Searching For The Hermit In Vain

 

Thanks Fifi!

***

I asked the boy beneath the pines.

He said, "The master's gone alone

Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,

Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown."

 

Chia Tao (777-841)

Trans. Lin Yutang

***

 

Snow Mountains, by Guo Xi

 

Alan Watts, Episcopal priest turned Zen philosopher, took this beautifully mysterious phrase for the title of one of his many books.  As someone raised to worry -- who gravitates mentally to horrible outcomes with lightning speed and vivid imagery -- I must, each time, put aside dire thoughts of the master, lost in the clouds, perishing of hypothermia, to be found next day clutching a few herbs in his old gnarled hand.  What is he doing, going up the mount alone?

 

But when I do put such fearful thoughts aside, this lovely poem rewards me amply.  Cloud-hidden from the clanging, yapping world -- oh bliss, delight, oh peace!  With only nature and God for company, what thoughts might I think?  What truths might I see, what ecstasies experience, what songs create and dances perform for God who is at last omnipresent, just as I'd always heard?

 

 

Perhaps I would haul up supplications from my well, so pure and clear that they'd exist before I could even grab the overflowing bucket and pour.  A gazillion light-years beyond my usual "please God don't make me go to that boring meeting/job/Christmas party/doctor's appointment; please God cure me, I hate diabetes/don't want to get old/lose my looks/die" -- so far above I'd blush to think of my banality.  What to do but laugh at myself and the whole silly world; hahahahahaaaaa echoing up the mountains and gently drifting back from the sky.

 

Down the mountain, into town, and maybe enlightenment would last more than a few minutes. I could be of some good, perhaps, to fellow humans, before getting sucked back into biz as usual.

 

 

Alan Watts, you mischievous spirit, you.