Thoughts On Pilgrimage

[camerata]

Since the topic doesn't come up often in this forum, here are my impressions of doing a pilgrimage.

The Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage covers 33 temples dedicated to Kannon in Western Japan. Kannon is the Japanese name for the Bodhisattva Avalokitasvara, or Bodhisattva of Compassion, one of whose 33 manifestations (the only female one) corresponds to the Chinese Kuan-yin and Thai Kuan-im.

The pilgrimage covers a huge area including the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto, plus the Yamato Plain, but almost nothing is left of the original pilgrim's trail. I got onto the pilgrimage a few years ago because a couple of the most picturesque temples are near Kyoto, and then I started visiting 2-3 temples on each visit.

This particular pilgrimage route dates from the 11th Century, but many of the temples were pilgrimages in their own right beforehand and some date back to the 7th Century. Basically, it's a "miracle pilgrimage," and each temple is associated with a miracle related to Kannon. A typical pilgrimage 1,000 years ago was only undertaken by the aristocracy and involved serious purification and fasting before and during the trip. Women couldn't do a pilgrimage if they were menstruating. The trip would take days or weeks on mountain paths in a bumpy ox-cart, culminating in days and nights of sutra reading and devotions at the temple.

Actually, that's what I wanted to experience - a hike through the mountains and a night at a temple, like it was in the old days. But that's not the way it is now. So it started out as a kind of cultural investigation, with me going through the motions but not really getting anywhere. In retrospect, it was a mistake to start with the easily reached temples near Kyoto and not to learn more about Japanese Buddhism, because I didn't get a sense of the spiritual side of the pilgrimage.

The basic procedure at each temple is you take your pilgrim's book to the nokyo (pilgrim's office) and get it inscribed and stamped. Then you find the hall with the Kannon image, throw some money in the donation box, ring the bell (actually a kind of gong that you strike with a vertical rope) and say a prayer. Some of the more popular temples have a leaflet in English but often there are no signs or anything in English, and no one who speaks English.

Serious pilgrims wear the pilgrim garb of white clothes and wear bells (either to frighten away bears/snakes or as a reminder of impermanence, depending on your source). Really serious pilgrims will wear a conical straw hat and carry a staff. But I suspect the hat and staff are pretty inconvenient. Serious pilgrims don't use a pilgrim’s book, they buy an expensive wall-hanging (opaque paper like tracing paper) with a picture of Kannon in the centre. The temple stamps go around the outside of the picture and the temple provides hairdryers to dry the ink. They look beautiful but are a hassle to carry around.

A lot of pilgrims are in their 60s and travel on a tour bus. That way the route can be done quicker and the temples visited in their proper order. Because of this, a number of temples have hideous parking lots outside the main gate and process pilgrims in conveyor-belt fashion. Not all temples have their main image on display, so at times there is nothing much to see.

I didn't really "get it" until I started on the harder temples a couple of years ago. I chose a sunny day in the cherry-blossom season and did the one-hour climb up to Kami Daigo-ji, east of Kyoto. There wasn't much at the top - boring buildings and no image - but the climb up through the forest was pretty exhilarating and for the first time the visit to the temple seemed like more than just a visit to a temple.

By that time I had read John Blofeld's book about Kuan-Yin and a number of others. Since I knew more about the symbolism involved, I started lighting three candles at the temples. With the help of the tourist office, I was able to get detailed schedules of trains and buses to the really remote mountain temples and find them without too much trouble. This is where you really get a sense of what the pilgrimage is about. The remote temples usually have an old pilgrim's path (or hundreds of steps) cut through the forest up the mountain, and this is the best part. Some of them have spectacular views from the top too.

Although most Japanese do the pilgrimage to make merit and possibly to ask Kannon for help with some problem or other, it seems more about "purifying the mind" to me. A long walk through a forest is pretty calming and uplifting in general. If it's done for a spiritual purpose, arriving at the destination has a strong effect on the mind - you feel energized and connected with nature.

At the temples, I found that some of the images had a similar effect. The bigger the image, the stronger the effect. The older the image, the deeper the connection with all the pilgrims who have worshipped it down through the centuries. Some of the images are over 500 years old and were carved by famous monks or sculptors, so there is an additional connection with its creator. Since most of the temples are Shingon, the majority of the Kannon images are in the esoteric, Indian style, with multiple arms or heads. The most common type has six arms, one to save beings in each of the six realms.

According to my books on Japanese Buddhism, the various Mahayana "deities" are the personification of either a principle or a quality. And Kannon is the personification of the human ability to feel compassion. But I found it felt more natural to consider the images an aid to Buddhanussati - contemplation of the Buddha's virtues. This also works well with the images of Yakushi (Skt. Bhaisajyaguru - the Medicine Buddha) sometimes seen in the temples because, as Buddhadasa points out in one of his books, "the Buddha is the healer of our spiritual disease." So you don't have to be a Mahayana Buddhist to benefit from a Mahayana pilgrimage.

One of the temples west of Kyoto is nicknamed Neuralgia Temple because praying at the Kannon-do and bathing in the mineral baths there are said to cure neuralgia (the water contains calcium, which is an anti-spasmodic). This was the only temple I did any real praying at, since it's well known that auto-suggestion can have an effect on the nervous system. About a year later my trigeminal neuralgia gradually faded away and hasn't come back for 27 months, but it's a condition that tends to come and go (and has no known cure other than radical surgery) so it's too early to be sure of anything yet.

Many temples in Japan also have an image of Binzuru outside and people rub the image in the places where they have an ailment in the hope of being cured. I tried this too since it's just another form of auto-suggestion. Binzuru is none other than the Buddha's disciple Pindola (imported from Theravadin Buddhism) and his image is placed outside the temples because of his reputation for occult powers and the ability to fly through the air, as recounted in the Vinaya.

A few of the temples have pilgrim lodgings but you can forget it unless you're Japanese. For that experience I went to Mount Koya, where there are nine temples that take gaijin (but not "ultra-rightists or yakuza!") and which is a major pilgrimage destination in its own right. I went up there by cable car but there must also be a footpath because I saw the end of it at the top of the mountain with a sign that said "Beware of bears." The temple I stayed at was right at the edge of the forest and you get vegetarian food served in your room by the monks. The rooms have sliding wooden doors with no locks and of course you sleep on a futon. It is bitterly cold at night and the tap water freezes your fingers in the morning.

The morning service at 6am is just praying for ancestors and lighting some incense. The chanting is pretty hypnotic but otherwise it's not that inspiring. I was hobbling around with a recently sprained ankle and on the first night I decided to check the location of the prayer hall so I would find it while half-asleep in the morning. The place was completely dark and I managed to stub the toe of my sprained ankle on a beam sticking out of the floor. Hearing a loud thud, a monk rushed out of the office and found me sitting in the dark, holding my foot and going: "ffffff.... shhhh...."

Walking up to Kukai's tomb through the towering cryptomeria and ancient graves takes about 20 minutes but you can't get away from the noisy tour groups. Even when you can't see them, the noise really carries through the forest. But on one visit in September, a typhoon was coming. I went out in the rain and tried walking meditation up and down the path. There was no one else around and the gullies beside the path had turned into streams, so it turned out to be an unusual experience. The typhoon hit the mountain that night and I found out the hard way that sliding wooden doors rattle a lot in the wind.

Although it's neat staying in an old temple (some of the temple lodgings on the mountain are fairly modern), I don't know whether Mount Koya really offers much of the pilgrimage experience to a foreigner since there's no walking involved in getting there. You can't really join in the chanting at the temple and the one I stayed at had no image on display. You can go around the Hall of Mirrors at the Okuno-in and pay your respects at Kukai's tomb, though. Generally, the language barrier means you are left to your own devices in Japanese temples and need to be well prepared before you arrive.

I must say people in Japan are always friendly though. I've had people give me cookies on the pilgrimage trails and one woman I asked directions from on a country road gave me a lift in her car. A group of pilgrims and their priest-guide at a remote mountain temple saw me on my own and insisted I join their group photograph on the temple steps. They all waved to me when I headed back down the mountain and again an hour later when they passed me in their tour bus. This is another aspect of pilgrimage - a spiritual version of the cameraderie of the road. In the end I found there's a lot more to a pilgrimage than just getting a book stamped, "worshipping" images or making merit. Ultimately, a pilgrimage is what you make of it.