In the high mountains of the Himalayans I meet older men who walk from temple village to temple village. They themselves say they are on a pilgrimage. “I complete my worldly duties,” said an erudite father-turned-yogi. “Now I seek.” The Aborigine call it a “walkabout,” where there isn’t a destination per say. You are said to keep walking until you are whole again. Muslims and Indians call it a pilgrimage, and they are everyone, sometimes in colorful packs along train platforms, heading to a sacred location that symbolizes spiritual wholeness.
Pilgrimage usually calls for a journey to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heroes, or to a natural setting imbued with spiritual power, or to a revered temple to seek counsel. To people the world over, pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise, an act of devotion to find a source of healing, a journey of risk and renewal, crossing boundaries literal and metaphoric, touching the land and feeling the earth beneath your feet. It’s process of regeneration and purification. The journey is almost always difficult, or it wouldn’t be.
Westerns have to create these metaphors for themselves. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going,” I’ve heard. Contradictions. You have to lose yourself in order to find it; solitude refines love; the road is the destination; yield to receive; be open to what comes your way.
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