UNVEILING THE SECRETS OF MOUNT SERMON: What's Behind the Title?

Author Khushwant Singh allegedly said in an interview that “there is no point in writing if you are not honest” (56). I took this advice and carried forward my spiritual act, my conscious affair with coming to term with who I truly am. The ‘I AM’ presence in me is joyous with what I write and when I write. It does not matter what I write, I have discovered over the years. Although I began with a strange fear that I must confine myself within a genre like poetry or fiction. But I kept coming across one answer to this dilemma.

Whatever I write, the only thing I need to do is to open myself to the Source of all being. And I will be given what I am to write. I need not worry about the format or form. That suits me well. But that does not suit the market. It requires you to confine yourself within a certain form. Market as such does not have a say in what you do. It is the people or rather simply put it, it is what you think people are going to like about you that makes you confine yourself within the limitations of a format. It is not a bad move either. Sometimes, confinement can bring art to flourishing heights.

My newest book is Mount Sermon. I would like to share some personal information about the book with you. Just like a human being every book has its own personal story to tell, other than the story that it offers you within its soul. There is another realm that you must explore, the realm a book shares exclusively with its author. Mount Sermon keeps such an exclusive space with me.

I will not prolong this post further. I would like to share some information about the title Mount Sermon. Mount Sermon may mean a mountain named sermon. What is a sermon? Any ideas? The word Sermon means “a talk on a moral or religious subject, usually given by a religious leader during a service,” according to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. A Mountain names sermon may mean a challenge posed in front of an individual like a mountain to be conquered or to be understood completely. The sermon that you require to cross or to mount to be understood completely is mount ‘sermon’. It’s not just a usual affair. It is a special and peculiar part of existence that one needs to look into in order to decipher its complete meaning.

Here is an old man, bringing his enemy’s son to throw him over the edge of a cliff to a waterfall.

The old man, Kathik- the storyteller, deserves your ears. He must be listened to. Then only one can understand his true agonies and existential dilemmas.

Mount Sermon also means the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus of Nazareth that one may read in the Gospel of Matthew. I would like to quote what author Kushwant Singh says about the sermon. “The strength of the sermon...lies in its simplicity and directness” (162).  

One may wonder why it takes us generations to work through all the varied levels of meaning in the Sermon on the Mount. One cannot criticize those who wonder why the Sermon has been interpreted in as many ways as there are people who read the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount literally appears to be mount ‘sermon’ with its majesty, weight, purpose, and level of achievement.

“The sermon...is an assurance that those who suffer will, by God’s grace, be comforted” (Khushwant 162) adds India’s great son. So is my book Mount Sermon too. Hope you will enjoy reading it. Order your copy here. Happy reading.

I will get back to you soon with another personal story about Mount Sermon in my next post. Until then, Take care, good bye.   

Books I quoted from:

Absolute Khushwant by Humra Quraishi (an interview with Khushwant Singh). published by Penguin Books. Get a copy here: Absolute Khushwant

Mount Sermon: A Novella (Book-2 Hope, Vengeance and History Trilogy edition-1) by Anu Lal. Published by BW Publishing