Outside of bustling Hong Kong proper, up a winding mountain road, and away from the noise, we are awarded with a stillness and calm unlike any I have previously witnessed.

“We” means a new friend, born and raised in Hong Kong, met on an airplane ride from South Korea, and I, the American tourist and nomad seeking novelty around every corner and in every encounter.

 The feeling of arriving in this sacred place: incense wafting through the air, monks walking amongst us, the heavy mist creating a layer and mysticism to it all.

With this feeling, I can’t help but think of the place in my mind I have been cultivating for years: a place of mindfulness, scarcity, and sacredness.

We begin to climb the steep steps of a grand fashioned staircase, through the mist, and up to the famous Tian Tan Buddha statue.

There is no expectation or assumption present in my mind, only fascination.

For a good two hundred stairs, I see nothing, squinting through the fog and distant shapes, trying to cross-reference them in my mind: a lamp post flickering with a tiny fire, a child holding her mother’s arm, a massive figure sitting crosslegged with a palm facing outward.

Even as my mind grasped the obvious reference to the many giant statues stored in my hippocampus, I was unprepared for the magnitude of this one.

This stone sculpture and the setting it was set in was the reason: shrouded in mist, with one hand open, the palm facing foreward, and the other hand also open with the palm outstretched. The hand to receive and the hand to give.

I cannot discern which is which only that I must take note of it, for future reference.

A mental note is etched into the photo I take.

A lesson as old as time and yet as needed as ever:

When I receive I am to give,

And when I give I am to receive.