Everest Is Not The Only Peak Quotes

The only thing you'll find on the summit of Mount Everest is a divine view. The things that really matter lie far below.

I had set myself an unattainable ideal. Such human skill I could summon wasn’t enough for the job. I felt the suicidal despair of all who longed to do what they couldn’t, what only a few in each century could – whether blessed or cursed in spirit. No achievement was ever finite. There was no absolute summit. No peak of Everest to plant a flag on. Success was someone else’s opinion.

the only thing you'll find at the summit of mount everest is a divine view, the things that really matter lie far below it

Humans have struggled with this challenge before, with grim results. There are only a few climbable routes to climb to the top of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot peak. If you die at that altitude (which almost three hundred people have done), it is dangerous for the living to attempt to bring your body down for burial or cremation. Today, dead bodies litter the climbing paths, and each year new climbers have to step over the puffy orange snowsuits and skeletonized faces of fellow climbers.

Experiments conducted in decompression chambers had by then demonstrated that a human plucked from sea level and dropped on the summit of Everest, where the air holds only a third as much oxygen, would lose consciousness within minutes and die soon thereafter. But a number of idealistic mountaineers continued to insist that a gifted athlete blessed with rare physiological attributes could, after a lengthy period of acclimatization, climb the peak without bottled oxygen. Taking this line of reasoning to its logical extreme, the purists argued that using gas was therefore cheating.

No end of blessings from heaven and earth. As we climb up out of the Moab valley and reach the high tableland stretching northward, traces of snow flying across the road, the sun emerges clear of the overcast, burning free on the very edge of the horizon. For a few minutes the whole region from the canyon of the Colorado to the Book Cliffs—crag, mesa, turret, dome, canyon wall, plain, swale and dune—glows with a vivid amber light against the darkness on the east. At the same time I see a mountain peak rising clear of the clouds, old Tukuhnikivats fierce as the Matterhorn, snowy as Everest, invincible. “Ferris, stop this car. Let’s go back.” But he only steps harder on the gas. “No,” he says, “you’ve got a train to catch.” He sees me craning my neck to stare backward. “Don’t worry,” he adds, “it’ll all still be here next spring.” The

Since we were on Everest, many other climbers have succeeded on the “big one” as well. She has now been scaled by a blind man, a guy with prosthetic legs, and even by a young Nepalese teenager. Don’t be fooled, though. I never belittle the mountain. She is still just as high and just as dangerous. Instead, I admire those mountaineers--however they have climbed her. I know what it is really like up there. Humans learn how to dominate and conquer. It is what we do. But the mountain remains the same--and sometimes she turns and bites so damn hard that we all recoil in terror. For a while. Then we return. Like vultures. But we are never in charge. It is why, within Nepal, Everest is known as the mother goddess of the sky--lest we forget. This name reflects the respect the Nepalese have for the mountain, and this respect is the greatest lesson you can learn as a climber. You climb only because the mountain allows it. If the peak hints at you to wait, then you must wait; and when she begins to beckon you to go then you must struggle and strain in the thin air with all your might. The weather can change in minutes, as storm clouds envelop the peak--and the summit itself stubbornly pokes into the fierce band of jet-stream winds that circle the earth above twenty-five thousand feet. These 150+ mph winds cause the majestic plume of snow that pours off Everest’s peak. A constant reminder that you have got to respect the mountain. Or you die.

Meditation is not something new. It is not something added to you, it is not an achievement. You already have it. Meditation is your inner being. But we have never explored our inner being. Man explores everything. He will go to Mount Everest and he will go to the moon, but he will never think of going within himself. That is the basic problem for man, which creates all misery. The real treasure is within ourselves. Unless one explores the inner treasure and unless one enters the treasure of one's own being, one's life becomes a wastage. We are losing the challenge and opportunity of life, and we are not even aware that we are losing the golden opportunity of life. Man is searching for his own inner treasure, but he is seeking in the wrong direction. By going to Mount Everest, he is really trying to find the highest peak of consciousness, but the real treasure is within yourself. The only treasure worth searching for is your own authentic nature, your inner consciousness. Once this search becomes a conscious commitment, then your inner search will not fail. Those who have allowed this commitment to become their greatest decision of life, have always reached to their inner authentic being. And then, an inner light explodes. One suddenly comes to know what life is and what is the meaning of life.

The tallest mountains generally get the most attention. Fourteen of the world’s peaks are more than 26,247 feet high. The region about 25,000 feet is known as a mountain’s “death zone,” an altitude the human body can only endure for a few days…when Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, he reverenced the mountain as Chomolungma, the “Mother Goddess of the World.” By contrast, after finished the ascent, Edmund Hillary wisecracked to a member of the team, “well, we’ve knocked the bastard off.” Some folks seem tone-deaf to mystery.

We set our heart on winning the peak of Mount Everest. We consider only being on top of the world and waving to the land is a success. But every step you need to take to be at the peak is a tiny success, aren’t they? So, to be on the peak of Mount Everest, you need to clinch approximately 85,238 tiny successes before you finally achieve the last one (the biggest success), the final step on the top. Aren’t each one is equally crucial? A success deemed big is a sum of many smaller ones. A success considered prodigious is a sum of many crucial ones.