Pilgrimage
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Zuisei draws on the life of the Buddha to illustrate the six stages of pilgrimage—the call, homeleaving, the journey, contemplation, encounter, return.
Pilgrimage is both an inner and outer journey; it is travel into the unknown for the purpose of knowing ourselves intimately and drawing closer to our understanding of the divine. It is realizing that at the end of a long sojourn, we return to the home that we never actually left.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. For transcript, scroll down.
This transcript is based on Zuisei’s notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
I’ve been thinking of Shugen Roshi and Hojin Sensei and our sangha brothers and sisters who went on the pilgrimage to India. As I was reflecting on this talk, I thought it would be nice to somehow bring their trip into sesshin by speaking about pilgrimage. Because we’ve been studying buddha ancestors this ango, I particularly wanted to look at the Buddha’s journey, which led, very concretely, to us sitting here today, practicing his dharma.
We can think of pilgrimage in terms of six steps that, although in some ways distinct from one another, also form a continuum, like the oxherding pictures—what seems like a linear way of describing a path that is not linear in nature. In order to speak of it, I have to use words, so let me do it in this way.
The first is the call. This is the first stirring, the first recognized yearning for something other than what we’ve had all along. Sometimes it manifests as a feeling of unease, sometimes we’re drawn to something that we see in a different kind of life, a religious life for example. For me it was convents and monasteries in Mexico—something about the cloister life, devoted to exploring things I could not quite see but could keenly feel. It felt like a life that was connected to something fundamental.
For the Buddha, that first stirring took place when he was nine years old. No, even before that, there was his birth and the prophecy that was made about him. Queen Mahamaya had a dream in which a white, six-tusked elephant danced with her and offered a pink lotus flower. She was filled with such bliss that she felt she would never again know pain or worry. The next morning, when she told her husband of her dream, he summoned the wise seers of his court. They declared that Siddhartha (his name means “one who accomplishes his aim”—so right from the get-go he was primed for his fate) would become a great ruler. He would either be a king or even an emperor. Or, he would be a great spiritual teacher, the holder of truth.
Months later, Queen Mahamaya was traveling back to her parents’ home in Koliya where she would give birth, as was the custom. Crossing through a forest in Lumbini, she suddenly felt unsteady and grabbed a branch of an ashok tree that was in full bloom just above her. Effortlessly, the queen gave birth to Prince Siddhartha, and some versions of the story say he was born a full-grown child from her side and that he took seven steps, pointed to heaven and earth and said, “Between heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one.” The honored one is the one who is holy—who is whole, who is nothing but the universe itself. Maybe that story is apocryphal, but it doesn’t matter, because the truth of the Buddha’s statement still resonates today. Any one of us could say it, and it would still be true.
One day the young Siddhartha witnessed, for the first time, the ritual plowing of the fields, a hallowed festival that all the members of the Shakya clan observed at the beginning of spring.
Everyone was dressed in their royal best. Flags and banners waved from turrets and the tops of houses. Rows of altars were set up along the road as offerings with colorful baskets of food and flowers. Music played and holy men chanted the sacred hymns of the Vedas. People milled about eating and drinking and celebrating the renewal of life.
At first, Siddhartha was fascinated by all the sounds and colors and smells, but after a while, he started to get tired. The sun was blazing hot, and the chants went on and on, so Siddhartha walked to the side of the field and sat down in the shade of a rose-apple tree. He watched as the king plowed the first of the rows to prepare it for planting. All his subjects followed suit and soon everyone was out in the fields turning the soil. Siddhartha sat quietly. He watched as a water buffalo strained to pull a heavy plow and the farmer used a whip to drive him on, sweat streaming down his face. When Siddartha looked at the ground, he saw the bodies of worms being cut in two. He saw a falcon swoop down on a mouse that it gripped with its talons. He saw the strained faces of the farmers and their bent bodies pushing and pulling.
Siddhartha’s legs were crossed under him, his back was straight. He lowered his eyes and looked inward. As his body and mind settled, he understood, with an understanding much older than his years, that no matter how long the priests chanted, this wouldn’t take away the suffering of all these creatures. He wondered whether this was the way of all things, whether such pain and toil and turmoil was really necessary. Much later, he would remember this day, and he would turn toward the call again, this time for good—for the good of everyone.
The second step of a pilgrimage is homeleaving, a kind of separation from the known. In our tradition, homeleaving usually refers to those who leave worldly life in order to become monastics. But, it can also apply to those of us who turn, to whatever degree, from the things that have occupied us in order to go searching for some kind of path. Searching for some way of understanding that will show us how to actually live this very fraught human life. Homeleaving can be a physical homeleaving, or it can be an inner turning. It’s a kind of turning of the tide, it’s a swimming upstream, because no homeleaving is easy. We’re nesting creatures. We like comfort and familiarity. We don’t like uncertainty, which is very much a part of any voyage. We don’t like not knowing where we’re going to step next or whether there will be ground there to meet us when we do.
There is a traditional Gaelic blessing that says:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields…
Christian pilgrims especially will offer it to one another when they meet on the road. Still, the uncertainty, as I said, is part of any journey. It has to be. If it’s all mapped out from the beginning, it’s not a true journey, it’s transportation. When we start on the path, we cannot possibly see where it will lead. We’re walking on faith that the ground will rise to meet us.
And, if we fall on the ground, we use that very ground to get up, as one of our koans says. Pilgrimage is very much setting out into the unknown. Even if you have maps, itineraries, schedules. What will happen as you are actually traveling, you cannot know until you start.
There’s a famous poem by Antonio Machado which has been set into song that says, in part:
Caminante, no hay camino, (Wayfarer, there’s no path,)
se hace camino al andar… (The path is made by walking…)
Caminante no hay camino (Wayfarer there’s no path,)
sino estelas en la mar. (But wakes on the water.)
The third step on the journey is the journey itself, which always involves some degree of striving. It is all the traveling, the “wearing down of sandals” as it’s called in Zen. All the searching and striving and falling and failing and striving again. It’s not that a pilgrimage has to be difficult, it’s that it requires of us a kind of wearing down of the self and a kind of surrender to the road and the traveling.
The Buddha left home and spent six years doing severe ascetic practices, trying to subdue his body and subdue his mind.
“Suppose I were to become absorbed in the trance of non-breathing. Suppose I were to practice going altogether without food. Suppose I were to take only a little food at a time, only a handful at a time...”
He was trying to see what lay beyond the senses, beyond the world of form. Asceticism is part of many of the world’s religious traditions. It’s a practice of renunciation, primarily of sensual pleasure for the purpose of transcending such pleasure. It comes from the recognition that ultimately, we have to be willing to surrender this body and mind. That is why that first instance of letting go—of truly letting go of the self—is so difficult. Because, the self does not want to be forgotten. Yet, this surrender is necessary if we are to see clearly what the self that we think we’re giving up is.
Those of you working on Mu, know that you can’t see it as long as you have it before you. As long as you’re trying or planning or anticipating…you have to be willing to let go into Mu. You have to be willing to be it completely, to be suffused, taken over by it. That’s the only way you can see it, and that demands a profound letting go.
In the Buddha’s case, all those ascetic practices were not the kind of surrender he ultimately needed. He realized, after going to the brink of death—farther than most of us would ever dare to go—that he was no closer to accomplishing his aim then when he first started. Then he remembered that day during the spring festival, and how easily he had slipped into a state of deep reflection, and he asked himself, “Could that be the path to awakening?” So he went searching for a place to do the work of contemplation. This is the next step on the journey.
“In search of what is wholesome, seeking the supreme state of sublime peace, I wandered by stages in the Magadhan country until eventually I arrived at Uruvela. There I saw an agreeable piece of ground, a delightful grove with a clear-flowing river with pleasant, smooth banks, and a nearby village for alms-going. The thought occurred to me: ‘This will serve for the striving of a seeker intent on striving.’ And I sat down there, thinking, ‘This will serve for striving.’”
Finding his seat, he turned to his own body, his mind, and vowed to not get up from until he realized himself. It’s interesting that the verb “to contemplate” means to “gaze attentively, to observe, to consider.” Originally it meant, “marking out a space of observation” for the Roman augurs who would foretell the future in ancient Rome, and that space became the temple.
Think of taking your seat in that way: that you are marking your space of observation. You're retiring into the temple of your body and mind in order to observe closely. You take your seat and you prepare the ground, as someone said to me recently. I like that, you prepare the ground—your mind—in order to do the work of contemplation. You don’t leave it to chance. You turn to your seat, you ready your mind, you set your intent, you focus.
That first moment of turning inward, of taking our seat, is revolutionary. Think of when you first received the instruction: “Let your body be still, let your mind settle.” See a thought and recognize that it is different from your breath. See a thought and discern whether you need to put it down or pick it up. See, that with practice, you can realize its nature.
I wonder how many of us see this as a life-changing moment even if we hate it. Even if we decide to never do it again. We have experienced, for an instant, the possibility of complete freedom. We may not recognize it, it may feel more like a tightening than an opening, more like noise than silence. The fact is that in that first turning to the breath the whole path is included.
The Buddha right after his enlightenment said: “All sentient beings and I and this great earth have at once entered the Way,” is included. “I alone am the honored one,” is included. Heaven and earth are included.
In a koan in the Book of Serenity, a king asked Prajnatara why he didn’t read the scriptures, and Prajnatara answered:
“This poor wayfarer doesn’t dwell in the realms of the body or mind when breathing in, doesn’t get involved in myriad circumstances when breathing out—I always reiterate such a scripture, hundreds, thousands, millions of scrolls.”
I’ve always loved this koan. I don’t dwell breathing in. I’m not busy breathing out. What is it like to truly breathe in such a way—a scripture that we repeat day by day, hundreds, thousands, millions of times? When my mind is busy, I say to myself, “Vanessa, rest your mind.”
Just to be clear, this “not getting involved in circumstances” is not indifference. It’s not ignoring or bypassing. It is acknowledging that there is a time to be involved, and there is a time to let be—so that you can be fully involved. It’s hard to trust that sometimes, isn’t it? Trust we don’t have to sit on our cushion figuring things out. But, it’s true. It’s necessary to have time and space in which to not dwell or get involved, in which to let the breath hold essentially everything. Because it can do that, the breath. It can hold whatever arises, no matter how painful, how difficult, how blissful, how exciting. This is the power of the breath body. Which is both the body of the breath: inhale, pause, exhale, pause. And also the breath filling the entire body. That is why the Buddha called the breath the “gateway to nirvana.”
There’s an interesting dichotomy between the third and fourth steps of the inner pilgrimage. There’s effort, there’s striving, there’s the hard work of taming the senses and taming the mind. And it is work, it doesn’t come naturally at first. Especially if we’re used to doing, doing, doing…Then there’s the effortlessness that we try to move towards in contemplation. To not do but just be—which should be easy, it seems, yet for most of us is incredibly challenging.
When I first started sitting shikantaza in earnest, this was the most difficult part for me—because there was nothing to do, nothing to focus on. Well, that’s not entirely true, because you do need to be aware, but the focus is very large, very spacious, and it can’t be contrived. It’s the ultimate practice of trust, shikantaza. The ultimate practice of truly resting in things as they are. Resting in wholeness (or holiness).
I’ve been reading a book on the Sabbath, by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In it he speaks about the importance of taking time to be with oneself without doing.
“Those who want to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. They must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling their own lives… Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the seventh we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.”
Strong words that he uses here, but I think, not inaccurate: There’s the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness, of doing and getting done. The clatter of our minds, the clatter in the world.
And he’s saying, we have to be willing to stop this. We have to be willing to stop wrestling with ourselves and the world so we can take care of our souls, of our spirit.
The fifth step of a pilgrimage is the encounter. This is the moment we let go of the rope. This is the leap into the unknown, the act of surrender that leads, however fleetingly, to a moment of merging. And, you can’t fabricate this either. You certainly can’t force it. But, you can inch your way toward letting go of that rope. You can get yourself used to the feel of the salt water on your body, the wind on your face, the cry of the seagulls above you. The constriction in your chest when you feel all of that space, the fear, you get yourself used to it. You coax yourself into opening, slowly, slowly…until, one day, you let go.
In the Buddha’s life, this was his enlightenment and the time leading up to it. Vowing to not get up from his seat until he achieved his aim. Mara visited, and an army of horse-headed, ten-eyed, tiger-faced, many-armed, with faces in their chests, with sharp yellow teeth, blood-dripping mouths… you name it. Anything to unseat the Buddha-to-be, but they could not. He remained steady and then Mara came and flung doubt in the Buddha’s face: Who do you think you are to become enlightened? Whatever makes you think you can do this, when no one else has ever done it before? And the Buddha touched the earth with his hand and asked her to witness for him, and the earth did. So Mara and his army were forced to flee, they were powerless. Until the Buddha was left alone with the morning star and he roared his lion’s roar, “All sentient beings, this great earth and I have at once entered the Way.” And it was true. In that moment, the truth that has always been present, was revealed.
The last and sixth step is the completion and return. Coming down off the mountain back into the world. This is where you return in order to report what you’ve seen in order to offer yourself in service to others. Daido Roshi used to call it entering the marketplace without leaving the mountain. You bring the mountain with you, and you learn to use it in every possible way.
The Buddha did this for forty years. Beginning with his first discourse on the Four Noble Truths which he offered to the five ascetics he had practiced with. He taught and he led the sangha, his teachings were handed down and continue to be handed down to this day. And we can think, well, that was a long time ago, and that was the Buddha, that’s not me. That was the archetypal spiritual journey, where wisdom triumphed over delusion, where the Buddha persevered, unwavering, in the face of every distraction, every obstacle that Mara presented him with. We don’t hear about the Buddha failing or doubting himself or being a jerk to one of his monks because he woke up in a bad mood. How helpful it would be to see when the Buddha didn’t succeed. I said I would write those stories (I think I will). It would be wonderful to hear about the Buddha’s humanity, wouldn’t it?
And the fact is, that these very vivid moments in the Buddha’s life in his pilgrimage, as well as the powerful stories we hear in the koans of people breaking through are not myths. In our own lives of practice, they may not manifest so dramatically. There may not be any thunder and lighting, but instead an imperceptible drenching of oneself—like walking across a field on a foggy night—and when you come inside you realize you are soaked through and through. That’s what practice is for most of us. We become imperceptibly suffused—reluctantly even—with just a little more clarity, a little less clinging. Don’t wait for the thunder and lightning, you don’t need it. Turn to this body, this mind, and meet it fully. Don’t know what you will find, but be willing to discover it—that’s what a true journey is.
Explore further
01 : Old Path White Clouds (pdf) by Thich Nhat Hanh
02 : Gaelic Blessing
03 : Caminante No Hay Camino by Antonio Machado