Reprinted from A Death on Diamond Mountain by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group

(USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2015, Scott Carney

The promise of enlightenment is not about incremental improvements. Enlightenment

happens in an instant, with a clear line demarcating the person before from the one after.
As if transformed by the grace of God, suddenly the enlightenee realizes the true nature of
reality, and the knowledge plants the person forever on a new plane of understanding. The
mundane world is an illusion. After the first realization, various traditions teach that the
enlightenment seeker progresses through a series of different eye-opening experiences
until they reach the ultimate final state—call it Buddhahood, or Nirvana, Moksha, or some
other type of transcendence. Whatever it is, enlightenment is also an experience. It is a sort
of knowledge that is deeply personal and resists any sort of outside verification. That such
a transformation is even possible requires a leap of faith. It resists scientific scrutiny and
undercuts the very notion of a material world.
If we assume that it exists, then the actual state of enlightenment poses an interesting
problem. What are people supposed to do with the rest of their time on earth once they’ve
gained the ultimate knowledge of the nature of reality? Revered gurus who teach that
status and power are meaningless in the ultimate reality nonetheless still have to muck
about in the mundane world. They gather followers, build institutions, and dispense
knowledge from lofty thrones. Is it hypocrisy when enlightenment simply reproduces
familiar hierarchies? How does a Buddha remain in the world but not of it?
Still, we strive for a spiritual essence because we often feel that we are missing out on a
vital part of ourselves. A person can live within the expected parameters of society, get
married, raise a child or two, work forty hours a week plus overtime, and fully fund a
retirement plan, only to discover at the end of their days that they failed to do anything
meaningful with the years they had. There is no silver bullet for happiness, and living as a
cog in a great machine of industrial global capitalism hasn’t kept humanity’s insomniacs
from looking up at the stars and wondering what it all was for.
Humankind has probably always wondered about things greater than itself. “Who am I?”
and “What is the meaning of life?” are perhaps the most fundamental questions we can ask.
Enlightenment promises answers through mystical experiences and self-examination.
Spiritual manuals penned and developed across dozens of different traditions offer specific
practices that aim to form the body and mind into vessels for transformation. Training
regimes take on many forms and can focus on extreme asceticism, or physical rigors that
seem absurd. Or even dangerous.
It is as if the extremes are meant to reform a person from the ground up. Life, it turns
out, is a preexisting condition. No matter how rigorous the technique, every person starts
the spiritual searching from his or her own point in space and time. If every journey is
different, what does that mean about the nature of transcendence?
Westerners, and perhaps Americans especially, have a conflicted relationship with
danger. On one hand our heroes are entrepreneurs and adventurers who risk everything.
We relish stories of the businessman who spends his last hundred dollars on a suit so he
can pitch a great idea that secures a wealthy investor. We admire the mountaineer who
puts it all on the line for a chance to summit an unclimbable peak.
Reprinted from A Death on Diamond Mountain by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group
(USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2015, Scott Carney

But when risk takers fail in their pursuits, we cluck our tongues and nod knowingly
about their hubris. Failure, and perhaps even death, may be the wrong yardstick to
evaluate a person’s journey.
Ian Thorson was well known only briefly in Buddhist circles, and more so for the unusual
circumstances around his death than for any of the actions in his life. Looked at from one
perspective, his plunge toward enlightenment is an obvious case of madness. Yet lurking in
the shadows of the cave where he died are clues about the idiosyncratic reasons Americans
have adapted Eastern mysticism to their own ends. More important, Thorson’s own self-
sacrifice begs the question, How much is too much to risk for a chance to pierce the veil of
divinity itself?
 Reprinted from A Death on Diamond Mountain by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group
(USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2015, Scott Carney

ing the intricate postures of couples yoga, where they would use each other’s weight to
push their bodies into impossible configurations. She certainly wasn’t the ex-wife of his
first guru and spiritual teacher, Geshe Michael Roach, who was still jealously stewing over
their controversial split. No. When he gazed out of the dimming aperture of the cave, he
would see an angel made of clear white light. Christie McNally was his lover and his lama,
the enlightened being who had seen the nature of emptiness directly, who had married him
and taken his tortured soul from a base understanding of the world to the cusp of his own
transformation.
She was also his only hope for making it out of here alive.
Even if he could stand, the cave was barely tall enough for Thorson to be on his feet
without craning his six-foot frame. During daytime, a small sliver of light filtered in through
a hole in the roof where the rocks formed a cleft. It was stuffed with all the things they had
thought they would need to survive a long haul. There were bags of basmati rice, bolts of
clothing and cold-weather gear, flashlights and jars of Italian seasoning. A small ritual
instrument hung from a hook in the rock ceiling. It was tuned like a Jamaican steel drum
and helped ease them into meditation. They had propane, and Costco brand baby wipes,
duct tape, Tibetan incense, a filtration device, and heavy black plastic bags full of junk. The
only thing they didn’t have was what they needed most: water.
Thick with poisonous snakes, mountain lions, and prickly cactus, the Chiricahua
Mountains of Southeast Arizona are prone to landslides and are unforgiving to outsiders.
Leaving the cave was an ordeal that left them exhausted and panting for breath. Since
they’d arrived a month ago, the temperature on the mountainside had been unpredictable.
One day it would be hot enough to melt the soles of their hiking boots, the next a freak
snowstorm might coat the rocks, yucca, and scrub oak with a fine layer of ice. Scorching
desert winds whisked away what was left of their moisture.