Reprinted with permission from “The Parable of the Sadhu,” by Bowen H. McCoy, Harvard Business Review.
Copyright © Harvard Business Publishing.
Last year, as the first participant in the new six-month sabbatical program that Morgan Stanley has adopted, I
enjoyed a rare opportunity to collect my thoughts as well as do some traveling. I spent the first three months in
Nepal, walking 600 miles through 200 villages in the Himalayas and climbing some 120,000 vertical feet. My
sole Western companion on the trip was an anthropologist who shed light on the cultural patterns of the
villages that we passed through.
During the Nepal hike, something occurred that has had a powerful impact on my thinking about corporate
ethics. Although some might argue that the experience has no relevance to business, it was a situation in
which a basic ethical dilemma suddenly intruded into the lives of a group of individuals. How the group
responded holds a lesson for all organizations, no matter how defined.
The Sadhu
The Nepal experience was more rugged than I had anticipated. Most commercial treks last two or three weeks
and cover a quarter of the distance we traveled.
My friend Stephen, the anthropologist, and I were halfway through the 60-day Himalayan part of the trip when
we reached the high point, an 18,000-foot pass over a crest that we’d have to traverse to reach the village of
Muklinath, an ancient holy place for pilgrims.
Six years earlier, I had suffered pulmonary edema, an acute form of altitude sickness, at 16,500 feet in the
vicinity of Everest base camp—so we were understandably concerned about what would happen at 18,000
feet. Moreover, the Himalayas were having their wettest spring in 20 years; hip-deep powder and ice had
already driven us off one ridge. If we failed to cross the pass, I feared that the last half of our once-in-a-lifetime
trip would be ruined.
The night before we would try the pass, we camped in a hut at 14,500 feet. In the photos taken at that camp,
my face appears wan. The last village we’d passed through was a sturdy two-day walk below us, and I was
tired.
During the late afternoon, four backpackers from New Zealand joined us, and we spent most of the night
awake, anticipating the climb. Below, we could see the fires of two other parties, which turned out to be two
Swiss couples and a Japanese hiking club.
To get over the steep part of the climb before the sun melted the steps cut in the ice, we departed at 3.30 a.m.
The New Zealanders left first, followed by Stephen and myself, our porters and Sherpas, and then the Swiss.
The Japanese lingered in their camp. The sky was clear, and we were confident that no spring storm would
erupt that day to close the pass.
At 15,500 feet, it looked to me as if Stephen was shuffling and staggering a bit, which are symptoms of altitude
sickness. (The initial stage of altitude sickness brings a headache and nausea. As the condition worsens, a
climber may encounter difficult breathing, disorientation, aphasia, and paralysis.) I felt strong—my adrenaline
was flowing—but I was very concerned about my ultimate ability to get across. A couple of our porters were
also suffering from the height, and Pasang, our Sherpa sirdar (leader), was worried.
Just after daybreak, while we rested at 15,500 feet, one of the New Zealanders, who had gone ahead, came
staggering down toward us with a body slung across his shoulders. He dumped the almost naked, barefoot
body of an Indian holy man—a sadhu—–at my feet. He had found the pilgrim lying on the ice, shivering and
suffering from hypothermia. I cradled the sadhu’s head and laid him out on the rocks. The New Zealander was
angry. He wanted to get across the pass before the bright sun melted the snow. He said, “Look, I’ve done what
I can. You have porters and Sherpa guides. You care for him. We’re going on!” He turned and went back up the
mountain to join his friends.
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I took a carotid pulse and found that the sadhu was still alive. We figured he had probably visited the holy
shrines at Muklinath and was on his way home. It was fruitless to question why he had chosen this desperately
high route instead of the safe, heavily traveled caravan route through the Kali Gandaki gorge. Or why he was
shoeless and almost naked, or how long he had been lying in the pass. The answers weren’t going to solve our
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problem.
Stephen and the four Swiss began stripping off their outer clothing and opening their packs. The sadhu was
soon clothed from head to foot. He was not able to walk, but he was very much alive. I looked down the
mountain and spotted the Japanese climbers, marching up with a horse.
Without a great deal of thought, I told Stephen and Pasang that I was concerned about withstanding the
heights to come and wanted to get over the pass. I took off after several of our porters who had gone ahead.
On the steep part of the ascent where, if the ice steps had given way, I would have slid down about 3,000 feet,
I felt vertigo. I stopped for a breather, allowing the Swiss to catch up with me. I inquired about the sadhu and
Stephen. They said that the sadhu was fine and that Stephen was just behind them. I set off again for the
summit.
Stephen arrived at the summit an hour after I did. Still exhilarated by victory, I ran down the slope to
congratulate him. He was suffering from altitude sickness—walking 15 steps, then stopping, walking 15 steps,
then stopping. Pasang accompanied him all the way up. When I reached them, Stephen glared at me and said,
“How do you feel about contributing to the death of a fellow man?”
I did not completely comprehend what he meant. “Is the sadhu dead?” I inquired.
“No,” replied Stephen, “but he surely will be!”
After I had gone, followed not long after by the Swiss, Stephen had remained with the sadhu. When the
Japanese had arrived, Stephen had asked to use their horse to transport the sadhu down to the hut. They had
refused. He had then asked Pasang to have a group of our porters carry the sadhu. Pasang had resisted the
idea, saying that the porters would have to exert all their energy to get themselves over the pass. He believed
they could not carry a man down 1,000 feet to the hut, reclimb the slope, and get across safely before the snow
melted. Pasang had pressed Stephen not to delay any longer.
The Sherpas had carried the sadhu down to a rock in the sun at about 15,000 feet and pointed out the hut
another 500 feet below. The Japanese had given him food and drink. When they had last seen him, he was
listlessly throwing rocks at the Japanese party’s dog, which had frightened him.
We do not know if the sadhu lived or died.
For many of the following days and evenings, Stephen and I discussed and debated our behavior toward the
sadhu. Stephen is a committed Quaker with deep moral vision. He said, “I feel that what happened with the
sadhu is a good example of the breakdown between the individual ethic and the corporate ethic. No one
person was willing to assume ultimate responsibility for the sadhu. Each was willing to do his bit just so long as
it was not too inconvenient. When it got to be a bother, everyone just passed the buck to someone else and
took off. Jesus was relevant to a more individualistic stage of society, but how do we interpret his teaching
today in a world filled with large, impersonal organizations and groups?”
I defended the larger group, saying, “Look, we all cared. We all gave aid and comfort. Everyone did his bit. The
New Zealander carried him down below the snow line. I took his pulse and suggested we treat him for
hypothermia. You and the Swiss gave him clothing and got him warmed up. The Japanese gave him food and
water. The Sherpas carried him down to the sun and pointed out the easy trail toward the hut. He was well
enough to throw rocks at a dog. What more could we do?”
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“You have just described the typical affluent Westerner’s response to a problem. Throwing money—in this
case, food and sweaters—at it, but not solving the fundamentals!” Stephen retorted.
“What would satisfy you?” I said. “Here we are, a group of New Zealanders, Swiss, Americans, and Japanese
who have never met before and who are at the apex of one of the most powerful experiences of our lives.
Some years the pass is so bad no one gets over it. What right does an almost naked pilgrim who chooses the
wrong trail have to disrupt our lives? Even the Sherpas had no interest in risking the trip to help him beyond a
certain point.”
Stephen calmly rebutted, “I wonder what the Sherpas would have done if the sadhu had been a well-dressed
Nepali, or what the Japanese would have done if the sadhu had been a well-dressed Asian, or what you would
have done, Buzz, if the sadhu had been a well-dressed Western woman?”
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“Where, in your opinion,” I asked, “is the limit of our responsibility in a situation like this? We had our own wellbeing to worry about. Our Sherpa guides were unwilling to jeopardize us or the porters for the sadhu. No one
else on the mountain was willing to commit himself beyond certain self-imposed limits.”
Stephen said, “As individual Christians or people with a Western ethical tradition, we can fulfill our obligations
in such a situation only if one, the sadhu dies in our care; two, the sadhu demonstrates to us that he can
undertake the two-day walk down to the village; or three, we carry the sadhu for two days down to the village
and persuade someone there to care for him.”
“Leaving the sadhu in the sun with food and clothing—where he demonstrated hand-eye coordination by
throwing a rock at a dog—comes close to fulfilling items one and two,” I answered. “And it wouldn’t have made
sense to take him to the village where the people appeared to be far less caring than the Sherpas, so the third
condition is impractical. Are you really saying that, no matter what the implications, we should, at the drop of a hat, have changed our entire plan?”
Sample Solution