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Buddhist Pilgrimage - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Buddhist Pilgrimage

Today I would like to talk about Buddhist pilgrimage. The catalyst for this was that I just finished doing a Buddhist pilgrimage, so it's very fresh in my mind and very much a part of my heart. So I'd like to speak about what's present for me.

The simplest definition of a pilgrimage that I like is that a pilgrimage is where an outer journey and an inner journey intersect and support each other. Conventionally, pilgrimages are often associated with going to a sacred site, and so they're spiritual in nature. Some people think that our life itself is a pilgrimage. Some people will call something a pilgrimage which is not necessarily spiritual, but that's often the association.

I've walked four pilgrimage routes in my life. Two of them were not a pilgrimage for me; they were other people's pilgrimage routes. People of other religions would enter into it in a deep way because it was deeply connected to their faith. I went along those partly because they were spiritual, and I felt that was an important part of why I was there, but I didn't share the same spirituality as them, so the resonance of that part wasn't that strong for me. I've been on two which were Buddhist pilgrimages, and they were actually part of my faith, part of my spirituality, and felt to be important parts of it. One of them just ended two days ago, which was quite lovely.

So, pilgrimages involve an inner and an outer aspect. The outer one is connected to the places we go. A simple added definition to a pilgrimage is walking to a sacred site, to a sacred temple or sacred place, and then maybe walking back is also part of it. A pilgrimage is a time when we're separating ourselves from life as usual—work and home and all these kinds of things that we leave behind. We enter into a different way of being in the world. It has a lot of overlaps with going on a retreat, where we also leave our home behind, we leave our work behind, life as usual, in order to be able to experience life and experience ourselves independent from how those things influence us, or condition us, or weigh us down. It takes a while, both on a pilgrimage and on a retreat, to let ordinary life settle away, to pass away and not be so pressing on us. Then something else can start happening.

The pilgrimage that I just finished did have a kind of a sacred site we were going to, but this pilgrimage both began at a sacred site and ended at one. We were walking between these two places on land that some people considered to be sacred land, and I'm happy to call it that when I walked on it. The sacred land was Mount Tamalpais¹ in Marin County. One of the people on the pilgrimage with us was following in the footsteps of a sacred pilgrimage that was started by the Beatniks. Gary Snyder and different people in the 1960s started a pilgrimage around Mount Tam, circumambulating it. That's been going on for years, and now I think it's in abeyance, but one of the people involved has done that a number of times. There's a book about it, and she follows the route of the book. She was on the pilgrimage with us; there were ten of us doing it together.

We went from Spirit Rock Meditation Center to Green Gulch Zen Center, both Buddhist centers where I've taught, where I've practiced—important places for me personally, and I would consider them sacred sites. In both places, we were offered hospitality. One of the characteristics often of pilgrimages is that the pilgrims are guests of everybody. They're received by the people they get along with and receive hospitality. It's not always that way, but that's often one characteristic of it. The pilgrims usually go with a certain kind of humbleness, as you would as a guest into someone's house. You don't go in there and demand that instead of serving you spinach salad, they should have served some other kind. You don't say, "You're using the wrong kind of salad dressing for me here, I demand..." like you might in a restaurant. You're a guest in someone's home; there's a humility or humbleness and receptivity of being a guest.

We received hospitality first from Spirit Rock, where we slept in the meditation hall. They have nice residence halls, but they didn't offer us that, and it was lovely to sleep in the meditation hall. Then when we came to Green Gulch Zen Center, we also slept in the meditation hall there. The difference was at Spirit Rock, no one was using the meditation hall the next morning. At Green Gulch, the wake-up bell starts in the meditation hall at a quarter to 5:00, and we had to be out of there by then, so we had to get up early, which was part of the charm of it all. Then we slept two nights on Mount Tam because we took our time with the walk, and it's exquisitely beautiful.

In the process, the land played a very important role for us, certainly for me. The land, the trees—we had a botanist along who told us a little bit about the plants as we went. I learned that the redwood trees, which are a big part of that area, are apparently one of the oldest continuously present species of living beings on the planet. The redwood trees as a genus go back to the Jurassic times, so 200 million years ago. The species we have go back to the Cretaceous period², which could be about 100 million years ago. And coincidentally, I learned that a very big redwood tree has 100 million leaves. It's kind of astounding to me. The scale of time, the scale of complexity, and these redwood trees are so beautiful and so tall.

The pilgrimage put us in the scale of time that we're part of. The botanist pointed out how wonderfully the plants are shaped by the environment they're in, the way they evolved. You can clearly see that because all the understory plants have a problem with getting enough light, so they're all flat, going directly up to the sky. You can see how they were all created in shapes that helped them find light, because the larger trees didn't leave other choices for them to evolve. Humans as well, we've evolved as a species conditioned by the land, the environment, the natural world in which we've lived. As I was walking along the pilgrimage, I thought of one of the anthems of the United States for some people, Woody Guthrie's song, but I wanted to change the refrain to "This land made you and me." This is a land that made you and me. If you've been here in the United States for more than seven years, probably to some degree or other, you've been made by this.

There's something about walking, the movement of walking, the somatic experience of walking that loosens us up. It creates a different way of being on the land than driving a car. It's a different way of being alive, walking outdoors in a beautiful natural environment, than being where the real estate is a computer screen. That's a very small piece of real estate to spend time with, everything focused on it. Some people work that way and spend hours each day focusing on this little screen, this little piece of real estate that calls on so little of our physiology, a little of our body and our senses and experience of life. Who we are in relationship to that screen is very different than how most people feel who they are in relationship to a natural world—the forest, the ocean, the rivers, the trees, the mountains that we all went through these last days.

I reflected when I came back, I did go on my laptop and I looked at my screen and wondered, "How am I different here?" I could feel how I was bigger than whatever the screen is. The screen is only, I don't know, a square foot at the most, and I'm big and substantial. And I'm alone; there's something about the solitude of being in relationship to a screen, even though my wife was in the house. It was very different in contrast to being outdoors, where all the senses are open and there's this huge receptivity that develops over time. The walking is a lubricant, it's a massage, it kind of opens things up step after step. You always have to take into account what's around you. Many times the trail was not completely even, so there's a constant call for your whole body to adjust how it moves through space. It's constantly being adjusted and changed in all these little micro-muscle ways: little adjustments with the ankles, where the foot comes down, the knees, which muscles are activated, and what environment you're tuning into. Are you tuning into things through the ears? Are you tuning in through the eyes? Are you tuning to the ground, the trees, the sky, the birds, the ocean? It's a constant shifting of all kinds of things, and the whole body is involved completely in a way that, I'm sure your body is completely involved with your laptop, but it's probably not as fluid and open and flowing. It's probably getting more and more tense sometimes if you spend a lot of time doing the same thing with your body.

A pilgrimage has this wonderful way built into it: walking, walking, walking for hours. We walked in silence before lunch. To walk with a group of people together, there's a bonding that happens when we spend time together in silence. You get to know each other differently. There's a way of tuning into people when you don't have to be figuring out what to say or how to respond to what they're saying. There's a sense of camaraderie and commonality, something very touching about that kind of experience. We spent maybe four hours in the morning in silence as we walked. We did talk occasionally, like learning how old the redwood trees are, and we had little simple rituals we did as we went along that involved some speech.

Because of the outer silence, it affects the inner silence. It was like being on a retreat or meditating, where the inner landscape became highlighted. I became much more aware of my thoughts, my feelings, my sensations. An inner silence, an inner stillness started to develop. Having this silence as we walked, being in touch with an environment that was so spacious and supportive, contributed to an inner receptivity and inner silence. That was a very important part of this pilgrimage: an outer silence that supports an inner silence, and an inner silence that supports an outer silence.

As I went along, the little slogan I had for myself that became very rich to reflect on was a practice phrase: "Love teaches us to say yes to everything. Wisdom teaches us what to say yes to in every situation." So we're not saying yes to everything just automatically; there are things we shouldn't say yes to. But even in those situations, there's still something we can say yes to. So what is it we can say yes to, even in challenging situations, even in situations where you don't agree with someone? One of the things was, "Yes, I'll listen to you." This isn't exactly the conversation I want to have, but yes. I don't know if I agree, but yes, I'll listen. As we walked along, yes, I'll listen. Why not? The birds, I listen to the birds. I listen to the ocean. I listen to the creeks. Yes. There's a very different orientation to have this "yes," knowing that I disagree in certain ways, that I would say no to something. But yes, to live with a yes. I felt that was a wonderful piece of a pilgrimage.

We had a Buddhist teacher at Spirit Rock give a little short Dharma talk to us to begin the journey. That was Anne Cushman³, who has spent years studying pilgrimages and has done Buddhist pilgrimages in India, so she was familiar with them. Then, at Green Gulch, one of the senior teachers there met us and gave us a short talk. In both places, we meditated a little bit with the teachers and then they gave a short talk. It kind of bookended the whole thing with this wonderful receiving of teachings as we went along.

The Zen teacher gave this beautiful teaching that is from a kind of kōan⁴ in the Japanese Buddhist tradition. It's a fable, I think, but you decide. The Buddha himself was out for a walk with his students, maybe he was on a pilgrimage, and he stopped at some location. He pointed to the ground and he said, "This is the place to build a sanctuary, a sacred site." Apparently, the phrase can also mean a place for enlightenment, a place for liberation. Indra⁵, who was one of the most powerful gods in the Indian Pantheon, heard this and was following along. He came down from his celestial domain and plucked a blade of grass from somewhere and planted that blade of grass into the spot the Buddha had pointed to and said, "The sanctuary is built." And the Buddha smiled.

That's the story. The Zen teacher talked about how Indra, being the most powerful god, could have just snapped his finger and created a huge palace, a cathedral, a real building as the sanctuary. But he just took one of the most humble, simple, ordinary things that was right there, a blade of grass, and put it in the spot and made the sanctuary. So one interpretation of this for pilgrims is that every step is the sacred site. It's not about going to a sacred site, it's not about leaving a sacred site; it's about finding the sacred site in every step. Every step is something very precious and valuable, to be present just for that.

Part of the task of a Buddhist pilgrim, maybe a Zen Buddhist pilgrim, is to find what it means, how we discover the tremendous value, the power, the spirituality, the sacredness of one step, of the place we're standing, the place where our foot comes down, this particular moment here and now. It certainly requires a certain kind of humility, a certain receptivity. It requires a quietness in the mind where we're not so caught up in our thoughts and concerns that we miss the moment, we miss the footstep. And it certainly requires some kind of feeling of the value, the specialness of really being here in the place we're at. Part of that specialness for Buddhists is to appreciate the possibility of liberation, freedom from attachments, from clinging, from self-preoccupation, from building up the self, defending the self, being preoccupied with the future or the past—finding some liberation from all that. It's not an easy thing to do.

There's something about walking all day through the natural world that contributes to that, that contributes to the scale of our life and what's important changing. Part of what we walked along was the Marin Headland cliffs. It was an amazing view of the ocean going far, far out.

The other thing that I loved about the pilgrimage was how friendly people were to us as we went along. The people we encountered, even if they didn't know we were doing a pilgrimage, were just friendly out there. Some of them were county employees doing their work, and they were just so happy to be there and meet us and talk with us or answer our questions about what they were doing.

What was also nice was that we were a pilgrim group, and as we walked through the days, we started bonding together, becoming more and more, it felt like, not just a group of people doing the same thing, but a group of people sharing a certain sensitivity, a certain mutuality, a certain sacredness. We had come together, some of us having never met each other before. The peak time for that, when it really felt like we gelled, was during the two nights we slept out on Mount Tam in sleeping bags and tents. The second night, we had our dinner at a picnic table. We'd finished everything, the evening was coming to a close, and we all just sat around the picnic table. As it was getting darker—it was a full moon—there was a feeling that we had now jelled into a single body. You might say, for a group of people, we were all now on the same page, sharing the same sensibility and feeling very connected to each other. That was probably partly because we had walked so much together, sharing the sacredness of this land and this purpose, and because of the strong connection we all had to the practice. Everyone was a practitioner.

We spent time meditating together. Sometimes during the day, we'd come to these spots that just seemed like the right place to meditate, and we'd sit there. There's a place called Cataract Falls, one of the great hikes in the Bay Area. We walked up Cataract Falls, and halfway up there's a great waterfall, and we sat there on the hillside meditating.

These things can happen right here in the Bay Area. What made it a sacred pilgrimage was the intention, the purpose, and the context in which it was created. It was created last year; this is the second year we've done it. Before that, this pilgrimage didn't exist. All Buddhist countries in Asia have pilgrimage routes, as far as I know. Most major religions have pilgrimage routes. I don't think there's been too much of this in the United States yet. So it was high time that we have one here in California. So now we have one.

The idea is to make it longer. Last year we did Spirit Rock to Green Gulch Zen Center. This year we actually walked a little bit further to Rodeo Beach and ended there. The idea is to slowly make it so we can spend as many nights in meditation halls or Buddhist temples as we make our way down the coast. Maybe eventually make it to our retreat center in Santa Cruz, or further, all the way to Tassajara, deep in the Los Padres National Wilderness—Tassajara Zen Center. I don't know how long that would take, but it's a lot shorter than the El Camino that people know in Spain, so maybe we'll get away with it.

So, that was what I did for my vacation. Hopefully, that was nice for you to hear.

Q&A

One person commented, drawing an analogy: if the sacred site equals enlightenment, and each step was the revered site, then each meditation would be a step, and even more, each moment of our lives would be a step.

I completely agree with you. That's definitely the conclusion of this practice: to realize that in every meditation, you're sitting in the place of awakening. It's a sanctuary. Every step, every thing you do. That's the goal. Some of us need some help, and a pilgrimage is one of the ways to get that help. It's not just going on retreat; you're living a life in the world, walking and encountering things. It's really palpable that this is what you're doing. And hopefully, we learn from that, it becomes imprinted in us, so that when we go back home, we bring that with us and appreciate that every sip of water is a pilgrimage.

Another person who had hiked the Cataract Trail before shared their appreciation for the place. Someone else then brought up an article they saw about why bodies of water are so peaceful for us and asked for my thoughts.

Maybe I won't answer the question directly. This last year, there have been a few times where I've been in situations where people had to introduce themselves with a little bit about their background. I've told my life story so many times that I'm not that interested in it anymore. I had time to reflect before I was going to do this introduction, and as other people were doing theirs first, it was interesting to hear their introductions and have that reflect back to understand myself in a different way. By the time it was my turn, I didn't want to tell any stories in the conventional ways; it just wasn't really relevant for me.

What was most relevant, what I felt most in the last six months, was how I have been shaped by places in nature. One of those ways is bodies of water. I've spent a lot of my life on water, and it's been a really big theme throughout my life. I was born in a coastal town in Norway, and I spent a lot of time on water and fjords. Some of these fjords can be so peaceful, so calm when there's no wind. The calm bodies of water, I feel like they have shaped me. There's something that lives in me—the spaciousness, the openness, the expansiveness of peace or calm that seems to impact something in my chest, where my chest becomes similarly peaceful and quiet. Why that is, I don't know, but it has certainly had a big impact. So you might want to reflect on how you would tell your life story from the point of view of the places you've lived, as opposed to what you did.

A participant who had recently completed Everest Base Camp trekking mentioned how they wished they had incorporated ideas like walking in silence and meditating at different spots. They suggested that IMC might organize similar hikes for non-teachers.

There are some people who have organized hikes. Kristen Benson has offered a couple this last year; she was trained to be an eco-chaplain. She has offered hikes that have brought together some of these things. She often does it around the solstice or equinox times, so keep an eye on the newsletter to see if she plans to do one for the summer solstice. It is good to do more of it. If this pilgrimage route gets developed all the way down south of here, at some point it has to go through the peninsula. So either you'll have to wait till it gets that far and then you can join, or maybe we'll develop it in sections.

Someone else shared that they had just come back from Salt Lake City and felt challenged by what they witnessed there, struggling with judgment versus curiosity regarding the history and hierarchy of the faith prominent there.

I appreciate very much what's behind your question. I have Mormon friends, so I know some of the challenges that they have with their own religion, or some of them have left their religion. But those challenges—maybe the nuances and details are a little different—but almost every religion has some of the same problems. You don't have to look very far to see problems with Buddhism as a religion as well; Buddhism is not free of this.

In terms of this idea of saying yes, yes, there are problems in religions, and there's a lot of goodness in people as well. I've noticed that there's a lot of generosity, a lot of friendship, a lot of ethics among Mormons that I've met that have inspired me. I know some of the difficulties as well, but I really like to orient myself around that which resonates with me and that which inspires me, because that's a way of supporting more of that in the world. To only orient ourselves towards the problems kind of limits us, because then we're resonating with the problem and the distress that it causes us, and I don't know if we grow from that as much as we do from resonating with what's good.

But what's very important is not to be Pollyannaish and just ignore the problems. I think there's a tremendous importance to seeing it clearly, but not to be limited by it. It's about finding where the spiritual growth is happening. One motivation that I have when I see things that are terrible in the world is that it inspires me to do better. It reminds me that the world I want to live in is the world that needs to begin with me. So rather than waiting for someone else to fix the world, at least we try to fix our own world, the world that is born out of us. If other people are being unethical, I would like to live in a world that's ethical, so then I have to look at myself. When the world is at war, I want to live at peace. Where there's conflict, I want to live with concord. So how do I live and promote concord coming out of me, rather than participating in the conflicts in the world?