Parable of the Sadhu

Bowen H. McCoy's 1983 Harvard Business Review article "The Parable of the Sadhu" describes the author's own experience of how he "literally walked through a classic moral dilemma without fully thinking through the consequences" (p.106). During a sightseeing junket to the peak of Everest, McCoy and his moralistic Quaker buddy Stephen have their travel interrupted by the discovery of a religious pilgrim -- a "sadhu" -- found basically naked and half-frozen on one of the high mountain passes. The weather is good and this high mountain pass is not invariably passable for tourists like McCoy, so the fact of the good weather means that all the parties present -- which include various tourists from Japan, Switzerland, and New Zealand -- are more concerned with getting over the pass than with a two-day trek back down the mountain to get the sadhu to a hospital or the...
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