Sacred Spaces and Profane Hearts: What I Lost at Everest Base Camp
April, 2012
"Do you think Buddha is jealous?" she asked, her voice thick with false innocence. I looked at the plaster Buddha watching us from the corner of my room, its painted eyes serene and unblinking. "Of course," I replied, then added with a cruelty I immediately regretted, "Look how he holds himself in envy."
I write this with regret that has ripened over years, but the regret itself teaches something essential about how we desecrate the sacred—not through deliberate blasphemy, but through the simple failure to recognize holiness when we're standing in its presence.
The journey to Tibet had been seven years in the making, beginning when I first left America for Shanghai with a single oversized suitcase and no return ticket. In those intervening years, I had fashioned myself into a traveler of the "untamed roads," someone who sought authentic experiences beyond the tourist trails. Yet here I was in Tibet, following the same well-worn path as the caravans of white SUVs speeding through villages, stopping at the obligatory monasteries and viewpoints.
My companions exhausted me. Molly embodied every stereotype of the American tourist miscast as an expat—living in China for the better part of a year but knowing nothing of her host, asking questions she wouldn't retain the answers to, her interest in herself precluding any genuine engagement with the profound landscape we traversed. Amy was better but handicapped herself by her inseparable attachment to Molly.
The trek to Everest Base Camp should have been transformative. We hiked up through the thinning air, each step a small victory against altitude and exhaustion. The mountain revealed itself slowly, first as an idea, then as an impossibility of rock and ice scraping the ceiling of the world. Standing at base camp, I felt something I couldn't name—a presence, an invitation to drop the masks and preoccupations that I carried as self-defense through my expatriate life.
But instead of staying with that feeling, instead of walking back down the mountain to let the experience settle into my bones, we took the shuttle. That small convenience—choosing comfort over contemplation—became a metaphor for everything I was about to lose.
The drive back from Everest was different. The anxiety and compulsive thinking that had occupied my mind on the journey up had vanished, replaced by something I had rarely experienced: a sense of peaceful satisfaction, a wholeness that didn't require conquest or validation. For once, I wasn't consumed by the next encounter, the next achievement, the next mountain to claim. I was simply present, carried along by the rough road and the endless Tibetan plateau.
That presence lasted exactly until I returned to the familiar comforts of Shanghai. Within days, I was back to my patterns, seeking the casual encounters that had become my comfort food in the frequent isolation of expat life. The plaster Buddha watched from the corner of my room as I betrayed the gift of presence and self-satisfaction that Everest had offered with another attempt at escape.
Watching "Seven Years in Tibet" later, seeing those visual reminders of everything I had just witnessed, I felt the full weight of what I had lost. The holiness of Tibet hadn't been lost on me at the time—I had felt it, had been invited into it. But I had failed to protect it, failed to carry it back with me, failed to let it transform me.
This is how we lose the sacred: not in dramatic renunciations but in small shuttles back to comfort, in the inability to sustain presence when faced with our habitual hungers. The sacred spaces of the world—whether the grandeur of Everest's slopes or the quiet beauty of a neighborhood sanctuary—offer us momentary liberation from our smaller selves. They show us who we could be if we could sustain the courage to remain open.
But we are creatures of habit more than transformation. We take photos instead of communion. We make jokes in the presence of the holy because sincere reverence feels too vulnerable, too close to acknowledging how far we are from our potential.
I think now of all the sacred spaces I've rushed through, all the invitations to transformation I've declined in favor of the familiar. Tibet offered me a mirror, and in it, I saw both my capacity for reverence and my reflexive return to the profane. The Buddha wasn't jealous—Buddha was simply present, watching with infinite patience as another foreign visitor failed to sustain the gift of awakening.
The regret I feel isn't for the act itself—bodies seeking comfort in a lonely world. The regret is for the failure of imagination, the poverty of spirit that couldn't hold the sacred for even a few days before defaulting to the transactional, the immediate, the small.
Sacred spaces exist. They wait for us in the high places of the world, in the ancient temples, in the moments when beauty becomes almost unbearable. But they require something of us—the courage to remain present, to resist the shuttle back to our smaller selves, to walk down the mountain carrying something more precious than photographs.
What I lost at Everest Base Camp wasn't innocence or purity—those were gone long before I reached Tibet. What I lost was an opportunity for transformation, traded for the cold comfort of the familiar. The mountain offered transcendence. I chose the shuttle bus.
The Buddha watches still, in a thousand temples and ten thousand moments of possible awakening. Neither jealous nor judging, simply present—a reminder that the sacred remains available to those who can sustain the courage to receive it. Even now, especially now, for those of us who have failed before.
April, 2012
"Do you think Buddha is jealous?" she asked, her voice thick with false innocence. I looked at the plaster Buddha watching us from the corner of my room, its painted eyes serene and unblinking. "Of course," I replied, then added with a cruelty I immediately regretted, "Look how he holds himself in envy."
I write this with regret that has ripened over years, but the regret itself teaches something essential about how we desecrate the sacred—not through deliberate blasphemy, but through the simple failure to recognize holiness when we're standing in its presence.
The journey to Tibet had been seven years in the making, beginning when I first left America for Shanghai with a single oversized suitcase and no return ticket. In those intervening years, I had fashioned myself into a traveler of the "untamed roads," someone who sought authentic experiences beyond the tourist trails. Yet here I was in Tibet, following the same well-worn path as the caravans of white SUVs speeding through villages, stopping at the obligatory monasteries and viewpoints.
My companions exhausted me. Molly embodied every stereotype of the American tourist miscast as an expat—living in China for the better part of a year but knowing nothing of her host, asking questions she wouldn't retain the answers to, her interest in herself precluding any genuine engagement with the profound landscape we traversed. Amy was better but handicapped herself by her inseparable attachment to Molly.
The trek to Everest Base Camp should have been transformative. We hiked up through the thinning air, each step a small victory against altitude and exhaustion. The mountain revealed itself slowly, first as an idea, then as an impossibility of rock and ice scraping the ceiling of the world. Standing at base camp, I felt something I couldn't name—a presence, an invitation to drop the masks and preoccupations that I carried as self-defense through my expatriate life.
But instead of staying with that feeling, instead of walking back down the mountain to let the experience settle into my bones, we took the shuttle. That small convenience—choosing comfort over contemplation—became a metaphor for everything I was about to lose.
The drive back from Everest was different. The anxiety and compulsive thinking that had occupied my mind on the journey up had vanished, replaced by something I had rarely experienced: a sense of peaceful satisfaction, a wholeness that didn't require conquest or validation. For once, I wasn't consumed by the next encounter, the next achievement, the next mountain to claim. I was simply present, carried along by the rough road and the endless Tibetan plateau.
That presence lasted exactly until I returned to the familiar comforts of Shanghai. Within days, I was back to my patterns, seeking the casual encounters that had become my comfort food in the frequent isolation of expat life. The plaster Buddha watched from the corner of my room as I betrayed the gift of presence and self-satisfaction that Everest had offered with another attempt at escape.
Watching "Seven Years in Tibet" later, seeing those visual reminders of everything I had just witnessed, I felt the full weight of what I had lost. The holiness of Tibet hadn't been lost on me at the time—I had felt it, had been invited into it. But I had failed to protect it, failed to carry it back with me, failed to let it transform me.
This is how we lose the sacred: not in dramatic renunciations but in small shuttles back to comfort, in the inability to sustain presence when faced with our habitual hungers. The sacred spaces of the world—whether the grandeur of Everest's slopes or the quiet beauty of a neighborhood sanctuary—offer us momentary liberation from our smaller selves. They show us who we could be if we could sustain the courage to remain open.
But we are creatures of habit more than transformation. We take photos instead of communion. We make jokes in the presence of the holy because sincere reverence feels too vulnerable, too close to acknowledging how far we are from our potential.
I think now of all the sacred spaces I've rushed through, all the invitations to transformation I've declined in favor of the familiar. Tibet offered me a mirror, and in it, I saw both my capacity for reverence and my reflexive return to the profane. The Buddha wasn't jealous—Buddha was simply present, watching with infinite patience as another foreign visitor failed to sustain the gift of awakening.
The regret I feel isn't for the act itself—bodies seeking comfort in a lonely world. The regret is for the failure of imagination, the poverty of spirit that couldn't hold the sacred for even a few days before defaulting to the transactional, the immediate, the small.
Sacred spaces exist. They wait for us in the high places of the world, in the ancient temples, in the moments when beauty becomes almost unbearable. But they require something of us—the courage to remain present, to resist the shuttle back to our smaller selves, to walk down the mountain carrying something more precious than photographs.
What I lost at Everest Base Camp wasn't innocence or purity—those were gone long before I reached Tibet. What I lost was an opportunity for transformation, traded for the cold comfort of the familiar. The mountain offered transcendence. I chose the shuttle bus.
The Buddha watches still, in a thousand temples and ten thousand moments of possible awakening. Neither jealous nor judging, simply present—a reminder that the sacred remains available to those who can sustain the courage to receive it. Even now, especially now, for those of us who have failed before.
April, 2012
"Do you think Buddha is jealous?" she asked, her voice thick with false innocence. I looked at the plaster Buddha watching us from the corner of my room, its painted eyes serene and unblinking. "Of course," I replied, then added with a cruelty I immediately regretted, "Look how he holds himself in envy."
I write this with regret that has ripened over years, but the regret itself teaches something essential about how we desecrate the sacred—not through deliberate blasphemy, but through the simple failure to recognize holiness when we're standing in its presence.
The journey to Tibet had been seven years in the making, beginning when I first left America for Shanghai with a single oversized suitcase and no return ticket. In those intervening years, I had fashioned myself into a traveler of the "untamed roads," someone who sought authentic experiences beyond the tourist trails. Yet here I was in Tibet, following the same well-worn path as the caravans of white SUVs speeding through villages, stopping at the obligatory monasteries and viewpoints.
My companions exhausted me. Molly embodied every stereotype of the American tourist miscast as an expat—living in China for the better part of a year but knowing nothing of her host, asking questions she wouldn't retain the answers to, her interest in herself precluding any genuine engagement with the profound landscape we traversed. Amy was better but handicapped herself by her inseparable attachment to Molly.
The trek to Everest Base Camp should have been transformative. We hiked up through the thinning air, each step a small victory against altitude and exhaustion. The mountain revealed itself slowly, first as an idea, then as an impossibility of rock and ice scraping the ceiling of the world. Standing at base camp, I felt something I couldn't name—a presence, an invitation to drop the masks and preoccupations that I carried as self-defense through my expatriate life.
But instead of staying with that feeling, instead of walking back down the mountain to let the experience settle into my bones, we took the shuttle. That small convenience—choosing comfort over contemplation—became a metaphor for everything I was about to lose.
The drive back from Everest was different. The anxiety and compulsive thinking that had occupied my mind on the journey up had vanished, replaced by something I had rarely experienced: a sense of peaceful satisfaction, a wholeness that didn't require conquest or validation. For once, I wasn't consumed by the next encounter, the next achievement, the next mountain to claim. I was simply present, carried along by the rough road and the endless Tibetan plateau.
That presence lasted exactly until I returned to the familiar comforts of Shanghai. Within days, I was back to my patterns, seeking the casual encounters that had become my comfort food in the frequent isolation of expat life. The plaster Buddha watched from the corner of my room as I betrayed the gift of presence and self-satisfaction that Everest had offered with another attempt at escape.
Watching "Seven Years in Tibet" later, seeing those visual reminders of everything I had just witnessed, I felt the full weight of what I had lost. The holiness of Tibet hadn't been lost on me at the time—I had felt it, had been invited into it. But I had failed to protect it, failed to carry it back with me, failed to let it transform me.
This is how we lose the sacred: not in dramatic renunciations but in small shuttles back to comfort, in the inability to sustain presence when faced with our habitual hungers. The sacred spaces of the world—whether the grandeur of Everest's slopes or the quiet beauty of a neighborhood sanctuary—offer us momentary liberation from our smaller selves. They show us who we could be if we could sustain the courage to remain open.
But we are creatures of habit more than transformation. We take photos instead of communion. We make jokes in the presence of the holy because sincere reverence feels too vulnerable, too close to acknowledging how far we are from our potential.
I think now of all the sacred spaces I've rushed through, all the invitations to transformation I've declined in favor of the familiar. Tibet offered me a mirror, and in it, I saw both my capacity for reverence and my reflexive return to the profane. The Buddha wasn't jealous—Buddha was simply present, watching with infinite patience as another foreign visitor failed to sustain the gift of awakening.
The regret I feel isn't for the act itself—bodies seeking comfort in a lonely world. The regret is for the failure of imagination, the poverty of spirit that couldn't hold the sacred for even a few days before defaulting to the transactional, the immediate, the small.
Sacred spaces exist. They wait for us in the high places of the world, in the ancient temples, in the moments when beauty becomes almost unbearable. But they require something of us—the courage to remain present, to resist the shuttle back to our smaller selves, to walk down the mountain carrying something more precious than photographs.
What I lost at Everest Base Camp wasn't innocence or purity—those were gone long before I reached Tibet. What I lost was an opportunity for transformation, traded for the cold comfort of the familiar. The mountain offered transcendence. I chose the shuttle bus.
The Buddha watches still, in a thousand temples and ten thousand moments of possible awakening. Neither jealous nor judging, simply present—a reminder that the sacred remains available to those who can sustain the courage to receive it. Even now, especially now, for those of us who have failed before.
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