Day 62 - Walking Along The Nichinan Coast, and Reflections About Our True Nature, The Kyushu 108 Temple Pilgrimage, Japan

 

Day 62 - Walking Along The Nichinan Coast, and Reflections About Our True Nature, The Kyushu 108 Temple Pilgrimage, Japan

Today we returned to Aoshima in order to walk the part of the Nichinan coast that we did yesterday by bus.

In Aoshima, we sat again in the surfers cafe and ate Açaí bowls.

In our hotel this morning, we had made ourselves a simple breakfast of a baguette with cucumbers and cheese, but we couldn’t resist having these smoothie bowls, perhaps for the last time on this pilgrimage. 

The landscape we walked through was tropical, with palm trees swaying gently in the breeze and ferns that you see growing in places that do not get many freezing nights.

One of the plants we saw growing in great abundance is similar to the hibiscus plant, except that it grows hundreds of small red flowers.

When I was a kid on my way to school, I used to pluck some of the flowers and suck on the sweet nectar at the end.

It tasted like honey.

I haven’t seen this plant for years, as it doesn’t seem to be a cultivated plant, instead growing wild in environments that are suitable for it.

My biggest concern as a child foraging in the woods was to make sure that I didn’t pick a flower that had a bee inside it, or a flower that had little ants in it.

The sweet nectar was beloved by many little creatures.

For nostalgic reasons, I plucked a red flower and sucked the end of it, just to see if it still tasted like honey to my adult taste buds.

Indeed it did.

A flood of childhood memories poured into me with that one sweet taste.

We had sidewalks almost the whole way, which were mostly designed for bicycle use, not for walkers.

Luckily, we had the sidewalks all to ourselves as no one was cycling on the day we walked.

The only other person who passed us by, was a runner who seemed to be an elderly man in perfect physical shape.

We reached the Horikiri Pass, and had beautiful views over the cliffs of the azure sea and the rocky serrated shoreline. 

In the morning before our walk, I researched where we could eat lunch.

There were a few options for lunch along the way.

There was a Soba and Udon place, but those can be found almost everywhere on our walks.

The best choice for a beach lunch seemed to be a tiny restaurant by a tiny fishing port, that served swordfish burgers and fries.

I was thinking that this was the ultimate surfers diet, a good smoothie bowl for breakfast and a delicious fresh fish burger for lunch.

It was almost too good to be true in rural Japan, so steeped in tradition that the only variation from Japanese food is a pasta or pizza.

The little restaurant had three small tables, one occupied by a young couple with a baby.

The owner is also the chef and server.

He made us a fish burger so delicious, I almost had tears of joy in my eyes.

I felt such contentment wash over me, and I felt so surprised by it.

It was so unfamiliar for me to feel my body react to something so simple as a lunch, with such a wave of contentment.

After all, delicious as it was, it was just a lunch…

It reminded me of another time in the past, when my body had an uncontrollable reaction that was separated from my reasonable mind.

It was in New Delhi, in a busy market, where a man I couldn’t even see groped my breast and squeezed it.

Jules was by my side, and the man disappeared quickly into the crowd.

I felt such rage rising inside, that was not really how I felt mentally.

So what, I reasoned with myself, a breast is just another body part, no different from a knee, an elbow or an ear…

But the fact was that the rage I felt, was beyond my reasonable mind.

I felt so hurt despite myself, maybe because the groping man intended to humiliate me, make me feel less whole and more like a sexual object that he could manipulate.

My instinctive reaction of rage really surprised me.

When we finished the lunch, the chef told us that the convenience store next door was the last one until we reached Udo Shrine, where we planned to end our walk today.

He also said that cars drive fast along the coast, and that we should be careful when we no longer have sidewalks to walk on.

It was a beautiful sunny day, not too windy and not too warm.

The scenery along the road continued to be beautiful, devoid of dilapidated factories and closed shops.

As we walked, I reflected about the seemingly separated body-self, that experiences contentment or rage, without my agreement.

Who is this self and who am I…

Which one of us has control and which is the real self…

How can I experience my Higher Self, when I don’t even understand the forces operating inside me…

The Buddha said that we make some fundamental cognitive errors, about who we are.

This dictates what we experience and causes our suffering. 

The whole Buddhist path is about getting away from who and where we THINK we are, to who and where we REALLY are.

The path we walk on through the world of dreams, is full of clouds, created by our judgments, imagination, preconceived concepts and ideas.

We don’t see ourselves and the world as we really are, but as we imagine and understand it to be.

Those clouds have been there for so long, that have gotten used to them. 

In fact, we like them and thus they stay in place. 

They help us define our reality and make us feel safe, while the vast brilliance of the Light, the endless potentiality of power and the openness of the unknown sky, seem threatening to the little ego self. 

So we keep the clouds obscuring the sky and they become part of our universe, and are not easy to let go of.

Yes, said the Buddha. 

Since we are creating this world and all its drama and tragedy ourselves, we have the power to free ourselves from it. 

We can relax the struggle. 

We can renounce our damaging, false sense of self. 

We can cultivate all that is good in us. 

We can open our minds and hearts to others. 

We can see reality clearly and live in harmony with it. 

We can be who we are really are. 

Our little self is born out of our ignorance of our Divine True Self.

To use the Biblical terminology, God created us in Her own image and we remain as gods, perfect, eternal and all powerful omnipotent beings, despite our obscurations of the Truth.

In other words, we are Divine beings living in Heaven, even here on Earth, although we roam the finite earth believing ourselves to be mere mortal beings and subject to war, famine, weather, circumstances, suffering, sickness and death.

But our true nature is unchangeable, real and always present. 

Our enlightened nature, our natural wisdom and our true loving heart, are like the sun. 

It’s always there, and it is always shining.

The sun’s rays may not reach every corner of the earth, because local conditions obscure the sun, but the sun is still shining.

We stopped walking around the time where the last bus to Nango was coming.

It was just before dark and we didn’t want to arrive at the hotel and climb up the mountain it is located on, in the dark.

But the bus was late, so we missed the connecting bus to Nango, and had to take the train instead.

We arrived in Nango in the dark, so we walked over to the taxi stand and took a taxi to the hotel.

At the hotel, we asked if it were possible to check out a day early, without being charged for the extra night.

The clerk checked our reservation and saw that we hadn’t yet paid, so he agreed.

We decided to do that because we had already visited the last temple in the area, and we had to continue walking north of Miyazaki City.

The one car train that connects this southern cape is very slow, and it takes almost two hours just to get to Miyazaki.

It would be a better use of our time if we were staying north of here.

We loved the hotel and the outdoor hot springs over the sea, but we were happy to be going north tomorrow.

With love and light,

Tali

Stats: 23,077 steps 

Today’s walk: 16 km 

Kilometers walked to date: 1062.5 km

Temples visited: none