One of my favourite sayings, that I learned from a former Hare Krishna devotee is, “There are many paths to the top of a mountain, but the view from the summit is the same.” I was at a professional development session about restorative practices last week and I shared this quote in a circle.
This little saying reminds me of three things. First, good people are good people. If they are on a good and kind path, it doesn’t matter what their faith, background, or ideology is. If they are on a path to being the best they can be, if they are doing their part to make this a better world for themselves, their friends, and their community, well then they are on a good path. It doesn’t have to be the same path as me.
The second interpretation of this quote is that sometimes it’s good to take the 2,000 foot view of things, to not get lost on your own path, and not see that others’ paths are going in the same direction. A good example of this is when dealing with upset parents. It’s easy to get lost in the issues, but if you pause and look at the issue from above, suddenly you can see clearly… you both have the best interest of their child in mind… you both want the same thing. With this perspective, it’s easier to see the forest through the trees. It’s easier to not focus on your own path, but a mutual path. The view from the summit is not hindered by the path.
When it comes to faith and religion, I think of this quote as meaning there are many ways to seek God, or to be spiritual. The biggest issue I have with religions is their fervour that there is only one path to God. That seems ridiculous to me for 2 reasons. First, how many 2,000+ year old religions are now dead? How many people lived before modern faiths even existed? Surely God cared about some of those people that lived before the ‘one true religion’ even existed. Surely He/She cares for people today who are good and righteous, but have never been exposed to that one religion. And secondly, if a benevolent God were truly that concerned about a specific unyielding faith, then He/She would have given us scriptures that were more universally interpreted and less framed in the era and geography they came from. Just think about the animals mentioned in religious texts, and whether they should be eaten, not eaten, or sacrificed… these animals had relevance not to a wise God, but to the people at the time that these people wrote the scriptures. No scripture is written well enough to be the words of God, they are all so obviously written by people.
“There are many paths to the top of a mountain, but the view from the summit is the same.”
A Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Jew, an Atheist… each one of these can be good people on a path to a kinder world, and each one of these can be selfish jerks that are of a belief that somehow their faith or ideology makes them righteous and heaven bound or makes them better than others. What if they just saw each other on the same mountain, and all heading to the same summit?
I like the view from the top of that summit!
