. Across any distance. Change one, the other responds. Instantly. Faster than light.”

He pocketed them again and started moving.

“So, God—”

He interrupted her with his laboured voice, “God is the embodiment of that original state – The singularity.” He paused for breath every few words now. The altitude was taking a toll.

“Loving God — reaching God — is going back to where you belonged. Dissolving the distance. Returning to what you were before you became separate.”

He wiped his face with the back of his glove.

“But that requires — ” he stopped. Coughed. Started again.

“That requires moving faster than light and bending time.”

“How is that possible?”

Acceptance/ Juyō/ 受容

He reached a flat section of track and paused, leaning forward on his stick looking at the muddy gravel below.

“The ordinary mind cannot do it. Cannot even conceive of what lies on the other side because it has no frame of reference for a state without separation.”

“Paul was walking to Damascus. Not looking for anything. And then something stopped him. Not from outside — from the centre of everything. Time folded. The separation dissolved. He crossed to the other side of the beginning.” He exhaled slowly.

“Buddha sat under a tree.”

“Nanak walked into a river and came out three days later speaking of unity.”

“They were not taught this. They were enlightened.”

The wind screamed across the open face of the mountain. He stopped talking and started to absorb his own spoken words.

He kept moving, one step after another.

“And love?” she asked quietly.

“Love is — ” the breath was very short now.

“At its most complete. Most selfless – it is divine. Closest a mortal gets to crossing that threshold.” 

“For a moment — a genuine moment — we are enlightened.”

“But it doesn’t last,” she said.

“No.” His voice was very quiet.

“Because we are bound by time. The moment passes. And what we touched on the other side — ” he stopped walking and stood in silence.

” — It stays in us as a question we cannot answer. A place we cannot name. A feeling we spend the rest of our lives trying to find our way back to.”, she completed.

He was very still.

“By pushing to the edge of things,” she said softly.

“By punishing yourself.”

Rain on rock. Wind through open air. Nothing else.

ONE

He reached into his pocket and held the two stones in his closed fist until he felt the cold into his palms. He carefully placed them on the ground. He got a weird feeling of feeling nothing. The digital clock on his wrist seemed to move slowly. Something had profoundly changed.

He moved on and arrived at the crater, in front of a temple. He removed his backpack, kept the sticks down.

The air was thin, his lungs heavy and heart overburdened.  

“I am scared.”, his voice cracked and tears started to flow down his face.    

“Don’t punish yourself.” she whispered.

“I missed you. I missed you so much.”

…

“Let our love be the window. Don’t seek the window. Look through it.”

The tears mixed in the rainwater and washed away.

He opened his bag, brought out a small silver engraved pendant. He sat down, kissed the pendant, and buried it near the temple.

“Farewell.”

EPILOGUE

He shouldered his bag, picked up his sticks and started to move towards the highest point Kengamine. It was still raining heavily. The visibility was zero.  He moved one step at a time in complete silence.

Through the fog and mist, two figures appeared moving at the same slow pace. Each one was alone but was each other’s strength. 

 

“Ek Noor te Sabh Jag Upjaya”

(Bhagat Kabir, Sri Guru Granth Sahib)

From one light — all of this.