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April 10 - April 25, 2018
Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.
it…I understand the world is suspended on a monstrous structure of wild competition and, consequently, of awards and distinction. But this structure is an enemy of true art. Where awards and distinction rule, true art ends. I sincerely believe that climbing can elevate the climber to physical and
mental well-being and to wisdom, but awards and distinction elevate the climber to vanity and egocentricity.
I’m very conscious that the desire for awards and distinction is the greatest trap of our ego and a proof of vanity.
people “gravitate towards environments that reward their hereditary inclinations.”
To know a mountain, you must sleep on it.
“I was admired. Of course, if you are admired, you want it more. This is the trap. And after years, I knew more and more that it was a trap.”
“Climbing for the first time was about discovering… freedom. Such a discovery lies in the nature of a first-timer’s experience. But in the world of limited self-expression it becomes much more intense. Shock, enlightenment and a distanced look at the ‘socialist reality’ were our first mountaineering achievements.”
A land spread wide as wings, folded here and there into mountains.
Behind these faces is hidden an immense human pride which can be attained only at the limit, because only at the limit…”
only at your limit can you attain something valuable, an important message or some precious bit of knowledge.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
“If you sell your soul to these things and you go beyond your circle of friends and those people who make your life good, then it becomes meaningless – even dangerous.”
Changabang
“A Hunger Artist”
climbing any 8000-metre peak was mostly about suffering. “This is the essence of high altitude,” he claimed. “Every step is overcoming your weakness. Since it’s totally deprived of vertical pleasures, this kind of high-altitude creativity is simply about overcoming your pain. And overcoming your pain results in an exhilarating sense of liberation.”
“It is essentially the difficult attempt to ascend above oneself,” he wrote with typical earnestness. “It is grasping toward freedom.”25
“Peak bagging is a form of emotional consumption, a sign of a mountaineer overwhelmed by a desire to collect,” he wrote. “If there is such a thing as spiritual materialism, it is displayed in the urge to possess the mountains rather than to unravel and accept their mysteries.”
If you had to prove you were the best, you were already lost as a human being, he insisted. The competitive aspect inherent in a “sporting” approach worried him because it seemed the inevitable precursor to suffering.
“For a climber, if there is no artistry, no beauty in alpinism, then there is no life,”
He who is in pursuit of a goal will remain empty once he has attained it. But he who has found the way will always carry the goal within him.
“I carry out a climb for my soul. Every climb is a story in itself. You come back changed
from each one. Your consciousness grows; this is the most important thing. And if you enjoy each journey, then all the rest is superfluous.”
“The best way to feed your spirit is to feed your body,” Voytek claimed. “Physical exertion is the best food for your spirit and your brain.”
To lose something, or everything, sharpens our vision and gives us an acute awareness of what remains.
“I am sadly convinced that egocentricity and a kind of inner deafness are common personality blemishes in our climbing community, more so than many care to admit,”
Find beauty; be still.
“I now see clearly that climbing is Art. I also see that advertising is poison, while self-advertising is the oldest disease of the human soul.”
“Do your own thing with integrity, and communicate the things you’ve experienced and learned with honesty and humility, humor and
enthusiasm, and you’ll end up influencing new climbers more than if you beat them over the head with the rightness of ‘your’ style and the ‘wimpiness’ of their style.”
He knows that his conviction that alpinism
is not only about ascending a mountain but about ascending above yourself, should be shared with others. “If you can’t bring back the experience of power and love from the mountains to your normal life and to others, it is senseless to do it.”
