Mom, I'm trekking to Mt. Everest (video)

I visited Mount Everest Base Camp

(Luke Korns) July 28, 2024: What's up? My name is Luke Korns. I trekked to Everest Base Camp with a retired Nepalese Sherpa guide from the Himalayas. His name is Phanden. To contact him, email sherpa.phanden@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter (lukekorns ) or Instagram (LukeKorns).

Featured places. See more information in Google Maps Everest Base Camp Campground 4.7 (519) Details

Once upon a time in Nepal...

Just give me a few years of silence.

Once upon a time in Nepal a boy sought enlightenment. He sat under a tree in the woods. But soon he attracted all the wrong kind of attention. It wasn't just the tree spirits and unseen beings who haunt the forest. It was devoted looky-loos and devoted observers. He got up and went somewhere else, acting like a modern-day Siddhartha.

[But Prince Sid Gautama was actually in Gandhara, what the ancient Greeks called Scythia, in the territory or mahajanapada of the Sakas (Indo-Scythians) called Kapilavastu. But never mind about that detail; historians have relocated him to tiny Nepal on the border of India where it's easier to safeguard his story and monuments, leaving the massive ones in and around his hometown in Afghanistan to languish for centuries with no one paying much attention until recently: Mes Aynak, Bamiyan, Ajina Tepe...]

I'm a do-it-yourselfer, a self-awakened buddha.

The boy's name was Ram Bahadur Bomjon (nicknamed "Buddha Boy" for some similarities to the story of Siddhartha), who eventually became an esoteric Vajrayana lama and spiraled into disrepute. Too much fame too soon does that to a meditator.

What would it have taken to ascend the mountain of wisdom and reach the pinnacle of knowing-and-seeing? Restraints on practice, boundaries, a solid disciplinary code (vinaya). "All we ever wanted was everything. All we ever got was cold," sings Bauhaus. Now could an American reach the Holy Land and get to the base of what is reputedly the tallest mountain in the world?

But, Son, what about avalanches? - Oh, Mom!

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• Luke Korns, wandering in Nepal, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly