The preceding practices all demand some amount of physical exertion and take place over a real, natural landscapes. The practices of this chapter take us into the realm of largely symbolic and less physical travels. Mandala and Pure Land visioning have deep roots within Dharma practice. Labyrinth practice is largely foreign to Buddhist experience. It is included here because, as a foot practice, it offers a great deal to Dharma practice, and because it is becoming increasingly familiar to Western practitioners.
Walking the Stations
Another version of a symbolic walk, in fact, a kind of symbolic/mini-pilgrimage is the structure of the Stations of the Cross. We’ll pass up and down the church aisles to experience the possibilities of this important Christian walk.
Mandala and Pure Land
Mandala are symbolic patterns, sacred landscapes which describe realms, personages and relationships which invite us into another level of experience where we can participate in processes and adventures beyond the confines of usual time and space. Such experiences can supercede our ordinary body-bound experience and lead us to new understandings of the activities of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. We will examine several noteworthy mandalas and their associated practices.
Pure Land recitation and visualization refers to meditative expeditions wherein the practitioner enters into a trans-physical landscape, one created through the meditative experience, and explores the otherwise inaccessible landscape of the Pure or Western Land of Amida Buddha. In these travels, we follow the practitioner who creates/enjoys a visit to an idealized world of sublime perfection, one intended to inspire and structure one’s human realm practice. We consider how we can walk to such a land ‘in this very life’.
Walking Practice 9: Labyrinth Walking
Labyrinths appeared in Mediaeval Europe, and possibly earlier, introducing Christian and pre-Christian symbolism into a highly structured walking practice. As Lauren Artress, the woman who single-handedly restored knowledge of and interest in the labyrinth, notes:
The labyrinth is like teaching a fish to swim. It is easy and natural for most people to enter into a different realm of consciousness.
The Sacred Path Companion, Artress, p. 25
Labyrinths are fixed-pattern walks, typically circular, which lead the walker through a complex series of back and forth circles which are designed to interrupt usual-mind thinking. One cannot predict the movement through a labyrinth, but one always has the confidence of completion. Labyrinths are not mazes. They require no solving, only walking. While they have little historical relation to Dharma practice, they have become familiar enough to Western practitioners that there may be value in learning to use them for Dharma practice. We follow our own footsteps through different shapes with different intentions, perhaps to find a way to blend this practice with our own.
Walking Practice 10: Sauntering with Henry
Thoreau has inspired countless writers, naturalists, meditators and environmentalists. During the middle of the 19th century, he re-located from a bustling commercial town in the North East of the US, into a small cabin not far, but far enough, from the town so that he felt part of a natural landscape. His reflections on his life, on nature, on civilization and on walking helped shape 20th century values and thought. In his book/essay, Walking, which first appeared in 1862, he begins:
I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is taking walks, who had a genius for ‘sauntering’… I think I can not preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, and it is commonly more than that, sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
Walking, Thoreau, p. 1-4
There is a distinctly ‘spiritual’ tone to Thoreau’s work and so, as contemplative sojourners ourselves, it will be instructive for us to walk some way with him.
Walking Practice 11: Walking for Change
Many of the various waves of Buddhadharma arising in the West have tended to replicate Eastern practices. Contemporary Western Buddhists have carried on most of the traditional walking practices in some form. With the maturing of Buddhist thought and practice, teachers of all traditions found it critical to re-form walking to meet the needs, issues and familiar context of modern Western society.
From the worker’s marches of the early 20th century, through the protests of the 60’s-80’s and into the 21st century, walking has found a place in the repertoire of social change advocates. Buddhists, East and West, have lead and joined marches for many causes, most often with peace and environmental issue focus. One radical and imaginative new form for walking is interpreted in Elias Amidon’s Mall Mindfulness. He explains:
[I had decided to invite my students…] to try something new – to contrast the grounded wisdom achieved through walking mindfully in non-human made nature with the lessons revealed through walking mindfully in that temple of human-made nature, the shopping mall.
Mall Mindfulness, in Dharma Rain, p. 232
No less participants in this disjointed modern world, we can bring the historic adaptability and creativity of Dharma practitioners the world over to our engagement in the process of bettering our planet and society. Walking can be a vital element of that activity.
Chapter 10: Returning Home
Home, and the journey is over. And yet, are we at the end or only locating ourselves at another threshold? Can we ever truly dwell without some awareness of another boundary which we must cross, and the journey which will take us there? What have we learned on our travels? How might we begin or transform a personal practice with our new walking experience? Will the prospect of some new adventure thrust us into the company of that 17th century Zen poet-traveller, Basho, who could scarcely shake the dust from his feet before he abandoned his cottage once again for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Let us make preparations for our journey.
CHAPTER TWO
IMAGININGS
There is a difference between a pilgrim and a wanderer. Buddhist teachings use ‘wanderer’ to refer to someone who is lost in the rounds of suffering existence, transmigrating through the six worlds… The difference between a pilgrim and a wanderer is to know the path and to set out on it.
Jizo Bodhisattva, Bays, p. 118
This place of dwelling, this home of the hearth and security, is also the place from which we view the open road. It is out the window, over the back fence, below the balcony. It rolls out before us literally and metaphorically, not simply as a road, somewhere to visit, but as a path and the Path, which can relieve us of the irritation of The Question. One teacher of mine used to call it “the only question worth asking, who is this?” It irritates like a stone in one’s hiking boot, suggests like an open door and calls like the roar of waves heard from the other side of a sand dune. We have to seek it out.
WALKING AS PRACTICE: SITTING, WALKING; WALKING, SITTING
It is
