o Henro-san
Self-determination has to mean that the leader is your individual gut, and heart, and mind or weâre talking about power, again, and its rather well-known impurities. Who is really going to care whether you live or die and who is going to know the most intimate motivation for your laughter and your tears is the only person to be trusted to speak for you and to decide what you will or will not do.
– June Jordan
All of one other senses, other artificial boundaries and borders of the modern world disappear, allowing us to contemplate as one unified humanity on planet earth.
The importance of a pilgrimage is not on its completion (nor how fast or how far), but rather what you take home and become after you internalize your experiences.
Know your mind
I am paraphrasing a thought that Kukai passed along in his writings about knowing one’s own mind:
Know your mind just as it really is, then you know Buddha’s mind.
When you know Buddha’s mind, you know everyone’s mind.
The world of truth or enlightenment:
That is the great awakening:
ones’s own mind
the mind of the Buddha
the mind of all beings
Again, as I observed in an earlier post: I came a long way to find myself.
Eternal Meditation
Kukai is not dead, but is in eternal meditation until all beings are free of suffering.
I will not say “owarimashita” (I am finished) since I believe that when you come to the end of a pilgrimage (or anything in life for that matter) you will find that it is just another beginning. Â
Baadaye and Mata Ne (ăžăă)
Shirley J âĽď¸
This and several posts this summer will chronicle my pilgrimage in Japan where I am walking the 1200 kilometer-long Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage. Read my announcement here.
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