stepped into religious history. He walked across North India and established a monastic order that walked with him. His birth story distinguishes him by his three steps. As a mature and troubled adult, when he left his palace he walked into the forest and walked for decades with a group of fellow renunciants. His early symbol was his foot-print (padakan). And on and on. The question that rolled around in my walking thoughts and led to this book has to do with the apparent relegation of walking as practice, as cultural image and as aspect of religious history to a minor role or even to be dismissed as unimportant. When I tried to imagine the Buddha’s time, or that of Jesus or Moses or any other religious leader, when I imagined them walking for days and months as they shared their teaching, it seemed without question that some major teaching and practice would have happened along the way. It seemed without question that this walking experience would have played a key role in the cultivation of contemplative life. And so I wondered why it wasn’t explored in great detail in subsequent literature or teaching.
Initially, I imagined a magnum opus, a wise and scholarly tome that examined images of foot, walk and path in the most obscure Indian and Chinese texts, that traced the teaching tradition across all schools. That may one day be written. However, in the end, the practical side, the walker, won out. Hence this book, which is not the scholarly tome but a handbook. It takes you on a journey; it shows you how to transform the ordinary act of walking into a beautiful and energized contemplative act.
I think it was my friend Greg Krech who tells his story of walking a trail in his Vermont neighbourhood. He recalls walking up the trail and grumbling at how rough and untended the trail was. He slipped into blame and resentment at the poor quality of the path. Once at the top, he recognized how collapsed his mind-state had become and approached the descent with a perspective open to gratitude. Walking the same trail he saw all the evidence of hundreds of person-hours which had cleared branches, restored the ground and protected precious plants. In his haste and selfish-mind he had missed all the evidence of other hands.
Now that I have completed my journey, may I acknowledge the many hands involved in clearing the way for this project. Once more, I thank my parents and my walking-mentor, Ray Lowes, for introducing me to the trail so early in my life. I thank my precious friend and educator, Dr. Nalini Devdas, who opened my Dharma-eye and has always insisted on thoroughness and persistence in writing and study. I thank my sensei, Rev. Monshin Paul Naamon, Secretary General of the Tendai-shu North America District, who helped me learn many of the walking practices described in this book and in so many other ways. I thank all the writer-practitioners of the trail who have helped me to understand the source material of the book. I owe special thanks to Thomas Tweed for his notion of religions as “crossing and dwelling”, to China Miéville for his imagined world of in-between/un-seen spaces. I thank my publisher, John Negru who planted the seed of this book and helped make it a reality. I thank my wife, Judy LeClair who encouraged me to write and bore my absence and solitude with such understanding and patience. I thank my beloved four-legged trail-companion, Joshu-daiosho who brought me back to the trail so many times. I thank all my human trail-companions, those who have walked with me, short trail, long trail, winter, summer, all over the world. I bow to all my fellow walkers and un-official henro-pilgrims who have kept up the drumbeat of steps on the Earth. They remind me of dogyo ninin, we never walk alone. Last, but hardly least, I bow and offer thanks to Jizo-bosatsu, the Bodhisattva of the road. Even before I knew his name, he guided me along every trail, calling me forward, urging me to risk another step. To him, my constant road companion, I offer up whatever merit may arise from this book and every step taken along the way. Om namu jizo busa.
PREFACE
DWELLING
When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.
What is it, what is it
But a direction out there,
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?
If with fancy unfurled
You may leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road
From The Old Marlborough Road,
Henry Thoreau, Walking
WHY LEAVE YOUR ABODE?
Its hard for me to separate walking from other practice forms, since it became fused to my practice regimen very early on. Walking had been a time of reflection for me from my early teens, well before my introduction to Buddhadharma. There seemed to be something in the steady rhythm of a walking pace that supported those times I reserved for contemplating the big questions of life for the first time.
Like the 19th century American philosopher-walker, Henry David Thoreau, I felt it important to combine reflection and walking. In his essay called Walking, he notes: “…moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking” (Walking, p. 7). And like Thoreau, as much as a city teenager could, I sought relief from the roads and highways. I very often waited until dusk or after dark, when I could visit the many quiet ponds, parks and canal-trails near my home. Again, like Thoreau, I understood the difference between the urban thoroughfares fronted by shops, and those other, more desirable spaces where the commercial grid dissolved into foot-paths and river-banks. He proposed:
“When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or mall.… Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster.” (Walking, p. 8, 12)
An early contemplative walking experience occurred while I was falling into what was to become my life-long thrall with Buddhadharma. In my first-year studies, where I began to explore Indian meditative history and practice, I was living in the part of Ottawa which nestled along the famous Rideau Canal. Adjacent to the Canal, which winds for about eight kilometres from the Ottawa River, to my then-school Carleton University, was a small pond. Late one Saturday evening, restless from too much essay-writing, I left my apartment to walk the quiet streets, towards the canal. After some 30-40 minutes, I found my self on the upper bank of a small pond, and there, with the nearly full moon, the warm early fall air and echoes of the Bhagavad Gita and Shakyamuni’s quest, I too sat down. I probably imagined some trans-temporal link between my teen-age reflections and those more epic contemplations. Like those masters to whose lives I aspired, I began to find the harmony between sitting and walking practice.
In my early twenties, following my formal undergraduate university training, I began exploring organized Dharma practice in earnest. As it was for many contemporary Westerners, it was Zen I took to be real Buddhism. And, like so many, I took sitting practice, zazen, preferably staring at blank walls, to be the only valid practice. Throwing myself into formal Dharma practice, first through Rinzai Zen style and later Soto Zen style, I learned the most common walking practice, kinhin. The two schools have their own distinct versions of walking, one fast, the other slow, each an expression of the broader distinctions of the two schools. I didn’t know or appreciate those differences and adopted the Soto style, a slower, measured pace, one which seemed familiar, so much like my pre-Buddhist walks. As I was taught
