Enlightenment

I had been told, after a great deal of searching and mystical transfer of energies, that enlightenment could be found in a hidden stairway deep in the mountains. It had taken me the better part of a decade to locate that stone stairway. My hands and feet were tattered and calloused. My clothes were similarly ragged. What had started out as purified white cotton had acquired a deep red-grey hue after months of dust and hundreds of miles of forgotten pathways. The stones carried me forward, but I left more and more of my physical self behind.

The cliffs rising on either side of me hedged me in and protected me from the wind. Its calls and cries echoed around the whole mountain region. It needed more attention than I could give it. My legs were burning, my back was bending and pushing me forward, my arms ached and protested with every thrust of my twin walking sticks.

The steps reached out ahead of me into billowing clouds. Roiling fog poured out of the sky and down towards me. As always, when you walk into the clouds you are never in the midst. They are always thickest off in the distance. I couldn’t see the top, but I knew I must be near it. My body was screaming with the effort fo moving towards the vaporous thicket.

The stories described the summit as the most peaceful place in the kingdom. The hills opened out before you into a long valley of flourishing trees and plants. The vista was surrounded by an open-air temple, constructed by those wisest monks of old to shield you not only from the wind, but from all sound of the world below.

I could just see the pillars and carved stones of the entrance as felt enlightenment reaching towards me. My heart stabbed sharply. My hands faltered on the poles, and I drifted quickly to places higher and more quiet still than what lay before me at the end of the steps.