In class today, the four students who were able to come to Overlook Mountain on Saturday reported on their experience. It was somewhat different from mine! Where I experienced the forest's gentle molting as a crystal miracle, they described feeling "challenged" by the mountain. "As the ice was melting it came pelting down," said one poetically. Another was hit in the head by a piece of ice. "It felt personal," the first added. Not that they weren't glad to have gone! It was still "another world,"
a taste of "sacrality." Yet what moved them turns out not to have been the mountain but the monastery and the winsome monk who showed us around and led an introduction to meditation. They were charmed (as was I) by his challenging us to stop breathing, an uncomfortable blockage; feeling that pain we could appreciate that our usual regular breathing loves us - defined as saving another from pain. Love!
It fell to me to remind them the lesson extended to the mountain. The monk spoke of the mountain as the source of water (one has a view of one of the city's feeder reservoirs) and air (the trees purify it) for New York, and of the work of prayer flags which, moved by the wind, scatter words of healing not only toward the monastery but toward the animals of the forest. Love is all around, an example for us to follow. It's natural - and as powerful - as the breathing of humans and mountains.
