On Pilgrimage and the Spiritual Imagination

On Pilgrimage and the Spiritual Imagination  

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Martin Buber 

Our lives are a perennial pilgrimage in search of lost betweens. But a pilgrimage that has a beginning and an end is one that has never begun and has already ended. A Zen story tells of a traveller needing to cross the river. He asked a person on the other shore where could he find a boat to take him across? The person on the other shore asked why he wanted to cross the river? The traveller replied that he needed to get to the other shore. The reply came: But you already are on the other shore! Pilgrimage can be understood not as traveling from one place to the next, but as the understanding that we already are in that place. Pilgrimage is understanding. But we also know that not every “here” is here, and not every “now” is now. The pilgrimage to the here and now is not a call for complacency, it is a call for the transformation of this shore in the image and likeness of the other shore. We make both shores into one and the same and at that moment the true “here and now” will no longer be a delusion but a real presentness. The institution of pilgrimage is one of the central practices of most religions. For institutional religions the practice of pilgrimage underscores a number of important functions: It establishes a central geographical point of reference for the imparting of authority, much as a capital city does for nation-states. Pilgrimage also reinforces the idea of the immanent sacredness of particular sites and the recognized holiness of declared masters and religious leaders. The exercise of control over spaces deemed as inherently sacred is one of the essential tools for the enforcement of the power vested on the hierarchical structures of religious institutions. 

From a dialogical perspective there are no sites that are inherently sacred or secular, for sacredness is an attribute we bestow to sites or persons. The fundamental truth is to understand that we bestow sacredness through our deeds of embrace, and we desecrate through our deeds of indifference. Pilgrimage sites and temples are places where the community gathers to celebrate and worship, and in that sense, they serve an important sociological and cultural role, but to the extent that these sites function in the context of a theological officialdom, rather than sites of community they become sites of control. Religious pilgrimage, whether to visit sacred sites or meet holy masters, as conventionally practiced, should not be considered genuine spiritual travel. Borrowing a concept from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, conventional petitional pilgrimage is a journey in search of “spiritual materialism.” We go on pilgrimage hoping to find a reward, however we define the form and the content of that reward, but we must first believe in the religious significance of the site and in the power of the master before we depart, therefore, as we journey to our destinations we carry with us a baggage filled of preexisting beliefs, and in this sense, it is not strange to return home feeling fully satisfied. This goes to the issue of the circularity of religious beliefs: in the context of religion, believing is seeing. What the mystic takes from his experiences is the same that he brings in, only now he feels a compelling emotional response. What she carried with her, she brings back with her, nothing more and nothing less, for that which we predicate is that which we find. 

This is the difference between the mystic and the poet. The poet already has that which the mystic goes out looking for. “Goes out,” because even if it is toward the within that he goes, the God of the theist is outside of the realm of nature. Rumi the poet was committed to a theistic religious interpretation of God, and as he walked in the fields with His beloved, and as the case is with all mystics, he did not discover the presence, he believed it was there, and therefore he found it. In the religious mind, first comes the belief, then comes the confirmation. Sometimes it is said that we go on pilgrimage not to reach any particular site or master, but to find our own selves in the process. But aren’t our own selves that we carry with us for the journey? If we hope to return with a new-self, or as born again, we miss the essential point that a true pilgrimage does not take us anywhere outside of our own selves. The new we hope to find is not somewhere else: we pilgrim to the within by going to the in-between. A true pilgrim knows not what she might find, as there is no site she must reach, nor a master to sit by his feet. In true pilgrimage the destination is of no consequence. This was explained by Dogen when he wrote: “Do not ask me where I am going, as I travel in this limitless world, where every step I take is my home.” Similarly Thich Nhat Hanh said “There is no way home, home is the way,” therefore, in which direction we walk, and which destination we are hoping to reach, are of no consequence. Hanh said that every step we take is peace, but we need to remember that peace and home are every step only when we are able to forgo the wrong idea that pilgrimage must always be to a predetermined somewhere. 

As Buber said: “all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” For the pilgrim there is only one primordial journey from which all others derive: How to find the path to find our lost betweens? If one has found the answer and his pilgrimage has ended, it can only mean that the primordial question has eluded him. It is for this reason precisely that we were offered the insight to kill the Buddha if we 239 meet him on the road, for we must reject the giver of answers! We must embrace the pilgrim who holds our hands and walks together with us, not the one who holds our hands to take us on his own way. In life there is nothing easier than finding answers, nothing more dispiriting. The poet Machado taught us that life is like a pilgrimage over the waters of the sea, and the traces we leave behind are carved in the foamy bubbles of the waves: no one can follow us, as we cannot follow anyone, except, perhaps, for the dreams we are yet to dream. 

Think of this: if in the course of your pilgrimage you suddenly realize that you have found the answer, and signs and miracles and all sorts of bells and whistles eagerly proclaim that your time has come to stop your journey and bow to the answer, this will probably be the most propitious time for you to take your stick in your hand and turn the other way. If we ever did pause it should be to reflect on the primordial question, not on the pretender-answer. We are sustained by faith and failed by beliefs, but we should not bow, for we cannot walk and bow at the same time. Nothing sadder in life than the sight of a pilgrim walking back. A pilgrimage ended is a thought we should never speak. A true pilgrim is one who comes from some place, not one who goes to some place. True Pilgrims don’t go anywhere, the only come from somewhere. But don’t ever ask a pilgrim where she came from: if lucky, she comes from where she is now. There is no joy like that of a pilgrim in the fields. No sadness like returning with your hands full. In Zen they say: “Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed, that is human.” To have a place of origin and to learn well how to come from it is the pilgrim’s most beautiful poem. All our lives we long to come from some place, but there is no delusion greater than the memories of places past, or the memory of places future. Pilgrims have no knowledge of future destinations, they only have colors and smells and tastes and melodies, albeit vague, of those places they came from. True pilgrims have no illusions and no saviors, all they own are one or two memories, and they’re very jealous about holding on to them. Let us celebrate the fact that the pilgrim only finds on the road that which he remembers from home. 

True pilgrims walk on earth for they long for her touch. The touch of the earth, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, is the only miracle a pilgrim will encounter in his journey. The journey of life is to have a destination, but the pilgrimage of life is to have an origin. Our pilgrimage is to return to our lost betweens, but I know this well: to be a pilgrim one must have a place of birth, for otherwise, where will our place of death be? Some believe that every road had a road maker, but a pilgrim knows otherwise. As Machado the poet said, we make the road as we walk. Every maker had a maker before him, but the road is its own maker. Some believe that there is order on the road but chaos in the journey. The pilgrim knows otherwise: chaos is order and order is chaos. And something else, very important: a true pilgrim knows that he will never return to his place of birth, and that is true regardless of how many times he actually does. This we must repeat: a pilgrim who comes from no place has no right to call himself a pilgrim, and a pilgrim that starts on his way back it is simply because he has decided that this was her best time to die. Zen poet Dogen disapproved of journeys. He said: “if you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?” There are no places to go or times to do it, for as Dogen told us, our true pilgrimage is to be here right now. If we do that, we will be perennial pilgrims. 

True pilgrims go not toward the within, not towards the without, they go toward the between, for it is his lost-betweens a pilgrim is searching for, and the only path to follow to find the lost betweens is to go toward the between. In other words, there is no path to the between, the between is the path. Dogen told us to look at pilgrimage not from within the place we have locked ourselves in, nor from the outside where we have locked ourselves out, but essentially, and literally, from nowhere: There is nowhere we need to be, “This is it,” and we already are “here and now.” Why walk in or out through the open door if we already are on the other side? Andre Breton said: “Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.” Nothing is It, all is Thou. Why search for love elsewhere if we are always only surrounded by it? This is true, but let us not make that one mistake our perennial pilgrimage depends on: Sometimes, to be here and now, we must first bake a few pieces of unleavened bread and leave promptly at dawn. Adam and Eve were not expelled from paradise, they walked out on pilgrimage. That was the original pilgrimage, and since then we are all, like them, in search of lost betweens. Why search for lost betweens we might ask? Why not other betweens? There is an improbable reason for this: The original pilgrimage, the one we have lost, was the first act of liberation of our spiritual imaginations. Our initial betweens created the Gods, the Buddhas, our spirits, our prophecies and our poetries, for those were moments of inception of deep poetic insights. What we created at those times and places, that which we reveled to ourselves, was desperately trying to find a name. We named it God, or Buddha, or spirit or poetry. What did those moments of inception consist of? We stood in the between of an I and a Thou. 

No nameless moment was ever named from any insight other than the will to say Thou to a being and the grace of saying it again.