mountain ridge

I'm at a campsite in New Zealand. It is late afternoon. Birds are chirping. Far away I can hear some sheep bleating. And there's a little bit of noise coming from other campers. But it's a peaceful scene. In front of me there is a small lake, and beyond that a mountain range. And the ridge, the crest of that mountain range, forms the skyline, silhouetted against a hazy, slightly cloud covered sky, with the sun trying to break through here and there.

And it's that skyline that I want to talk about, the ridge of the mountain. I've been gazing at it for some minutes. And what has caught my attention is just how irregular it is. Perhaps the mountains have been pushed up further in some places than others. And of course, at different points along the ridge, the mountains have been eroded at different rates. Perhaps in some places, the rock was softer, or more shattered. In some places there are very jagged notches. In other places, there are gentle curves, sometimes small, but I can see off to one side there's a there's a huge dip, a saddle, a big curving space taken out of the ridge.

I'm a little bit distracted by a beautiful bird pecking on the grass, just a couple of metres away from me. It doesn't seem to be disturbed by me.

Coming back to the mountain ridge, seeing this irregularity makes me realise this is a unique ridge. Every mountain ridge is like a fingerprint, unique. But it is also changing, as the rich gets eroded, battered by the weather, perhaps shaken by earthquakes, it's slowly changing. And seeing this ridge, it reminds me of our human personality. The whole human side of our being is also changing, with our experiences: in some places being buoyed up by life, and other parts of our being are being chipped away at. Each one of us is so unique, and that's the beauty in it.

Wouldn't it be a dull world if we were all the same, just as if all mountain ridges were identical straight lines? There would be no beauty in it. The beauty comes from this uniqueness, and from the fact that it is evolving, changing over time. And thinking of our human side, recognising that our beauty, the beauty of our individual personality, comes from our differences, but also comes from all these chips and dents, chunks that have been taken out of us by the erosive troubles of our life: this is what gives us beauty in the end.

But all of that also contrasts with our buddha nature. for our buddha nature is such a simple thing. There's no space in it for these individual irregularities. Our buddha nature is, if the truth be known, a shared phenomenon. There is but one buddha nature. It's inside each of us, and inside this mountain range, too. That's the other side of our being. It's a combination of the two, though – this irregular, unique, individual human side, and that pure undefiled buddha nature – it's the combination of the two elements, the two aspects of ourself, that really makes us a whole human being.

It's beautiful, miraculous. How lucky we are.