Words from the Pilgrims Path

Dear sangha friends,
 
As I write these words it's March 28, day 10 of our pilgrimage. We are staying at temple 19, the first one we've stayed at so far. We've walked 74.5 km as far as temple 15, but due to foot breakdown (Kate's), have taken taxi, train and bus, since yesterday afternoon, hoping to resume more walking soon.

Those are the stats, but they don't tell you much.

We are not speed-dating these temples as seems some of the walking and driving pilgrims do. We stop for birds, flowers, butterflirs, roadsice buddhas and bodhisattvas, some of whom are stone images and some are farmers harvesting winter vegetables, kind people who stop to make sure we're on the right path, and fellow pilgroms, many of whom are older than we are. They all readily tell how old they are. Rural Japan is the country of the old and urban Japan is the country of the young. There are more blossoms and bodhisattvas each day, and they help us carry in our hearts the myriad sorrows of the world, from the global to the personal -- the deaths of two dear sangha members, Anka Rick Spencer and Ursula Palecsek. And just this morning we learned that the zendo at Tassajara has burned to the ground, grateful to know that no one was hurt.

We chant the Heart Sutra twice at each temple, and at the first one each day also the refuges, verse of atonement, and precepts, all from  our Japanese chant-books. We include some mantras, which are hard to chant because they are Sanskrit transliterated into Japanese. Of course the dedication is always "May we realize the Buddha way together with all beings."
 
There's a kind of motto for this pilgrimage: do gyo ni nin, which is literally, together- going-two- people, and means: Kobo Daishi is always there, going along with you (Kobo Daishi, the founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, who walked these paths in the 9th century). We are keeping each other good company, too, and you are all coming along in our hearts.
 
Warm bows from afar,
Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

The henro-san (Pilgrims) at Dainichiji, temple 13, day 7