{Shikoku Hachijūhachikasho Meguri}

--WEEK EIGHT--

The hotel we stayed in last night had a huge onsen. Huge! It took up the entire second floor of the hotel. It wasn't crowded and seemed to me to be frequented only by the locals. One of those "locals" was a guy in his twenties (?) who was covered in tattoos from his waist up to his neck and down both arms to his elbows. I din't get the impression that he would mind so I asked him about them and we chatted for about 10 minutes. As I told him, I would never consider getting them, but they were impressively good looking. He said it cost him about ¥1,000,000 to get it all done! Amazing... and proof that we all have our own personal priorities for our own money.

This afternoon, while waiting for a train at a small rural train station, Eric and I killed a little time by giving the station a quick sweeping. They had two brooms and a dust pan hanging on the wall and we had 45 minutes to wait so it seemed like a match made in heaven. Luckily we were able to finish before anyone showed up to see who did it.

Most nights for the past week i've been working my way (yet again) through sections of Kōshō Uchiyama's "Opening The Hand of Thought." Here are some thoughts that seemed appropriate for walking henro:
"We all have eyes to see, but if we close them and say that the world is in darkness, how can we say that we are living out the true reality of life? If we open our eyes we see that the sun is shining brilliantly. In the same way, when we live open-eyed and awake to life, we discover that we are living in the vigorous light of life. All the ideas of our small self are clouds that make the light of the universal self foggy and dull."

And this:
"The fundamental posture of Buddhism is the true self settling on the true self. This fundamental posture is to settle upon our undeniable, immovable true self without being dragged about by our unstable thoughts."

That is exactly the shūgyō of walking — settling into "just walking," or, more accurately, "just being," without being distracted by that raging river of unstable thoughts.

But here's another line from Venkatesananda's "The Song of God:"
"There is no effort, even, to abandon sinfulness (such effort would likely become the seed of future sin — arrogance). Sinfulness has to drop away. It is not possible to acquire virtue, to abandon wickedness or to grow in humility. When the right vision is acquired, these happen automatically. Till then, one must strive to grow in virtue and reduce wickedness by all means."

You don't grow in humility, it grows in you as you allow the right vision to blossom in you.

And this:
"There is an illusion, yoga maya, based primarily on the senses and the intellect, which have limited function and no ability to perceive the truth. The eyes see, the ears hear, and the mind believes that the messages brought in by the senses constitute the entire truth. The intellect creates its own limitations, regarding them as absolutes which therefore appear to be obvious. This is where the danger lies: what is obvious to one is not obvious to all beings. It is your own mental projection or point of view, a Maya. (We must recognise, too, that even the belief in the existence of God is just one point of view!)"

What is obvious to one is not obvious to all beings. Or, what is obviously true for one is not obviously true for all others! And, maybe, not even true at all!! Put that in your boots and walk with it for a while.

Return