Member-only story
LIFE LESSONS | PHILOSOPHY | EMPTINESS
When you are in the hills and somebody steals your hiking boots
(no more self, nor more shoes)
We were twelve and I had sworn to get all twelve of us back down alive: six clients who had entrusted me with their fate and well-being, five sherpa, and me. We had tickets on a flight out of Lukla back to Kathmandu. We would be flying in 10 days. I had a good mind to get this done.
It was December — not an ideal month for hiking in Nepal. The first days had been nice and easy though. We were having a jolly good time.
But not that day. It had been snowing since early morning and we were cold and disoriented and exhausted — when finally we reached some kind of balcony glued to the steep hill, and the skeleton of a deserted gompa materialized in the clouds.
This was both a hiking and a study tour. Every evening after we had set up camp, and while the sherpa engaged in cooking, the rest of us assembled around a violently hissing gas light in what we called the assembly hall tent — and studied an aspect of Buddhist philosophy and practice.
Emptiness
For many days now, the topic had been emptiness and how emptiness does not mean that things do not exist (here). Emptiness…
