The joys of self denial 2

The old man of the high peaks could hear them coming, thousands of feet below in the sun-kissed valleys, where meadow flowers fluttered in the warm breezes. He could hear their feckless chatter, already truncated by breathlessness. By the time they got to him, they’d be panting for air. They would, of course, expect him to make their travails worth while.

It was cool up in the heights, but he never elected to notice. He had the truths to contemplate, the way of light, the ground of being. Heat, hunger and thirst were rather impertinent interruptions in the light of revelations gently being made known to him, if only he could keep his mind out of the way.

Throughout the day he followed their ascent, the stumbling, the cursing, the swigging of water bottles, and the controlled desperation of it all. He neither moved nor declined to move. He simply listened. He had drunk some water and had eaten some nuts and fruit in the recent past. He had no bodily needs to attend to.

They arrived in the late afternoon. Two hot young men, bursting with philosophical enquiry and ontological need, staggered up to the entrance to his cave and stood, bowed over before him, gasping for breath and enlightenment.

“You know, don’t you?” said the first young man, mopping his face with his scarf. “You know what life’s all about.”

The old man shrugged a careless affirmative. The men’s faces lit up.

“Can you tell us?” asked the second man eagerly. His eyes were popping in the altitude.

“Yes I can,” replied the old man with a small, open smile.

The men looked at each other in delight and relief.

“But I’m not going to,” continued the old man, and he crawled back into his cave.