Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
engages a team of sherpas for the ascent to the cave of the mystical holy man who, it is
said, holds the secret of existence.
Up they climb. It takes days. The temperature dives, the wind howls, and the snow
becomes deeper and deeper. The sherpas keep asking the man if he wants to turn back,
but driven by his desperate thirst for the ultimate knowledge, he persists. Finally, ex-
hausted but thrilled, he arrives at the holy man's cave and crawls in for his audience.
And there he is, wearing robes and a long beard, sitting cross-legged before a fire. Our
hero is so cold, so tired, he cannot speak. But the holy man offers him a bowl of celestial
nectar and the man drinks gratefully and finds himself miraculously restored.
“Your Holiness,” he says, “I have come such a long way to see you. I left everything
I knew behind, my wife and family, my home, my work. I took an ocean liner across the
Atlantic, a train across Europe, cars across the Middle East, and a camel across India. I've
been climbing these mountains for the past ten days, and all because I want to ask you
one question.”
“Of course, my son,” the holy man says. “What is your question?”
“Your Holiness, what is the meaning of life?”
The holy man leans back a bit and takes a deep breath. A beatific smile lights up his
face.
“Listen carefully, my son. Life is a wheel,” he says, and falls silent.
The man waits for more but nothing more is forthcoming.
“That's it?” he says. “Life is a wheel?”
“Yes, my son, life is a wheel.”
Our hero is suddenly incredulous, and his despair bursts out of him in a flood of exas-
perated words. As he speaks he gets more and more excited and the volume rises. When
he finishes his chest is heaving and his face aflame with passion.
“Life is a wheel?” he says. “That's the secret? Life is a wheel? I leave my wife and fam-
ily and five hundred thousand dollars a year? I cross the Atlantic on a slow boat, ride a
cramped and crowded train across Europe, hitchhike through that miserable desert, ride
a camel, for Chrissakes, through India, and freeze my ass off climbing all the way up here
to ask you the question at the heart of my existence and that's all you've got to say to me,
that life is a fucking wheel?”
At which point the holy man looks quizzically across the fire at his supplicant. His
eyebrows knit in perplexity.
“Life
isn't
a wheel?” he says.
