---

I DON’T NORMALLY SWIPE STUFF off the Internet to use in Hundred Mountain, without proper permission. But I so liked the little animation of the Sisyphus character that illustrates this column that I downloaded it off a website which I came upon a while back, then e-mailed the website’s owner to ask who had done it? She had no idea as to its provenance. So if you are the designer, my apologies. Contact me and I will give you credit, earning you a few moments of fame with Hundred Mountain’s worldwide audience of—how many of you are out there nowadays?17? 1,700? 17,000?

I call the little guy in the animation Sid Sisyphus. Sid’s cyclic toiling -- roll the big heavy rock up the hill, chase after it when it rolls down, roll the dang thing up -- neatly captures the feeling of day-to-day life sometimes. Work hard. Rest for the briefest of moments at the top of the hill. Race to catch up with things as they slip away from your grasp again. Start the whole shebang over again. And again. And again. And again.

Sid could be a mascot for Hundred Mountain, since his work echoes the line that originally inspired this web magazine’s name. Keen readers will have already intuited this connection from the Richard Nelson quote at the top of this page:

“There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains.”

WHAT DOES THIS QUOTE SIGNIFY? I take it to mean several things. First, that we may be tricked by romantic, idealistic and even self-deluding notions that in order to find meaning and enlightenment, we must go off in a hundred different directions and up a hundred different mountains -- preferably exotic ones, in faraway places. They need not be actual mountains or specific places, of course. The hundred directions in which we flee, in search of comfort, insight and most often simply escape from the life of Sid Sisyphus, can be mountains of entertainment, heaps of diversion, inviting ranges of pleasures that seem to go on forever. All the usual intoxicants, from drink, to drugs to debutantes, which -- just like a far-off mountain range -- seem so inviting, mysterious and worthwhile at a distance.

Yet the Nelson quote suggests that we ask ourselves this question: What about the mountain on which you already stand? But that’s the mountain we always disparage. Call it your daily life, your routine, the drudgery of work and homelife, etc. Getting up in the morning and going off to the same old workplace, Coming home to the same old house. Preparing food in the same old kitchen. Seeing the same old family and greeting the same old sun once again in the morning.

Sid’s work, it can feel like. And such a life can’t be as good or in any way as cool as those exotic blue mountains off in the distance. That's the place where we feel we may be more likely to find ourselves, to find our way or maybe to lose ourselves. To forget the damn rock we roll up the hill every day. To leave it all behind and go be what we were truly meant to be.

Much of the time, though, we feel trapped on our own mountain, trapped within the four walls of our little piece of real estate on that heap of stones. We gaze off at other distant hills, tortured by what might have been, lost in the dreams to which W.H. Auden referred to:

Clear, unscaleable, ahead
Rise the Mountains of Instead,
From whose cold cascading streams
None may drink except in dreams.

PAGE 2: 'The Bounded is Loathed by its Possessor.'

	Page One | Editor's Notes | Buddhascope | Buddamerica | Dharmatalk | Foundobjects | GuestColumn | Meditation | Poetry | Quotes | ReadingRoom | SiteIndex | Contact Us | Subscribe