Two Sherpas
Sebastián Martínez Daniell
Top 10 Best Quotes
“What he can do, it seems, is lie there Britishly upon the mountain.”
“They see it as perfectly logical for Sherpas to summit. They ought to think of us as Titans, deities with powers unattainable by mere mortals.”
“These people...' says the old Sherpa.”
“Then, for a moment, silence dominates the path to the summit of Everest. If the furious race of monsoon winds blasting the outlines of the Nepalese mountain range can be considered silence.”
“The young Sherpa -- eight at the time -- had been nursing exaggerated expectations. Then again that was childhood, or at least it was his: a constant assemblage of outrageous predictions, a permanent fleeing from the referential framework. He didn't even know what he might find on a farm. But he assumed it was something wild, indomitable. The very thing that would bring about the greatest unpredictability.”
“The old Sherpa lingers for a moment on that expression: sun protection. He thinks it could be a noble title in the proper empire. 'Sapa Inca, Viracocha's Chosen Brother and Great Sun Protector of the Tahuantisuyo.”
“The bureaucrat? A conservative, of course, like anyone canonised. A hinderer. That's what the old Sherpa would say. And at the same time: a holy man. A guardian, the Grail's custodian, a Joseph of Arimathea eternalised in his crypt of laws, edicts, and amendments, provisions and standardised protocols all in keeping with arbitrary norms: therein lies their value. That the key, the old Sherpa would point out. The arbitrariness.”
“The Mahayana Buddhists believed that it was possible to democratise Nirvana. That just about anyone could achieve a state of enlightenment. Like Zen doctrine, which owes much of its cosmological framework to it, the Mahayana interpreted Buddhism as method rather than as worship.”
“That's why he delays several seconds, during which time the silence of the mountain recovers its protagonism. If the thunderous hum of hundreds of turbines from the underworld blowing icy air between the peaks of the Himalayas can be considered silence.”
“Shall we get up?' the old Sherpa hears at the exact moment when, contemplating the figure of the fallen Englishman, he was already thinking that he would never find a way to reconcile his desire for egalitarianism with his misanthropy.”
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