Planning Our Saigoku Walking Pilgrimage In Japan, and Flying to Take a Walk In Taiwan
Planning Our Saigoku Walking Pilgrimage In Japan, and Flying to Take a Walk In Taiwan
I wish you a wonderful Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
May the year 2020 be the very best year of your life!
May you bring forth deliberately and consciously your Divine Higher Self, and let the Mighty I AM Presence within you, create a peaceful and happy year in your life.
it is shaping up to be a very cold winter here in Colorado, and we have started planning our next walking pilgrimage, for this spring in Japan.
We plan to walk Japan’s oldest pilgrimage, the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage.
Last year, in 2018, the Saigoku Pilgrimage celebrated being 1300 years of age.
In ancient times, pilgrims setting out on the Saigoku pilgrimage had no choice but to walk, and perhaps some used horses to help carry supplies for the long journey.
Nowadays, in modern times, I can find almost no record of anyone who has actually walked the entire pilgrimage.
About 300-400 people do this pilgrimage each year, but all who do this vast pilgrimage, that stretches across several prefectures and many mountains, do it using a form of motorized vehicles, like trains, buses and cars.
The Saigoku walking route has no trail marked. We will have to make our own way, to chart and navigate the landscape by figuring out a walking path between the designated 33 ancient temples and 3 extra Bengai temples that make up this pilgrimage route.
As we were working on mapping out this pilgrimage, our friends who live in Taiwan wrote and told us that they would soon be continuing their annual walk around Taiwan.
I have always wanted to walk a Buddhist pilgrimage around Taiwan.
One thing led to another, and tomorrow we will fly to Taipei, and after a few days of acclimating ourselves to the time zone there, we will be joining our friends on their walk down the east coast of Taiwan.
It will be our introduction to how it feels to walk around Taiwan, and hopefully it will give us some ideas on how to plan the full two months it will take to walk around the entire island, which we would like to do in the future.
As I researched visiting one temple in Taipei, I saw that there was a row of fortune tellers near the temple.
An ancient quote from a wise person was posted there, reminding people that fortune and misfortune never fall from the sky on unsuspecting people.
We are the creators and architects of our lives!
Here is what the wise man said:
“Disasters and blessings have no entry gates of their own;
They are always summoned by people.
The effects of good and evil are like shadows,
Always following their forms.”
With love and blessings,
Tali
