🌸 Noire Henro-san: On The Threshold 2

If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone.

Better than a meaningless story of a thousand words is a single word of deep meaning which, when heard, produces peace. – Gautama Buddha

The day before I arrived at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, I took a moment to reflect about my pilgrimage there. The day after my arrival at Okubo-ji, I’m doing the same in Japan on the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage.

Today

This is on my mind as the new year rapidly approaches. I am not a religious person. The concept of religion on this planet is hard to embrace. The reality and history is this: war, genocide, slavery, grief, sexual abuse, and other unspeakable acts are committed by people, religious or not, every single day.

There was no escape from that reality more than a thousand years ago here in Japan. And there is no escaping now. Today, I did not expect to walk as a pilgrim in isolation or ignorance of current events or the news.

My encounters with fellow pilgrims, locals, and other visitors to the country happened as soon as I stepped on the trail. I enjoyed engaging with each and every one about the state of the world. My own curiosity was awakened by all of this good noise.

And it is not over… yet.

Unseen relics of buddhas and saints are often explained with a dose of treachery and secrecy. It seems to be true where people want or have to believe in something. Is it relevant to the modern age, our times, or to me – one black woman – centered in increasing worldly and planetary strife? I do not lean on denials and contradictions but toward clarity and authentic understanding. It is perplexing that any institution, religious or not – or – any society, justly ruled or not, would harm the very people that defend its tenets. 

These are the things I think about and discuss with others on this island between the ocean and the sea.

Miles away on a vast continent – Africa – millions of women and men – were forcefully placed on a painful projectory. Five hundred years later, the effect is tinged with a sorrow felt on a mitochondrial level to this day. It keeps me on the trail and strengthens me.

After many weeks on my pilgrimage, I am on the way to Mt Koya. The question of all time is still there: why are we here? Why am I here?

Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.

– Gautama Buddha

Tomorrow

I am still pondering the answer while continuing on my pilgrimage to Koyasan.

Baadaye and Mata ne

Shirley J ♥️

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