Beyond the lands that maps can show, past the rim of the known world, there
stands a mountain unlike any other. The sages who sang the old songs called
it Meru, and they said it was made of gold.
A young pilgrim named Sumati once set out to find it. He climbed the
Himalaya, which any traveller would call the greatest range on earth — wall
after wall of white peaks scraping the clouds. But the wandering rishis he
met on the trail only smiled when he spoke of those summits.
"Tall," said an old hermit warming his hands at a fire. "But not the
tallest. There is a mountain that does not merely rise into the sky — the
sky turns around it. Meru. The sun and moon and all the stars wheel about
its peak like moths around a lamp. Its slopes are gold, its forests are jewel
and sandal, and the rivers of heaven fall from its crown."
"Who lives there?" asked Sumati.
"The greatest of the great," said the hermit. "On its heights dwells
Shankara — Shiva himself — calm and shining among the fierce Rudras, the
most peaceful of them all though they are storm and fire. On its golden
terraces Kubera counts the treasure of the worlds, lord of every buried
gem and hidden hoard. And in every hearth and every offering rises Agni,
the fire, the brightest of the Vasus, carrying gifts up to the gods."
Sumati looked at the white Himalayan peaks before him, suddenly small.
"Then I will never reach Meru," he said.
"Perhaps not with your feet," the hermit answered, feeding a stick to the
flames. "Meru is the highest place there is — and Krishna says, of all
high things, he is that highest. Of the Rudras, the kindest. Of treasures,
the richest lord. Of the bright ones, the purest fire. When you stand
before anything that towers over everything else of its kind, you are
already looking at a spark of him. You do not have to climb to the centre
of the world. You only have to notice it."
That night Sumati watched the stars wheel slowly over the white peaks, and
for the first time he thought he could feel them turning — turning, far
away, around a golden summit, around the One at the centre of it all.
