Dreams from Tiruvanamalai

At the Foot of the Fire Mountain

The bus rattled into Tiruvannamalai just as dawn gathered on the horizon, brushing the sky with rose-colored light. Arunachala stood ahead—immense, silent, and strangely familiar, as if it had been waiting for the traveler since before memory began.

Naya stepped onto the dusty road, feeling the air change. Pilgrims moved quietly toward the Arunachaleswarar Temple, their footsteps soft but purposeful, like beads slipping along a mala. The gopurams rose high, covered in a thousand carved stories, yet the greatest story of all was the mountain watching over them.

Inside the temple, the lamps flickered. Naya joined the line for darshan, the scent of camphor curling through the air. But even amidst the ringing bells and chanting, a deeper stillness tugged inside—a silent invitation.

Later, as the sun climbed, Naya walked toward Ramanashram. The path was simple, shaded by trees filled with chattering monkeys. And yet each step felt like shedding something: a worry, a memory, a layer of identity once believed essential.

Sitting in the Old Hall where Ramana Maharshi once taught without words, Naya felt the quiet more than heard it. The presence there was unmistakable—gentle, spacious, intimate. It didn’t teach; it revealed.

A question rose in the mind:
What am I seeking?

And almost immediately, like a response carried on a breeze from the mountain, came the whisper of Ramana’s teaching:
“Turn within. Ask who is the one who seeks.”

The seeker paused. The question seemed to dissolve into something wider. For a moment, the boundary between the body and the world thinned. The mountain, the ashram, the dust on the road were not separate—not other—they were simply part of a single silent presence.

That evening, Naya joined the pilgrims walking giri pradakshina, circling Arunachala under a moonlit sky. Children laughed. Sadhus chanted. Some walked barefoot; some carried offerings. Yet all were drawn by the same ancient pull—the promise that the very ground beneath them was a Guru in stone.

As the road curved, Naya felt the inner and outer worlds touch.
Arunachala—the mountain—was not just a place.
It was a mirror.

In its stillness was the teaching Ramana offered again and again:
The Self you are seeking is the one who is looking.
Be still, and know.

And with that simple awareness, the pilgrimage shifted. It was no longer a journey to a sacred mountain, but a return to the quiet, luminous center that had never been left.