We walk

We walk.

5 days into the walking Pilgrimage on Shikoku island. Half way through! We are tired tonight, and in a nice hotel with tatami mats and laundry facilities, and really just feel like reading something and passing out asleep. But! We feel we must check in, and we are homesick and miss everyone.

Ok, what is the walking Pilgrimage like? We are only going to 15 or 20 of the 88 total temples scattered around the island. We are with a group and a tour company--some British ladies, a couple from Hawaii, a British couple (the wife is Iranian), an Australian woman and a Chinese woman. Our guide is a Brit who has lived in Japan 14 years. He's very very knowledgeable about Shinto, and Buddhism, and all the deities. Of which there are many, with many complex variations.

We joined the group in a Tokushima, and have had 4 walking days now. We have walked through cedar forests, along ridges, with views of misty mountains and today, a rocky pacific coastline. The first day it was freezing and rainy off and on, today it was actually hot and sunny. I do not have quite the right clothes for any weather situation--I give myself a C-for clothes planning for this trip.

We also have a bus which takes us to a new place sometimes, so we don't continuously walk, but we do walk temple to temple and up some major inclines. The temples are at the tops of small mountains. Sometimes we walk in a group and chat, sometimes we string out along the path and are silent. There are little markers along the way, showing the pilgrim route, usually with little drawings of pilgrim stick figures.

We stay in Japanese hotels, on futons, and have Japanese breakfast and dinner--rice, miso soup, sashimi, bits of pickle and oyster and egg and odd colorful salty things in many little dishes. Saki, beer, ginger ale, and oh yes, before dinner we usually go to the Onsen--the public baths. Hot soaking pools that make the day! We have a current issue because of our tattoos. There are rules against them in order to keep Yakuza out--so tomorrow we need to pick up athletic tape to cover them.

The temples. The temples are the whole point of the walking, and they are strange and wonderful. Some are big, with many different buildings and large statutes of Bodhisattvas, koi ponds, gardens, cherry trees in blossom. Some are quite small, with many stone steps. They each have the same essential set up but a different feel and age and story.

They are Buddhist temples but also have the feel of Shinto shrines--it's all wrapped up together. They get many visitors and so are quite impressive, but they are not tourist attractions, they are functioning places of daily complex worship--each one has been just beautiful, old, new, fascinating, startling, strange, detailed, peaceful, surprising.

Here's what we do when we approach a temple, as coached by Ben, our guide.

First, some of us are wearing the white pilgrim gear--at least some of it. We see elderly pilgrims on the road dressed entirely in white with hats and staffs, but those of us who chose to do it in our group just have the jacket or vest. Pilgrims wore white so in case they died in the road they were all ready for cremation--also, while on pilgrimage, they belonged neither to this world or the next. White was the color of a liminal space.

So--we bow at the gate. Then we wash our hands with little dippers out of a stone basin. Then we ring the giant temple bell with a great, deep gong.

Next we light candles and 3 sticks of incense, and we say a prayer for Moey. Then we approach the main hall where the particular Buddhist deity of that place is enshrined. We put a slip of paper with our name, and home, and our wish in a box, then we ring a small bell. Then we chant the heart sutra, which takes about 2 minutes--we read it phonetically off a card. Then we go to a different building where a statue of Kobo Daishi is enshrined--this is the Buddhist Saint who established the 88 temples. You say a short mantra there. Then you get your book signed with beautiful calligraphy, proving you have been to that temple.

For the camino walkers, this is so much more complicated!

Then each temple has its own folklore and particular elements--a huge stature of Kannon holding a basket of fish in a fishing town, a little shrine to Jizo, a bodhisattva who protects travelers, a sacred spring where Kobo Daishi struck his staff into the earth and a spring bubbled up, a huge stone where he is supposed to have imprisoned a Demon, etc, etc.

More walking tomorrow. The cherry blossoms are now in full bloom.