Walk Like a Mountain. Innen Ray Parchelo

or as instrumental, such as walking while doing nembutsu recitation. This book will take walking practices, not merely in these various ways, but as an integrated set of practices.

THIS HANDBOOK’S INTENTION: WALKING AS CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

      In a remarkable book, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religions, the socio-anthropologist, Thomas Tweed, proposes a metaphor to describe what religions are. He sets out:

      Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries. [These two] orienting metaphors are most useful for analyzing what religion is and what it does: spatial metaphors (dwelling and crossing) signal that religion is about finding a place and moving across a space, and aquatic metaphors (confluences and flows) signal that religions are not reified substances but complex processes.

      Crossing and Dwelling, Tweed, pp. 54/59

      This intriguing and deeply satisfying conceptualization resonates strongly with a book about the place of walking in one of the world’s great religious traditions, Buddhism. Space does not permit us to pursue Tweed’s metaphors further, but he is successful in providing us with a suitable metaphor for this book itself.

      We will adopt, in fact we already have adopted, this dwelling-and-crossing metaphor in two underlying ways: firstly, in conjunction with the ‘three phases’ metaphor introduced in our Preface, and the ‘chapter-map’ of our journey through Buddhist walking practices, the metaphor of crossing/dwelling enriches the journey metaphor, transforming it; and secondly, as a template for understanding the structure of any walking practice. We will see the dwelling/crossing frame can guide us in how to use the practices.

      Let’s look in a little more detailed way at how our journey will move us from dwelling to crossing and back again.

      Part 1: Preparations

       Preface: Dwelling

      We began in the known, the many rooms of and windows on our world, familiar and secure. In our meeting, The Preface, someone (myself) unexpectedly reports back with news from their travels. A question mark suddenly appears beside our calm world. A new way of being in that familiar world is proposed. The possibility of a new journey is raised, with something of how and why we might take it and what we might explore and learn. As in our usual world, this ‘travel bug’ must be scratched.

       Chapter 1: Stirrings

      We are now in the world of Shakyamuni Buddha, walking across North India, day after day, year after year. We step back from the sermons and the drama. We, who are his modern day entourage, observe his everyday life, treading dirt roads, resting in groves, finding a next meal. We step back and wonder what might this have to do with the Great Awakening. Could this to-ing and fro-ing really have nothing to do with being fully awake? Are the travels of Shakyamuni just filler, something to do around the real practices? In what ways has our 2500 year tradition formulated walking practices which we can employ on the Dharma Path? We will leave our comfortable dwelling and take to that road to join our Sangha-companions in their walk.

       Chapter 2: Imaginings

      A strange and compelling vision takes shape in our hearts and now our bodies. We begin to feel, in our bodies, the movement onto the highway. We recognize we are arranging our bodies for travel, and we need to remember the efficiencies of posture, step and breath. Although we may be walking alone, we remind ourselves that each step is dogyo ninin, two walking together. Who, we wonder, will be our silent companions? In whose steps are we following?

       Chapter 3: Threshold – Foot and Step

      With a deepened sense of how we ought arrange our bodies, before we set off, we check our most important equipment for the journey – our own body. Napoleon’s army may have marched ‘on their bellies’, we will have to rely on ankle, foot, toes. Our strength will be our posture and breath. We will need to understand these intimately and we will use the lenses of both modern Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine to inform our understanding. We will consider this journey as an exercise in bio-mechanics, and of ki-energy flow – one which takes place at the margin between earth and sky.

       Chapter 4: Threshold – Preparations

      Our determination set, having let go of habits and routines, we must gather around us the necessities of the road. We check equipment, pack knapsacks, refit boots with stout new laces. We consider our mentors –centuries of pilgrims, monks circling stupas, super-athletes coursing up and down a sacred mountain. They will recommend what we might need on our journey –can we really get by with only a begging bowl and a staff? We are struck by Jizo, the Eternal Pilgrim, trudging through the Six Realms of Conditioned Existence, his simplicity – the pilgrim’s robes and his shakujo, the sturdy staff which supports his pace and whose jangling rings announce to all beings that the Dharma-messenger is approaching.

      Some of us wonder whether we are fit for this journey. We wonder about old bones, injuries or even more permanent disabilities. Will these force us to stay behind. What can our predecessors advise?

      Part II: Journeys

       Chapter 5: Journey - First Steps

      Our destination clear, all preparations made and a trusted map in hand, we take the first steps away from our daily lives and towards an adventure, a learning and, with luck, a transformation. As those who join the road do, we ponder the practice habits we know. Most of us turn to the archetype, the cross-legged monk, the seated Bodhisattvas and the Buddha, in repose on a lotus throne. Some may have tried the walks that divide rounds of sitting practice, some may understand how walking is the continuation of the practices of sitting. We frame our questions, we engage our curiosity, we have formed our intention for the road. Now on the road, we begin with our reliable and familiar practices.

      Walking Practice 1: Kinhin and Tai Chi

      Most styles of Buddhist practice include some form of formalized walking practice. The most common is kinhin, ‘just walking’. It is characterized as the practice form used to vary periods of sustained sitting practice. It has its own posture and can be done in a variety of paces, from glacially slow to a near sprint. Since it is usually twinned with sitting, it is done indoors, contained within the actual sitting space. Others, most famously Thich Nhat Hahn, have promoted a moderately paced walk out of doors. His form breaks the traditional pattern of a line of practitioners. Video of him leading a walking practice resembles a swarm or wave moving across the landscape, with the Master Thay clutching one or two children’s hands.

      Normally, the kinhin line circles the outer edge of the practice room or, for smaller groups or individuals, a 15-20 pace extended loop, down and back the space.

      When the Dharma entered China, it entered the territory of Taoist masters. Over the centuries, the two flowed in and through each other, leaving invisible links and overlaps. Like roads built over roads built over roads, no one can say what the substance of the final road may be. We pause to meet walking Tai Chi, a unique and companionable form of walking whose meticulousness and rhythm can teach us a new side to our walking.

       Chapter 6: Journey 2 – Crossing

      Evening the pace, feeling the freedom from former ways, we slip into the walking of our ancestors, all those monks who wove back and forth across the sandy trails between a deer park, a king’s palace and a wealthy man’s garden. Readily we come to appreciate the delights and demands of a meal on the trail. We are now immersed in a new life.

       Walking Practice 2: Walking as Daily Life

      Anyone who has passed a day at a Dharma centre will have engaged in samu practice. This term from Japanese Buddhism will have parallels in other countries. It refers to all the day-to-day duties a monk or retreatant undertakes to contribute to the Sangha. It is almost a stereotype of samu to be sweeping floors or cutting wood. The variations are as many as tasks in place. Virtually all of these