YET THE NELSON QUOTE SUGGESTS that the insights we might draw from climbing a hundred different mountains may be more limited than we may imagine. Probably, we’ll come back with lots of great photos, entertaining stories, worn-out shoes and some colorful trinkets for the kids (“My Parents Went to the Mountains of Instead and all I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt”).

And, perversely, crawling up the sides of a hundred different mountains may itself become a different kind of -- unexpected -- drudgery. Exoticism, diversion, constant seeking in other places and other worlds -- these are all well and good in doses. Yet even a whole mountain range, even a universe, may prove tiresome if it offers nothing more than diversion or stimulation and yields up secrets no more enticing than: “There’s another mountain ahead after you’re done climbing this one. It’s got a gift shop, too.”

So, is that it? Have we only got two possible realms where we can do our work: the deceptive world of a hundred mountains and the drudge world of our own daily mountain that we must climb hundreds and hundreds of times?

William Blake sounds like he is referring to the second realm -- the boring, daily round of our daily life -- but actually he is talking about the hazards both of these realms pose when we allow ourselves to be dulled by them:

“The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round, even of a universe, would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.”

HOW, THEN, DO WE UNBIND OURSELVES? We might start by trying to wake up to the mountain on which we live instead of disparaging our daily trip up the mountainside we call home. We might learn more -- Richard Nelson suggests -- by seeing that there is a whole lot going on upon our mountain. A hundred trips up the same mountain -- a hundred times a hundred trips -- is a great opportunity to learn one mountain’s ecosystem intimately.

This is none other than the sort of awareness offered by the lifelong path of insight meditation and spiritual work. It's a practice not at all limited to sitting on a cushion in a darkened room. That's just where you do your intensive study. The real work is in waking up to what's already there in your life, diving into it, really getting to know and to appreciate the moments of your daily life. Waking up to your mountain.

THE BUDDHA, AS HE OFTEN DID, nailed this whole matter 2,500 years ago. A hundred mountains? A hundred years? Just as there may may be much more to learn right in your own backyard than by heading off in a hundred different directions, the Buddha taught that it is better to live one day awake then a full hundred years in a stupor. As he put in in the chapter titled “The Thousands” from “The Dhammapada,” his collected short sayings:

Better it is to live one day wise and meditative than to live a hundred years foolish and uncontrolled.

Better it is to live one day strenuous and resolute than to live a hundred years sluggish and dissipated.

Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.

Better it is to live one day seeing the Deathless than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Deathless.

Better it is to live one day seeing the Supreme Truth than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Supreme Truth.

THE ABOVE EXCERPT comes from one of the most melliflously worded translations of "The Dhammapada," by Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita. His translation of the entire work can be found at one of my favorite Buddhist websites (because of its clean, user-friendly design) at: www.cstone.net/~maxwell/home.htm

LONGTIME HUNDRED MOUNTAIN READERS may have wondered what the heck happened to the Spring 2001 issue of this magazine, since it is jumping straight from the Winter 2001 edition to Summer 2001. This is a quarterly journal, correct?

Well, um, in theory. Except that I got overwhelmed this past Spring trying to roll up the side of my mountain more than one rock. In the avalanche that followed, I got flattened. I am just now recovered. But when I awoke from the concussion of the landslide, Spring had passed. So I just went straight to the Summer issue.

I'm trying to take some pointers from Sid: only one rock at a time.

Be well.

Douglas Imbrogno
Editor, Hundred Mountain

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