of their will, sheltered with no more pomp
Than the dim cave lends or the jungle-bush.
The Light of Asia, Arnold, 4th Book
In some respects, the life of the Buddha is a model for the leader in chapter seven of The Lotus Sutra, mentioned above, who takes his followers on a perilous journey leading to the ultimate treasure. If we accept that Shakyamuni Buddha was the presentation of the Living Dharma, and that his every gesture was the expression of the Way, we must imagine the great amounts of teaching which occurred while the first Sangha walked and walked, year after year. Its inconceivable that during all that time there wasn’t some structured practices of reflection, chanting or even question-and-answer that emerged. Could all that have been so trivial that it doesn’t merit a place in the practice routine of the Buddha and his followers?
The question is worth noting, as we look into the performance of these practices. However, the deeper examination and possible answer to such questions belong to another, as-yet-undertaken study. For now, we raise the puzzle while we ourselves join the Buddha, feeling the Earth beneath us and “…tread its paths with patient…feet.”
WALKING PRACTICE AS METAPHOR
Our journey here may not reveal to you the secrets of green mountains walking or an ultimate treasure, but we will most certainly follow Dogen’s sage advice, and investigate clearly our own walking. Although walking might seem a minor practice, compared to the highly-praised seated postures, walking inspired the early Buddhist imagination in other ways. Way, path, vehicle, step. These are the prominent metaphors of Buddhadharma. Consider:
• The fourth of the initial and pivotal Buddhist teaching is, of course, the Eightfold Path, the arya-arta ga-marga. A marga is a well worn path, such as a wild animal would leave behind, and also suggests an expedient route, a passage or the proper course;
• Using another road metaphor, all the schools of Buddhism refer to themselves as yanas, vehicles. Hence, we have the Lesser Vehicle (hina-yana), the Great or All-Encompassing Vehicle (maha-yana), the Vehicle of the Thunderbolt (vajra-yana) and The Harmonizing Vehicle (eka-yana). The sense here is of practice as a conveyance, that is how one gets from here to one’s destination; thus, these vehicles have the capacity to carry us to liberation or over the river of suffering;
• One of the most beloved books in the early Buddhist canon is the Dhamma-pada, literally, Dharma steps or footsteps;
• In the earliest Buddhist art, images of the Buddha were forbidden and symbols for the Teacher were used. One popular symbol was the padanka, the Buddha’s footprint, which became an object of worship;
The padanka symbol
• The story of the infant Shakyamuni, following his miraculous birth, includes the detail that, unlike the awkward stumblings of most infants, he stood up and took three bold strides, symbolizing his conquest of the Three Worlds. As he stepped, brilliant lotus flowers sprang from the earth. Its worth noting here again that with all the possibilities of things he could have done to show his extra-ordinariness, it was walking which characterized this miraculous child.
Curiously, with all these road metaphors, the word for teaching remains Dharma, which is a symbol of something static, not moving. It suggests a pillar or foundation – a set of rules or a natural order. Perhaps the common contemporary (to the Buddha) usages of Dharma in Hinduism simply transferred over to Buddhist teaching. As Buddhism moved across into China and Japan, it became more associated with Tao, The Way, the foundational concept of Chinese religion which captures more of the sense of movement and flow.
WALKING AS A ‘YOGA’
Walking practices, as we will see, are usually noted as adjunctive practices, such as a relief from sitting meditation, as with doing kinhin, as special practices, like the kaihogyo, which only the exceptional even dare to perform, or as instrumental, such as walking while doing nembutsu recitation. This book will take walking practices, not merely in these various ways, but as an integrated set of practices.
THIS HANDBOOK’S INTENTION: WALKING AS CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE
In a remarkable book, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religions, the socio-anthropologist, Thomas Tweed, proposes a metaphor to describe what religions are. He sets out:
Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries. [These two] orienting metaphors are most useful for analyzing what religion is and what it does: spatial metaphors (dwelling and crossing) signal that religion is about finding a place and moving across a space, and aquatic metaphors (confluences and flows) signal that religions are not reified substances but complex processes.
Crossing and Dwelling, Tweed, pp. 54/59
This intriguing and deeply satisfying conceptualization resonates strongly with a book about the place of walking in one of the world’s great religious traditions, Buddhism. Space does not permit us to pursue Tweed’s metaphors further, but he is successful in providing us with a suitable metaphor for this book itself.
We will adopt, in fact we already have adopted, this dwelling-and-crossing metaphor in two underlying ways: firstly, in conjunction with the ‘three phases’ metaphor introduced in our Preface, and the ‘chapter-map’ of our journey through Buddhist walking practices, the metaphor of crossing/dwelling enriches the journey metaphor, transforming it; and secondly, as a template for understanding the structure of any walking practice. We will see the dwelling/crossing frame can guide us in how to use the practices.
Let’s look in a little more detailed way at how our journey will move us from dwelling to crossing and back again.
Part 1: Preparations
Preface: Dwelling
We began in the known, the many rooms of and windows on our world, familiar and secure. In our meeting, The Preface, someone (myself) unexpectedly reports back with news from their travels. A question mark suddenly appears beside our calm world. A new way of being in that familiar world is proposed. The possibility of a new journey is raised, with something of how and why we might take it and what we might explore and learn. As in our usual world, this ‘travel bug’ must be scratched.
Chapter 1: Stirrings
We are now in the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, walking across North India, day after day, year after year. We step back from the sermons and the drama. We, who are his modern day entourage, observe his everyday life, treading dirt roads, resting in groves, finding a next meal. We step back and wonder what might this have to do with the Great Awakening. Could this to-ing and fro-ing really have nothing to do with being fully awake? Are the travels of Shakyamuni just filler, something to do around the real practices? In what ways has our 2500 year tradition formulated walking practices which we can employ on the Dharma Path? We will leave our comfortable dwelling and take to that road to join our Sangha-companions in their walk.
Chapter 2: Imaginings
A strange and compelling vision takes shape in our hearts and now our bodies. We begin to feel, in our bodies, the movement onto the highway. We recognize we are arranging our bodies for travel, and we need to remember the efficiencies of posture, step and breath. Although we may be walking alone, we remind ourselves
