To Be A Holy Man on A Mountain

“It’s easy to be a holy man on top of a mountain.”

The movie (and book) “The Razor’s Edge” is the story of WWI pilot Larry Darrell coming home after the war only to be plagued by existential questions and suffering from survivor’s guilt. In a quest to lead a life worth living, he takes various jobs, eventually becoming a coal miner. After saving a man’s life from a runaway mine cart, the man lends Larry a copy of the Upanishads, and suggests he travel to India to gain a differing perspective. He arrives to a buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, while when searching for inner peace, he realizes it’s easy to be spiritual and detached from the world when you are isolated on a mountaintop, which is where this famous quote written above comes from. After his stint in the Himalayas, Larry now has to struggle to find the same inner peace he found on that mountain in India within the modern world, all while being hit with numerous tragedies and heartbreaks.

I think about this quote a lot, especially in relation to our current societal and political landscape. I relate it a lot to my own journey. It was easy to feel pono and spiritually driven in my 20’s when living was, for back of a better word, easier. There was far less division and distrust. Inflation and skyrocketing cost of living were far from an issue. I felt more aligned and right with the world because, for the most part, others felt that way, too. It was the dominating energy that surrounded us. It does not mean there weren’t challenges - life is always full of them. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that it is not the same world we had before the pandemic, and it is likely not going to return. And the dramatic shift we are currently going through can be hard to deal with. None of what we are going through is easy.

I have struggled myself in the last few years to find that same sense of inner peace and balance I felt before a virus rocked the world in 2020. Living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to financially maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle, and beginning the feel the effects of living in such an isolated place as Hawaii is, the easy thing for me to do is fall into past habits and thoughts that kept me down, and it becomes all too easy to start blaming others for my own misfortunes. It becomes easy to fall out of balance because our survival mechanism kicks into high gear. The innate need to survive takes over our conscious thought, and all we are more worried about is where our next meal is coming from, or if we’re going to have a job tomorrow, than our spiritual practice. All of a sudden, we have a huge populace that wants to leave everything behind, uproot their lives, and go move to the forest or the mountains and escape all the world’s problems, thinking it will bring them the inner peace that they so desperately seek. I am guilty of it, too.

Some time into my own spiritual path, I hit a fork in the road. Feeling like a veil had been lifted from in front of my eyes, I felt I could clearly see just how problematic and downright hateful humans could be to each other. The propaganda that killing others in wars was justified under the guise of security had been taken out of my programming, and all I had was disdain and heartbreak that someone could look at a another person and see them as something less than themselves and treat them as such. I was sickened by all the hate. I wanted to retreat from it all, and made many plans of my own to go find an ashram or monastery in Nepal to continue on with my spiritual seeking, away from all the problems plaguing the world. I wanted to be that holy man on the mountain.

But, at every turn, something in my life kept me from actually taking that leap. Deep down, it felt disingenuous to just uproot my life and escape my problems under the guise of wanting to become enlightened. I did not really want to escape the world, I just wanted to thrive in it. In the end, I realized that part of my journey entailed finding my peace and balance amidst all the “bad” in the world and relate and connect with others who, too, wanted to see the world become a brighter place. So the only thing left for me to do was to continue onward, actively searching for the moments in life that made it beautiful and worth living. Searching for the good in others instead of dwelling heavily on the bad. Finding out how, among the chaos, I can find a life worth living.

In light of recent events in the current American political landscape, I would like to offer some food for thought:

We are beings of both light and shadow. We are capable of extraordinary acts of kindness and compassion, yet also susceptible to fear, anger, and judgment. The challenge lies in recognizing these dualities within ourselves and choosing the path of love and understanding.The media often paints a picture of a world polarized into opposing camps. But beneath the surface of these divisions lies a shared humanity. We all yearn for connection, belonging, and a sense of purpose. By focusing on our commonalities rather than our differences, we can begin to build bridges of understanding.

To cultivate peace within ourselves, we must first tend to our inner garden. Practices like mindfulness and meditation invite us to turn inward and connect with our own wisdom. This self-awareness empowers us to respond to the world with greater clarity and compassion.

As we extend this inner peace outward, we begin to see the world through a different lens. Empathy becomes our compass, guiding us towards understanding the experiences of others. Active listening becomes a sacred practice, allowing us to truly hear the stories of those around us. And acts of kindness, no matter how small, become ripples in humanity’s pond.

In a world that often feels divided, let us remember our shared humanity. We are all interconnected, and our actions have the power to create a ripple effect of love, peace, and compassion. By choosing kindness, empathy, and understanding, we can illuminate the path towards a more harmonious world. Sometimes, the hard things in life are the right thing to do. Loving ourselves and others can be hard, but the payoff of a world connected, empowered, and loved is immeasurable. So if you needed a sign, here it is: Stay on your path, keep moving forward, and do not feed into the hate and division. Keep on being you, the world needs it. You are loved.