The Summit That Breathes Light

One misty dawn, when shadows had not yet curled back into their night nests, I met an old man sitting beneath a tree whose branches reached toward the sky like a ladder into other worlds. In his hands he held an invisible vessel, scooping the air as if gathering the morning dew.

“What are you collecting?” I asked.
“I take the summit,” he replied. “And with it, the middle always comes.”

It seemed to me he was speaking in riddles. But the old man, as if reading my thoughts, continued:

Do you see how the sun rises? It strives for the zenith, yet at the same time warms the grass underfoot. The Vedas say: just as a tree is nourished when its root is watered, so life is nourished when the mind is directed toward the Supreme. One who fixes his mind on Brahman does not lose the earthly, for the higher contains within itself all that is lower, just as the ocean contains every wave.

I looked at the tree behind him and saw something strange: its crown was bathing in golden light, while its roots drank from silver streams of underground water. Between them lay the world — the rustle of leaves, the songs of birds, the breath of the wind.

“A human being is like this tree,” said the old man. “If you aim for the highest branch, you inevitably root yourself deeper into the ground. But if you care only for the roots, forgetting the sky, you will become a bush, not an oak.”

These words were not just advice — they echoed an ancient Vedic principle: sarva-dharmān parityajya — “Abandon all that is secondary, turn toward what is primary.” If your goal is low, you will gain only that. If your goal is high, everything in between will come as part of the journey.

I understood: the middle is not a compromise, but a gift that arrives when you strive beyond yourself. The summit and the middle are not two different goals, but two breaths of the same soul. Vedic wisdom speaks the same truth as Skovoroda: direct your mind toward the eternal, and the temporal will follow on its own.

And at the moment when the sun fully rose above the horizon, the old man vanished, leaving only a faint scent of jasmine and the feeling that within me had grown my own tree — with its crown among the stars and its heart in the warm, living world.