{Shikoku Hachijūhachikasho Meguri}

---The next year ...
... Still a henro?---

Not surprisingly, and as many people told me would happen, the memories of walking on the side of the highway, the memories of the trucks and cars, the memories of all the anger, ... have now faded and lost their importance. Of course i still remember being angry at the time, but now those problems seem so trivial, so unworthy of anger. Now i remember more the cherry blossoms, the people, and the time spent just walking, just being outdoors.

After all is said and done, though, i have come to realize that my pilgrimage didn't start until i finished walking around the island. For me, walking the henro trail was, apparently, just more preparation, like the packing and studying had been before leaving for the island in the first place. I have learned more about myself since coming home than i did during the entire two months on the trail. I have learned more about myself and where i am since leaving the trail and having time to think about what i had done.

I've come to the conclusion over the past year that i do want to walk this trail again. But this time, i want to do it as a sennichi henro, a one-thousand day henro. I want to walk long enough that i reach a point where i no longer look forward to the next temple. I want to walk long enough that i no longer look forward to the next day, or the next person i meet. I want to walk long enough that i no longer look forward. I want to spend enough time on the trail that my sole concern becomes where i am at any one moment, that my sole concern becomes what i am doing right then and there - where ever that then and there happens to be.

As much as i thought i was prepared, i wasn't the last time. I realize that now. I walked the trail with expectations. With preconceived definitions of success and failure. I thought, before actually starting the walk, that i understood what it meant to walk the pilgrimage. I was wrong.

Yes, i used all the appropriate words - the importance isn't the temples but what takes place between them. The pilgrimage is the empty space between the temples not the buildings themselves. Yada, yada, yada... I thought i knew what i was doing, but i didn't.

When i got to Zentsuji, someone gave me a souvenir that now hangs on my wall at home. On a simple sheet of paper he had written a quote that i think i have seen attributed to Basho since returning. It says, simply: Don't seek to follow the footsteps of the men of old, seek what those men sought. I understood the words even then. I understood what was meant even then. But, my understanding was intellectual, not heart-felt.

I'm sure that i can never explain why i want to walk the trail for 1000 days. Depending on who you are, the trail could be nothing more than a nice three month hike and a chance to spend time seeing the countryside of Shikoku. On the other end of the spectrum, walking the trail could be an intensely spiritual experience. Or, as it is for most people, it could be something in between. Why is it one or the other? I don't know. I doubt anyone knows. I think it has to do with the progress you have made before you start on whatever spiritual trail that brought you to the island in the first place.

I don't know when i will ever have the money and time to tackle the trail for 1000 days. Probably not for many, many years. Maybe never. Probably never. But, if the possibility ever comes up, i think i'll be more prepared than i was last time. I think i'm ready now. Over a year later.

Comments, criticisms, questions, and the like are always welcome. In fact, i would love to receive them. (Contact Information). Have a good day.

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