Imperfect Pilgrimage

This weekend i'll start reading Lisa Dempster's book Neon Pilgrim, about her walk around the Shikoku henro trail. This isn't a review of the book (i'll write something after i read it), but while flipping through its pages this morning i noticed something very interesting.

As you walk the henro trail, you follow, for the most part, the circumference of the island; you are essentially walking in a circle. As Lisa nears the last temple and the end of her walk, she finds that she must make a decision — should she walk from Temple 88 back to Temple 1, in order to complete the circle, or simply stop there because at that point she had visited all the requisite temples.

What to do? Close the circle or call it quits? According to her book she asked several Japanese henro (pilgrims) what they would do and they told her not to close the circle, citing several reasons, including: there's no precedent for it; doing so is a modern invention; and, doing so would be too perfect and the Japanese value imperfection.

There may have been more reasons, but those are the one's i saw as i skimmed the pages. I'll find out more when i read the book cover to cover. In the end, Lisa listened to these opinions and did not complete the circle.

I want to take exception to all of those reasons, while at the same time admitting that all i am doing is offering my opinion and these are of no more worth than those she received on the trail. But, these are the values that are embedded in my web site about the trail.

Precedent & Modern Inventions
Who knows what the precedent is? The pilgrimage has, since its inception, been changing and evolving. Contrary to legend, Kūkai never walked the entire pilgrimage. Contrary to legend, Kūkai didn't found the temples. The pilgrimage didn't even exist in its present form during Kūkai's lifetime. It started as a few individual pilgrimages to groups of local temples that were then connected into longer and longer segments by wandering ascetics traveling the island of Kūkai's birth after he had passed away.

Over the centuries, and even in our lifetime, temples affiliated with the pilgrimage have changed. Others have changed location. The trails change all the time as "trails" disappear and henro are forced to walk on roads, and as other, new, trails spring back to life.

Originally this was a walking pilgrimage. It has since become a predominately bus pilgrimage. Of the 300,000, or so, henro who do this pilgrimage each year only about 5,000 walk. (Or so i have read on the internet)

The point is, this henro trail is a living, changing, evolving trail. It changes continually, albeit slowly. You can't claim some never changing precedent as "the" henro trail. It just won't work.

Imperfect Circles
As you walk the henro trail, you walk through each of the four prefectures on the island. The prefectures, since the beginnings of the pilgrimage, have been called, in the order you typically walk them, the Dōjō (Training ground) of:

       Awakening Faith/Resolution
       Ascetic Practice
       Enlightenment
       Nirvana

This is a Buddhist pilgrimage and for those who walk it as a pilgrimage, as opposed to simply a hike in the Japanese countryside, your journey around the henro trail is a journey of spiritual growth and development. No Buddhist would tell you that your spiritual journey ends with Nirvana. It doesn't; it continues endlessly as you take that spiritual attainment back into your everyday life and continue your practice, with increased resolution and faith, in order to deepen your enlightenment. Like the pilgrimage on Shikoku Island, Buddhist practice is a never ending circle and never ending process. As you progress and grow you simply enmesh that growth into your everyday, imperfect life and continue the training. Living is training, or, conversely, training is living.

But the circle does end, you say, when the henro dies. Right? No. Again, according to the Buddhists, there is no end. The Wheel Of Life is the best known depiction of this pilgrimage we call life, and it depicts our journey as ..... a circle. Complete and perfectly round. Yep, when you get to the end at Death & Dying you move right back to where you started and begin the process all over again; continuing the circular pilgrimage until you figure out what the Wheel is all about and how to stop the process, which you do as you work whole-heartedly through the four-step process of Awakening Faith/Resolution, Ascetic Practice, Enlightenment, Nirvana, continuing faith, continuing practice, deeper enlightenment, deeper understanding of nirvana, even more faith, even more ... (you get the picture).

The point is, to suggest that it is better to intentionally break the circle of a Buddhist pilgrimage simply because you see no precedent for completing it, tells me that you don't understand the inherent importance of the Buddhist circle in the first place. You are swimming on the surface of life and neglecting to take that occasional dive to the depths, where the real value lies.

Imperfect Perfection
Yes, it is true that Japanese aesthetics values the symbolism of the imperfections inherent in our existence.

Japanese aesthetics tries to show the imperfections inherent in all aspects of our existence in almost all of their arts. In gardens, groups of items are laid out in odd numbers instead of even, or one object is intentionally offset to disrupt any symmetry; In art, some small part of the art piece is left intentionally incomplete, or an intentional imperfection is introduced; etc.

If you just stop at that superficial understanding, however, i think you are missing the point the aesthetic is trying to make. No gardener or artist would say that their work was imperfect or incomplete. They would say that it is complete, it is perfect, because it includes that imperfection. Life is only complete when you accept the imperfections inherent in everything. When you fight and try to deny these imperfections, you will always have a hole in your life that you can't fill; you must accept them, learn to live with them, learn to work with them, if you want to see the perfection that is life.

The point is, it's not the imperfections intentionally introduced to gardens and art works that should stand out as the supreme value. That value appears when you begin to see the perfection that only comes to the work as a whole when those imperfections are included. The perfection is the value, the imperfection is the currency used to achieve it. Likewise, life introduces countless imperfections in your pilgrimage as you walk from temple to temple. However, the great value of what you are doing comes when you accept those imperfections as an inevitable part of the perfection of the whole picture; of closing the circle, and walking all the way around the island. By not stopping before returning to the beginning.


So, back to the henro trail. In my opinion, if this is just a "hike," stop at Temple 88, no problem. You've seen what you have come to see. If, however, you intend to sell yourself as someone who has walked the pilgrimage (and this is not directed at Lisa, but to all henro), then your henro is incomplete until you close the circle and make the journey from Temple 88 back to Temple 1. Until then, you may have come to some realizations, but they are of no use until you make that symbolic return to where you started and then find a way to incorporate those realizations into the life you brought to the island and that you will take home with you when you are finished.