10,000 Paths Up the Mountain
I don’t remember the first time I encountered this idea.
“Ten thousand paths up the mountain.”
I’ve seen it everywhere—sutras, koans, lectures, aphorisms. It blurs into other phrases: many roads to enlightenment, many ways to skin a cat. Humans are endlessly inventive with metaphors for the same truth.
I know the thought came through sutra at some point. But which one? At this stage it hardly matters. The sources smear together: ancient Indian texts, the first discourse of Gotama, Ch’an, Mahayana schools, zazen, and onward through modern interpreters—right up to students of Alan Watts who sometimes mistake the finger for the moon—and call the finger dharma.
What remains after all that blur is the message.
There are not ten thousand paths up the mountain.
There are ten million.
There are infinite paths.
There are as many paths as there are people, moments, mistakes, detours, doubts, and acts of love.
This is the part that matters:
All of us are already held close to God’s bosom.
There is nothing you can do to change that.
We are not seeking the light—
we are made of it.
There is nothing to fear.
Nothing to earn.
Nothing to prove.
The only thing asked of us is this:
don’t fight it.
walk together.
cooperate.
Which, ironically, is exactly what every version of this teaching has always said.
All paths—no matter how dark—lead to the light.
So keep walking.
Let the rest work itself out.
