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Pilgrimage

Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me alright? Is it loud enough for everyone? It is, of course, a strange question, because if you don't hear, I think you won't answer it! So I trust that it's loud enough.

I'm happy to be here with you. I just came back from teaching a retreat at Spirit Rock^[1], which still feels like it's a part of me. Before that, I had gone on a three-day walking retreat that we'll talk about in a few minutes.

At Spirit Rock, they did something which was unusual for me: they had the speaker systems turned on really loud, and it was kind of surprising. But my hearing is getting weaker, and I've discovered that I didn't realize how hard I was trying to listen. Whenever I heard things going on, I thought it was just normal. Now, with hearing devices and these loudspeakers at Spirit Rock, I said, "Oh, look at that, Gil. This is more relaxed now, even though it seems too loud." Anyway, figuring this out is always a work in progress.

The Four Holy Sites

I have a story. There was a Buddhist monastery where many hundreds of people came to be monastics. There was always a group of new monastics that arrived every year. The first year at the monastery is often challenging—getting used to the lifestyle, the schedule, getting up very early in the morning, a lot of meditation, a lot of work, being in community, and sitting in silence. If you're a new monastic, you're at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of seniority, so sometimes the more challenging jobs are given to you.

At some point during the year, the abbess invited all the new monastics to go on a pilgrimage. They were so relieved. "What fantastic news! A pilgrimage!" They were told they were going to the sacred Buddhist sites. The Buddha talked about the value of visiting where he was born, where he was enlightened, where he first taught, and where he died. These are considered to be the four most sacred sites, at least in our kind of Buddhism. So they thought, "Maybe we'll go on a plane! It will be great to go on a pilgrimage to the holy sites."

They all got ready. A couple of fancy tour buses came to pick them up at the monastery gates, and they didn't know where they were going.

First, they went to a hospital. The abbess led them through the halls and the rooms, through the emergency room, and they saw people experiencing all kinds of sicknesses, illnesses, and injuries. Some of them had never really spent much time in a hospital.

When they finished, they got back on their tour buses and went to the next step of the pilgrimage: a hospice. There, they saw people who were in all kinds of stages of dying.

From there, they went to an old age home. They saw the different stages of getting old and what that means to the mind, the heart, and sometimes the body. They realized there are a lot of ways of being old.

Then they got back on their tour buses, and the buses took them back to the monastery. There, they went to the hospice in the monastery, where one of the oldest monks was spending his last days. They went to see him. He didn't have much to say, but there was this wonderful sparkle in his eyes. The light didn't seem like it depended on seeing them; he just had a sparkle. He was very peaceful and very calm. There was a feeling of deep tranquility just to be with him.

The abbess then took them to a meeting room in the monastery and said, "Now you've seen the four holy sites of Buddhism: sickness, old age, death, and a practitioner who has found deep, abiding peace."

Rather than being a physical place to visit, these holy sites were human conditions. There's something about an honest, direct encounter with human conditions that makes them holy sites for Buddhists. How could a hospital, a hospice, or an old age home be a holy site? I think the answer is found in that fourth holy site: a practitioner who has found their peace. A practitioner who is able to die with a sparkle, with delight, joy, and peace, having settled all the conditions of life.

We are asked to honestly and fully encounter this human condition of ours—not to pretend it's different, not to run away, not to skirt around these existential conditions that will visit all of us if we're lucky enough. The Buddha says to stop and take a good look. Stop and really be present. Practice with that. Let it be a mirror to see yourself, to see your reactions, your fears, your distractions, and your preoccupations. This Buddhist practice is here to support us through the deepest, most challenging experiences any person could have in a human life. This is not a hobby. What we do in Buddhism is not an excursion on a tour bus to Disneyland just to have wonderful spiritual experiences.

The Meaning of Pilgrimage

A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place. If you go to the dictionary, that's one of the first meanings. The words "pilgrim" and "pilgrimage" turn out to be closely related etymologically—from the same Latin source—as the word "peregrine," as in the peregrine falcon. Isn't that pretty cool? When a peregrine falcon is soaring high up in the sky, traveling long distances, there's a kind of freedom there.

In Buddhism, there's this idea that birds flying through the sky leave no traces. No tracks are left behind. That's held up as an ideal: when you go through your life, leave no traces. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be remembered when you die, but rather, don't leave anything sticky behind. Don't leave anything undone or unresolved. Don't leave any karma behind. Don't leave any disturbances behind. Leave the world in a better place than you found it.

From its Latin root, "pilgrimage" apparently meant going through the field, coming from abroad, or going abroad. I've known people who have gone on long pilgrimages, and classically, people do it for many reasons. Sometimes they do it because their life is falling apart. I've known people who have lost something very important in their lives and felt lost. They didn't know what to do. So it wasn't just that they were going to a sacred place; they needed to regroup, rediscover who they are, question their life, and reflect on what their life is about. It's also an opportunity to be open to new experiences. On some of the great pilgrimage routes in the world, you never know who you're going to meet, what you're going to encounter, or what you'll struggle with.

Classically, a pilgrim travels with very little and lives a life close to poverty, perhaps staying in pilgrim hostels. I stayed in one such hostel where there were probably two hundred people—men and women—sleeping under the same roof. There were partial dividing walls, so you didn't see everyone at the same time, but you heard everyone at the same time. It was phenomenal to hear the snoring at night. I used to live near the ocean, and it was comforting to hear the waves crashing at night. When you have two hundred people sleeping, it is remarkable. Their snoring was synchronized! It would come in waves. They'd start up, come to a crescendo together, and then quiet down for the next hour before rising again. It became like a phenomenon of nature, like the waves at the beach. I wasn't disturbed by it—how could you be disturbed by waves at the beach? I realized that if you ever have a roommate who snores, go on a pilgrimage first, and maybe you won't be disturbed by the snoring!

Sometimes people go on meditation retreats because it's kind of like a pilgrimage for them. They might be going through a big crisis and don't know what else to do. Some come because they simply want to deepen their meditation, but others come because they are suffering and it's the only thing they know to do.

Many years ago, a woman came to a retreat I was teaching deep in the redwoods. I asked her, "Why are you here?" She said, "My husband made me." I asked why her husband made her come, because requiring someone to attend a retreat is unusual and probably counter-indicated. She replied, "I had an affair." That puts a different context on it! Going somewhere to work through something, discover something, and confront something important in your life is part of a pilgrimage.

Pilgrimages are often done on foot. Some people do long through-hikes for weeks because nothing else makes sense anymore, or because they need to reflect on their lives. The gift my family gave me when I turned fifty was a solo hike up in the Sierras. I spent a week in the wilderness by myself in early May. There was still snow on the ground, and as far as I could tell, I was the first one in the backcountry. I used that occasion to reflect: "Now that I am fifty, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? What's important for me?" I came back with real clarity, which in my case was just to keep doing what I was doing. To have that kind of time to really look at your life is invaluable.

A California Pilgrimage

There have been Buddhist pilgrimages here in California in the past. One phenomenal pilgrimage was undertaken by an American from Tennessee or Kentucky who ordained in a Chinese Buddhist monastery in California. He became fluent in Chinese and was a phenomenal practitioner. His name is Reverend Heng Sure^[2]. He once came to a family retreat I taught at Spirit Rock, brought his guitar, and sang a song to the kids called "Put on Your Samadhi^[3] Shoes." It was so much fun.

His pilgrimage involved walking along Highway 1 from Southern California all the way up to Ukiah. What was more phenomenal was that every three steps, he would stop and do a full prostration flat on the ground. That takes a while and makes quite an impact! I wouldn't be surprised if he was chanting. Out of the Spirit Rock community, there has also been a bicycle pilgrimage for many years, sometimes starting from the Insight Meditation Center (IMC) and going to various Buddhist monasteries in Northern California.

Two weeks ago, I was part of a group of twelve people who went on a walking pilgrimage from Spirit Rock to Green Gulch Farm Zen Center^[4]. The distance was about 26 miles, walked over three days. It was meant to be a trial run to potentially establish a Buddhist walking pilgrimage route in California that connects Buddhist centers.

We asked Spirit Rock if we could sleep in their lower meditation hall the night before we left. They warmly welcomed us, offering us dinner and breakfast. They had meditation mats and futons set up for us. It was so touching to experience that generosity. On pilgrimages, the generosity that supports the community makes the journey richer and more meaningful. It's an act of renunciation to go to a sacred place, but there is also wonderful support for it.

That evening, Anne Cushman^[5], a wonderful Spirit Rock teacher who researched and wrote a book about Buddhist pilgrimages in India, came and gave us a short Dharma talk. She launched us in a celebratory way, and the mantra she gave us was: "There's plenty of time."

How often do you go through your life with that as your mantra? Many people live in time poverty. Everyone in the world has the same amount of time every day, but some live in poverty and some in abundance.

The next morning, supporters arrived to drive all our sleeping gear and tents to the campground, so we only had to carry daypacks with lunch and water. When we arrived at the campground that evening, all our tents and camping chairs were already set up!

As we walked, we held rituals connected to the four natural elements in Buddhism: earth, water, fire, and air. Being in the natural setting and connecting to these elements brought the world alive in a beautiful way. Early on, we stopped at a wonderful Redwood and Bay tree grove next to a creek. Someone led a presentation using rulers to represent the chronological and geological history of where we were. We looked at how long our lives had been, compared it to the 200–350 years non-indigenous immigrants have been in the area, and then compared that to the 35,000 years Indigenous people, like the Miwok^[6], had been there. We learned that Bay trees have been in this part of the country for 20 million years, and the Redwood trees for 200 million years. That creates quite a different context for our lives and our place in the world.

As I walked, the mantra "there's plenty of time" stayed with me. Because I wasn't trying to get anywhere—unlike hiking in the hills where I actively try to reach the end—my personal mantra became: "While going nowhere, going somewhere." It was like being on a retreat where time falls away and there's nothing to accomplish. Just being peaceful, settled, and relaxed. Just this moment is enough. Just to be alive.

In this pilgrimage, we didn't just walk to a sacred site; every step was the arriving at a sacred site. We called this upasama-pada^[7], or "steps of peace." Just this step. We've arrived. What a great thing!

On our last morning, we left at 6:30 AM and hiked down Mount Tamalpais into Muir Woods before most people had arrived. Muir Woods is almost a sacred place—some of the groves are even named religiously, like Cathedral Grove. To be there early in the morning, spectacularly beautiful and quiet, and to meditate in the woods was so special.

What enriched the trip were the small challenges. We were fortunate, but there was cold wind the first night, then rain, and struggling to sleep while rain pounded on the tents. You wouldn't normally want that, but a pilgrimage should have its challenges to make it real.

It was also enriching to read the information signs in Muir Woods. They talked about the history of the park and the people who preserved it, like John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt. But there was a new sensitivity to what all this means. The signs explicitly named that some of the people who preserved the natural world here were deeply involved in eugenics and white supremacy. John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt had some of these qualities. I was relieved to see this named. This, too, is part of the profundity of life we have to deal with and see honestly. Some of the ways we preserved the natural world involved environmental, economic, and racial injustice, denying the existence of the Indigenous people who were already on the land. To simply walk through the preserved wilderness and feel it is sacred without recognizing this bigger context is a partial sacredness. Including this history made the pilgrimage more whole.

We eventually came down to Muir Beach and walked up the valley into Green Gulch Zen Center, which was originally a farm. I lived and worked in the fields there almost 45 years ago. It was special to go back, see the fields, and imagine myself as a 45-year-younger, long-haired hippie working the farm.

When we arrived, Fu Schroeder^[8], who had been the abbess there for the last nine years, received us in the zendo (meditation hall). She gave us a beautiful Dharma talk, and then Green Gulch invited us for lunch. More generosity and support for the pilgrims!

It felt precious to have a pilgrimage in California. In Asian countries where Buddhism has taken root, pilgrimage routes have been created over centuries. In Japan, routes have been walked for over a thousand years. This sacralizes the geography through its associations. It makes part of California feel sacred because people have found profundity in stepping on this land, attuning their practice to the environment, and finding peace with every step.

Everyday Pilgrimage

We walked for three days, but people can walk for months. The point of these long hikes is not getting to a destination; the point is how you step.

The lesson here is that perhaps you are on a pilgrimage every day when you wake up. Maybe every time you walk down the aisles at the market, it's a pilgrimage. Can they be steps of peace? What would that mean?

You might say, "I don't have time for that! I have important products to get into my shopping cart! [Laughter] I have to make sure I get the right one at the right price, and study what other people are getting, and judge them!" You have all these important things to finish so you can move on to other important things. Why not make every day a pilgrimage? Why not feel that you have plenty of time? Why not make every step a step of peace?

You might have good reasons why you can't be that way 95 percent of the time. But maybe there's not a good reason to rush as often as you do. Maybe there is something very profound that you can offer the world, and yourself: the possibility that just this moment is enough. In this moment, you can find your peace, well-being, and contentment.

Doing this is a way to attune to others. It allows our deepest capacities to connect with compassion, love, kindness, and friendliness to come through. One of the nicest things about this pilgrimage was sharing it with people I had never met before. Sharing this common bond of humanity, engagement, warmth, and friendship created a depth of community that felt truly special.

Can that be a lesson for all of us? This is possible even in the supermarket. You're standing in line waiting your turn, ready to say hello, ready to appreciate people. If only we could live there, ready. Ready to treat every moment as a sacred pilgrimage.

Thank you for being here today, and thank you for just sitting and meditating here. Perhaps just being here this morning was a pilgrimage. I hope some of the qualities we talked about carry forward from our time together.