Pasang says, “Machig Labdrön once wrote, Unless all reality is made worse, one cannot attain liberation.…So wander in grisly places and mountain retreats…do not get distracted by doctrines and books…just get real experiences…in the horrid and desolate.”

Our valley is in darkness, but Everest blazes far beyond and above us in a cold, powerful, self-contained isolation. That strikes me as terrifying.

I didn’t know a damned thing about Zen meditation, if that’s what the Deacon really had been doing when he sat cross-legged and apparently lost in thought every morning before breakfast as Reggie recently suggested, and I certainly hadn’t had the time or interest on this insane climb to ask him about it. But I suspected then and I know now that mou

During the descent stage, it’s usually more common for the climber to be facing outward, thus making it easier for the climber to see the tiny ledges and footholds in the yards and meters beneath and beside him; that way the climber’s back is against the rock, his face turned toward (and attention now on) the drop beneath him, much of the view now

“Does Dzatrul Rinpoche give any advice on how to deal with yetis?” Reggie grins. “As a matter of fact, one young would-be ascetic did once ask the Rinpoche what he should do if a yeti appeared at his cave. The master responded, Why, invite him in to tea, of course!”

“Perfect place for a camp,” said the Deacon. “You have to be kidding,” I said between gasping coughs, removing my oxygen mask at every paroxysm. “We’re above twenty-eight thousand feet here.” It was true that our hearts were swollen, our muscles were failing, our kidneys, stomachs, and other internal organs were not doing their jobs properly, our b

The Deacon nodded and then nodded some more but then shook his head. Then he looked up, over the top of my head to the west, and said, “I want to climb the mountain. But I’ve never abandoned a fellow climber in need and I won’t start now, Jake.” I was stunned at this. “If you want to keep climbing, I’m fit to come with you,” I lied. It felt like th

I said, “Yeah, it’ll be a veritable Alamo up there.” “What is this ‘Alamo’?” asked J.C. He seemed far too cheery for the circumstances. I was coughing again, so Reggie explained the history of the Alamo to him in three or four succinct sentences. “It sounds like a glorious battle,” said J.C. after Reggie had just sketched the outline of the fight w

“Nepal’s forbidden to foreigners,” said Reggie. “You’ll be imprisoned, Richard.” The Deacon shook his head a final time. “Owings has friends there. His farm in the Khumbu Valley employs about a hundred locals, and he’s respected. He converted to Buddhism in nineteen nineteen—really converted, not like my meditate-in-the-morning, shoot-Germans-in-th