Tenzing & a Sacred Mountain

Seeing a trailer for the Apple TV film Tenzing created enough curiosity in us to give it an exploratory look and we stayed for the whole film. It is a docudrama about the earlier life of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mount Everest, the highest peak on Planet Earth. It's unlikely that Hillary would have accomplished this unprecedented feat without Tenzing. In fact, the two climbers of the team chosen to make the final ascent failed before Tenzing and Hillary succeeded.

A recurring theme in the film is the spirituality of Tenzing whose parents placed him in a Buddhist monastery as a boy because of their desperate poverty. He decided not to become a monk but this influence informed his perception of the mountain as a living entity to be respected and consulted rather than conquered. The British were determined to succeed where other nations failed and the irony is that in the end a Nepalese and a Kiwi were able to make the push to the summit. There is a scene in which Tenzing insists that before they climb the team participates in a ceremony within a monastery to honour Chamolangma, the goddess, rather than Everest, named after a British surveyor. 

Tenzing's son confirms that his father was a deeply spiritual person and offers this in his book Touching My Father's Soul: 

The scenery in the movie is spectacular because it is filmed on location, at altitude, a considerable challenge for the actors and the crew. Climbing Everest is still a major accomplishment although the entire perilous ascent is now roped to guide the climbers. Most of them have the most advanced equipment money can buy and guiding companies have camps with chefs. In 2026 1,000 people made it to the top counting climbers and guides. It is a commercial enterprise for the well-heeled and one of the big issues is the amount of garbage and human waste left behind. It is a desecration, a grim statement about our materialistic culture, although efforts are being made to change this. 

After we watched I did a bit of research about Tensing, as I'm wont to do, and I also got thinking about the holiness, the sacredness of mountains in my spiritual tradition. Moses had multiple "mountaintop experiences" from the burning bush to receiving the Ten Commandments in the Sina wilderness i to his final resting place on Mount Nebo. And Jesus climbed a mountain, perhaps Hermon, with several of his disciples, where they had their mystical experience Christians call the Transfiguration. We could see the snowy summit of Hermon when we were in the Galilee in 2023.

See the film, if you're able, and ponder the sacred mountains of different traditions. 

                                                                    Mount Sinai at dawn