Who Aren't You?

If anyone ever tells you that someone isn't a henro just because they walked the henro trail for the simple enjoyment of walking and didn't spend days on end in introspection, tell them to get a life. Tell them to mind their own business. Tell them to judge themselves, and to leave others lives to the care of those other people.

What nonsense to think that one person has the right to use his standards of what a henro ought to be to judge another person's actions. Poppycock! If someone even starts down this road with you, cut them off and tell them you don't want to hear it. Tell them that's not a road you have any intention of following. That the scenery along that road is of no interest to you.

Then, very slowly, and with as much patience as you can, try and get them to see it from another point of view. A henro is anyone who, for whatever reason, has chosen to spend some amount of time on all, or part of, the henro trail. If you walk all of it, you're a henro. If you walk from temple one to temple two and stop there, you were a henro for the amount of time it took to visit temple one, go to temple two, and visit there. If you travel on foot you're a henro. If you use a bicycle you're a henro. If you use a car, motorbike, taxi, bus, helicopter, or any other form of transportation — you are a henro. If you spend any amount of time on the henro trail you are a henro.

And why is that? Because the henro isn't the egoic person with two smelly feet laced inside a pair of boots, the person called Dave, or Fred, or Mary, or Sue, it's Life itself, using that person as a vehicle to get around. And since Life currently manifests itself through over six billion different human forms, each with its own distinct egoic filtering system, of course each time it walks the henro trail, it will appear to do so with different motives, different expectations, different experiences, different outcomes.

However, there is only one henro. Life. Life living through you, me, Fred, Mary, Sue, and all of the other people out there on the trail. It's not the egoic person who chose to do the walk. Life is using that person as another vehicle to work its way around the henro trail. Even if it's doing nothing more than simply enjoying the scenery, enjoying meeting people, enjoying drinking beer and telling stories at the minshuku each night, life is just doing what it does — living. And at that particular time, it happens to be doing it on the henro trail.

Looking at life through through your ego's eyes you separate yourself from everyone and everything else. Letting Life look at life through it's own eyes, the ones that happen to be located in your head, you would see that you aren't separate from others. You couldn't be separate from others. If you ever took the time to look into the eyes of someone else, deeply and with no thoughts, you'd be surprised to see that it was only you (i.e., Life) looking back at you smiling. As if you were looking in a mirror. But it shouldn't surprise you because you are Life, the other person is Life, everyone is nothing more, or less, than Life; each of us is nothing less than everything, manifesting in a different human body.

So, if one person spends all of her time on the henro trail in deep introspection, examining who and what she is, and someone else spends all of his time on the henro trail drinking beer and whooping it up ... what's the difference? Life is just doing what it needs to do at the time it needs doing and in the way it needs doing. But, in each case, Life is still the henro.

No, don't fall for those stories from people who try to say one henro is better than another because they follow a certain prescribed ritual on the trail. When you hear it, just tell yourself to shut up, plant your behind on your zafu, and let Life explain yourself to you. As many times as it takes to hear the message.

(...another point of view...)