The Language of the Mountain

The sun had begun its slow descent behind the western cliffs, casting long amber shadows across the stone terrace where the monk sat cross-legged, alone. Before him stood the mountain—immense, unmoving, older than anything he could comprehend. It had been there before his master was born, before any temple stones were laid, before even the first name for "mountain" was spoken.

His eyes were closed, but the light pressed softly against his skin, warm at first, then fading.

He breathed in.

He breathed out.

Thoughts arose like ripples in a still pool: memories of childhood, vague longings, and half-formed questions about the world. Then came words—phrases, images, entire internal conversations. The monk watched them as one might observe clouds passing overhead: shifting, multiplying, dissolving.

But today, something caught.

A thought repeated itself:

“Who is it that thinks?”

Another arose in reply:
“I do.”

But before he could accept that answer, another voice—calmer, deeper—murmured within:

“What is ‘I’? And whose language do you use to speak it?”

He opened his eyes.

The mountain had not moved. The light had gone pink along the rim. The world was silent except for the occasional chirp of a bird readying for sleep.

The monk looked out over the valley, where homes flickered in the distance. He realized that even the shape of his thoughts—every word, every image, even the structure of his questions—had not originated within him.

The words in his mind were not of his own making.
The voice he called his own had been taught to him.
Even the question “Who am I?” was a gift passed down from others who had asked it first.

He had spent years searching for the “true self,” but now he saw clearly:
He was a vessel.
And the water within him had been poured by unseen hands.

He turned back to the mountain.
Still it stood—silent, uncarved by thought.

“Perhaps the mountain is wiser,” he whispered.
“It says nothing, thinks nothing, yet it is utterly itself.”

The sun dipped lower, and the sky flared briefly before dimming.

The monk closed his eyes again, not in search, but in surrender.

If he was not the maker of his thoughts, then he could release them.
Let them return to the wind, to the ancestors, to the vast unknowing.

The mountain said nothing.
And in that silence, he found a stillness deeper than any answer.