Analysis
Being and Becoming
of our Journey
Embraced by the far away horizon, wrapped in a silent, misty solitude and kissing the skies it stood there surveying the entire creation. It was a towering, mighty mountain peak worshipped by bubbling brooks, dense forests and tall trees. They carried celestial hymns from the bosom of the earth and offered them to the breeze. Leaves sang the prayers and with the breeze they wafted beyond the yonder blue horizon to mingle with the breath of a traveler thus initiating a journey from somewhere along this infinite enormity and at some point in time- without a beginning and an end.
Stars beaconed him through their veiled firmament and he set out on a course charted by the footprints of the clouds sailing across the endless skies. Somewhere along the path a deluge of now rising and now ebbing echoes emanated to give him company. Path or destination, companion or guide were not the questions that bothered him. Marveling at the source of those echoes he just sauntered along till he reached that peak. Did the path end there? Did he reach his destination? He paused, turned around and asked the echoes. He asked about the beginning of the path that they had traversed together and whether the peak that shared their solitude was the culmination of that path?
The echoes had given him company all along the path, through the forest and across the brooks. But did they know about the beginning of the path? The clouds sailing across the horizon came, paused at the peak and asked them. Didn't the path that took them to the peak exist even before the traveler set out on his course and then found the company of echoes at some point? But where was that path now, looking from the peak they asked the clouds and how did they come to follow it to the peak through that dense forest? At some point in time the leaves singing those hymns had dried and the breeze carried them in its lap to spread them like a sheet on the path to gather the footfalls of all those who preceded and followed the traveler on that path. Through the dense forest and under the cover of dried leaves everywhere along that journey there existed a path winding its way up to the peak. And yet it wasn't surely the culmination.
The clouds brought with them stories of sailors and seafarers from the faraway mighty oceans and travelers across the vast sands and sky kissed mountains from far and wide. Enshrined in their bosom were the echoes of the footfalls of an incessantly marching caravan ever in search of the beginning and the end. At some point in time, somewhere, at some peak those echoes welcome a traveler who turns to them asking about the beginning and end of this journey. While listening to the echoes the traveler becomes one with the travel, his destination becomes just a milestone and path is the only being that remains.
05-Apr-2001
More by :
Dr. Vidur Jyoti
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