Buddha Blogs

Years ago, in a surprisingly quiet classroom I saw a poster on the wall of a dear teacher.  It was a beautiful picture of a man walking into a valley with high cliffs around him.  The quote on the poster was, "At first, I walked along the floor of the valley for many years.  I looked up, witnessed the power of the mountains around me, and began to climb them, with much difficulty for I was weak and inexperienced.  After many years, I became agile and as strong as the mountains I conquered and then I looked down and beheld the gentle beauty of the green and flowing valley beneath me.  I descended and have since relished in the life of the valley floor."  Or something like that.  It attributed the quote to Buddha.

The man had three parts to his life.  He started in a life of ease, but he didn't understand it.  The path was flat and easy.  Water and food abounded around him.  He opened his eyes though and witnessed how much he was missing out on, so he chose to explore, climbing up the steep and dangerous slopes.  He was lucky to survive long enough to gain the strength needed to conquer his mountains.  He beheld his glory and reveled in it, because he was great.  But then he noticed the gentle stream below him, the calm valley, and remembered the ease and bliss of his previous life, so he chose to return.  That life, now understood by him, became beautiful in absence and learning.  Had he stayed there forever, he would have simply lived an ignorantly blissful life devoid of trial, strength, or need.  This is not a life I view as worth living.

Life is a progession of trials which test the ability to climb the next mountain.  Unless I become stronger, abandoning the weaknesses I had develop as a source of pleasure and thus addiction, a source of inaction and thus atrophy, and as a source of pride and thus blindness, I will not survive long enough to survey the obstacles of my past, the deeds of my present, and the choices of my future.  Not all pleasures become addictions, because many are needed to help us relax and renew, only those pleasures that distract us from that which must be done.  Not all inaction atrophies, because sometimes there is no action to take, only those actions avoided out of fear.  Not all pride blinds us, because we should all be proud of a bang-up job, only that which clouds our fear of the future.  (Pink Floyd just came on, I am pleased)

This is also true of every part of our life.  At first we are ignorant of everything.  Then we notice literature, art, martial arts, music, religion, sports, and many other beautiful dangers.  We attempt to conquer them or we don't.  Our success is defined according to the failures we survived and moved-on from.  Those who choose to come down early, just produce objects not worthy of masters' hands andminds, are little better off than those who never challenge themselves.

We can't be stagnant and great.  We must try ourselves upon the rocky slopes life placed around us or accept our place beneath those climbing.  If we choose comfort and safety we shall be content, but without pain we can never know true pleasure.  If we choose the trial of the mountain, we shall be miserable and tired and beaten, but our glory and happiness will be greater than that of kings, in the end.