together. Who, we wonder, will be our silent companions? In whose steps are we following?
Chapter 3: Threshold – Foot and Step
With a deepened sense of how we ought arrange our bodies, before we set off, we check our most important equipment for the journey – our own body. Napoleon’s army may have marched ‘on their bellies’, we will have to rely on ankle, foot, toes. Our strength will be our posture and breath. We will need to understand these intimately and we will use the lenses of both modern Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine to inform our understanding. We will consider this journey as an exercise in bio-mechanics, and of ki-energy flow – one which takes place at the margin between earth and sky.
Chapter 4: Threshold – Preparations
Our determination set, having let go of habits and routines, we must gather around us the necessities of the road. We check equipment, pack knapsacks, refit boots with stout new laces. We consider our mentors –centuries of pilgrims, monks circling stupas, super-athletes coursing up and down a sacred mountain. They will recommend what we might need on our journey –can we really get by with only a begging bowl and a staff? We are struck by Jizo, the Eternal Pilgrim, trudging through the Six Realms of Conditioned Existence, his simplicity – the pilgrim’s robes and his shakujo, the sturdy staff which supports his pace and whose jangling rings announce to all beings that the Dharma-messenger is approaching.
Some of us wonder whether we are fit for this journey. We wonder about old bones, injuries or even more permanent disabilities. Will these force us to stay behind. What can our predecessors advise?
Part II: Journeys
Chapter 5: Journey - First Steps
Our destination clear, all preparations made and a trusted map in hand, we take the first steps away from our daily lives and towards an adventure, a learning and, with luck, a transformation. As those who join the road do, we ponder the practice habits we know. Most of us turn to the archetype, the cross-legged monk, the seated Bodhisattvas and the Buddha, in repose on a lotus throne. Some may have tried the walks that divide rounds of sitting practice, some may understand how walking is the continuation of the practices of sitting. We frame our questions, we engage our curiosity, we have formed our intention for the road. Now on the road, we begin with our reliable and familiar practices.
Walking Practice 1: Kinhin and Tai Chi
Most styles of Buddhist practice include some form of formalized walking practice. The most common is kinhin, ‘just walking’. It is characterized as the practice form used to vary periods of sustained sitting practice. It has its own posture and can be done in a variety of paces, from glacially slow to a near sprint. Since it is usually twinned with sitting, it is done indoors, contained within the actual sitting space. Others, most famously Thich Nhat Hahn, have promoted a moderately paced walk out of doors. His form breaks the traditional pattern of a line of practitioners. Video of him leading a walking practice resembles a swarm or wave moving across the landscape, with the Master Thay clutching one or two children’s hands.
Normally, the kinhin line circles the outer edge of the practice room or, for smaller groups or individuals, a 15-20 pace extended loop, down and back the space.
When the Dharma entered China, it entered the territory of Taoist masters. Over the centuries, the two flowed in and through each other, leaving invisible links and overlaps. Like roads built over roads built over roads, no one can say what the substance of the final road may be. We pause to meet walking Tai Chi, a unique and companionable form of walking whose meticulousness and rhythm can teach us a new side to our walking.
Chapter 6: Journey 2 – Crossing
Evening the pace, feeling the freedom from former ways, we slip into the walking of our ancestors, all those monks who wove back and forth across the sandy trails between a deer park, a king’s palace and a wealthy man’s garden. Readily we come to appreciate the delights and demands of a meal on the trail. We are now immersed in a new life.
Walking Practice 2: Walking as Daily Life
Anyone who has passed a day at a Dharma centre will have engaged in samu practice. This term from Japanese Buddhism will have parallels in other countries. It refers to all the day-to-day duties a monk or retreatant undertakes to contribute to the Sangha. It is almost a stereotype of samu to be sweeping floors or cutting wood. The variations are as many as tasks in place. Virtually all of these require some walking. We will examine what we can bring to these work-practices. Only a few of us will pass much time inside a temple or monastery walls compared to the hours we spend at work elsewhere. We explore how we can make these periods of work opportunities for practice.
Walking Practice 3: Alms Rounds
No doubt, the oldest formal Buddhist foot practice is that of alms rounds. As Shakyamuni assembled his steady group of followers, they adopted the already accepted practice for wandering ascetics, that of daily visits to homes and estates to exchange the presentation of teaching, for some material contribution, most often food and drink. This is not begging, in the sense of someone down on their luck asking for support from someone more materially successful. Alms rounds are a recognition of the intersection of two distinct competencies. Those with material goods exchange them for the receipt of salvational teaching by those who specialize in that knowledge. The religious are not seen as ‘needy’, but rather in possession of specially acquired knowledge. Since laypeople were viewed as incapable (at least in earlier times) of their own religious education, the gift of teaching was the primary way they could benefit from the efforts of clergy. (It was, in fact, part of Buddhist vows to make efforts to present the Dharma to other people.) Providing for wandering ascetics was, of course, a means of acquiring merit, good karma. How the spirit of this walking practice can be transformed for our modern situations is an as-yet answered question we will ask.
Chapter 7: Threshold 2 – Turning Back
At some point, every walker must decide to transform the walk from a letting go to a coming back. We will take time to reflect on the symbolic and ritual meaning of this moment, what we previously called our journey’s liminal or threshold moment. With our time behind us increasing, we come to appreciate the path-builders, the trail setters who preceded us. We understand their sincerity and effort, and will feel some gratitude. We turn to practices that represent that appreciation and thankfulness.
Walking Practice 4: Circumambulation
Circumambulation, for Buddhists, derives from the practice of walking around some sacred or honoured site. As part of the practice of venerating the remains of a great teacher, practitioners performed a walking and recitation practice which slowly encircled the stupa, in a clockwise manner. The recited material would be a familiar chant or a sutra. Such a practice not only deepens the practitioners mind-practice, but generates merit for themselves and others. Doing circumambulation is an essential part of any Buddhist pilgrimage.
Over time circumambulation around stupas or pagodas became possible around other sites, relics or statuary. In modern times, in its most extravagant form, it begins to merge with pilgrimage walking as circumambulation around sacred mountains becomes a practice.
Walking Practice 5: Walking Nembutsu
Nembutsu is a practice which emerged later in Buddhist history and is characterized by a reliance on a direct personal relation between the practitioner and a Buddha figure, most often Amida, the Buddha
