Chapter 5 - Walking the Dharma on Shikoku and in India

Summary

A long walking tour is an arduous form of pilgrimage with the potential to transform the walker. The Japanese island of Shikoku, with its eighty-eight-temple circuit, is the most famous Buddhist walking pilgrimage. Two Western writers, Oliver Statler and Robert Sibley, depict how this demanding walk affected them, although they are modest about claiming to have been transformed. The legend of Kobo Daishi shapes their encounters and experiences on the Shikoku circuit. Another traditional form of Buddhist pilgrimage is visiting sites important in the Buddha’s life. Two Englishmen, Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott, wrote two volumes about their 700-mile journey through India and Nepal. The contrasting perspectives of the Theravada monk and his devoted friend and student reveal their different temperaments and religious insights, which are evident in the ways each of them experiences unselfing and understands Buddhist ideas of no-self. Walking provides many opportunities for these pilgrims to discern the self’s ceaseless arising and dissipation and to practice patient returning to the present moment.