The Final Days: Part Final

In the actual last chapter, I get 2 parting gifts from the pilgrimage.

So I was feeling pretty good. Strolling down the road, whistling a tune like Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. I got to temple #6, Anrakuji, where things started to go haywire on the first day. I bowed at the temple entrance like I had done almost a hundred times, went to wash my hands and mouth at the sacred fountain, and marched over to the main temple to offer my prayers. But then I noticed something to my side.

There was a huge Japanese garden, with a pond and fishes and everything! In my haste and agony on the first day, I didn't even notice it. I walked from path to path, leaping from rock to rock, said hi to a funny little girl and her grandpa feeding the koi fish. You know, this probably isn't the only thing I missed. I had been in such a mad rush to complete the pilgrimage, marching hard to knock out my daily 30km, that I had probably bypassed all kinds of cool things like this. But at least I had noticed this garden, right now. I went to the main temple and spat out the obligatory heart sutra, then went to the Kobo Daishi shrine to offer my sincere thanks to the Original Pilgrim, or O.P. I went back to the main hall to buy a crapload of souvenirs for the people at home and chatted with the ladies working the desk. "How was your time in Japan?" they asked. "I loved it," I sincerely answered. As thanks for my massive purchase, they gave me an astonishing gift.

It was a brocade ofuda, or thank you note, made of elaborately stiched cloth. The color of the ofuda changes depending on how many times you do the pilgrimage. 1-4 times warrants the plain white ofudas, 5-7 times gets green ones, 8-24 times is red, 25-49 times is silver, and 50 to 99 times is gold. If you do the pilgrimage 100 times or more, you gain the privilege of giving brocade ofudas to those who offer you assistance. This was one of those brocade ofudas. "Look at the back," said the temple ladies. There, on the back of the ofuda, was a stamp that said that one Chiyo Hanaoka, from Wakayama city, had completed the pilgrimage 297 times. My God. That is only possible by car, but even with a car that is an absolute minimum of 10 years doing the Shikoku pilgrimage. This is an ofuda from a person that has dedicated their life to this pilgrimage (and likely has plenty of money to finance such a quest.) It truly was an astonishing gift. I don't know if it was from the temple lady herself, or if she was giving it to me secondhand or thirdhand from the original owner, but I was speechless, so all I could say was "honto ni, arigato gozaimasu." Truly, thank you so much. "Ah, it's nothing," said the temple lady. I got on my way to temple #7, Jurakuji.

As I walked on the road, the disturbing incident with the innkeeper still weighed on my mind. Just to occupy myself, I tried reciting the heart sutra. The heart sutra is an interesting Buddhist tongue twister that is part John 3:16, part Our Father, and part psalm. I had said it at every temple for the last month and a half. But for some reason, I wanted to say a different prayer, one that was in my language, one that I knew well. So I started to say the good old Our Father. Hah, what is this, the Peanuts Christmas Special? But as I said it, something strange happened.

For the first time in my life, I meant every word of it. I paused after every line, meditating on the image that each line brought to my mind. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. The laws of Heaven, and God's ultimate plan, His strange and inscrutible plan for this world, a plan that seems to include equal parts horror and joy. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. There. That's it. That's the one. That's the key.

The key to happiness in Buddhism is to feel nothing. If you feel nothing, then nothing can truly hurt you. That simply isn't an option for me now. Not only am I unable to feel nothing, I don't WANT to feel nothing. I want to feel joy and happiness and love, but to open myself to that I will inevitably have to feel pain and rage and despair. But if I can forgive those who hurt me, then maybe there's a chance I can be a part of this world, and still be happy. People will hurt you. It is logically, statistically inevitable. So forgiveness is the key. I thought of the face of the innkeeper, twisted with anger. And when I thought about forgiveness, the word forgiveness, the concept of forgiveness, my rage at the man abated. Not completely, but significantly. And if I can forgive him, maybe I can forgive some of the others who have hurt me, who have left me with scars that will remain for the rest of my life. This is gonna take a lot of practice, because this is an entirely new concept to me. I've given lip service to forgiveness, but I had never really considered it the way I did in that moment, praying the Our Father on the other side of the planet. Kobo Daishi has shown me a lot of things in this month and a half, but this was the strangest, and most unexpected of the entire pilgrimage. All I could do, for the second time that day, was to thank God, and thank Kobo Daishi, and thank all the people back home who supported me, and thank all the people I had run into in these incredible 6 weeks. I walked on, past temple #7, which was closed, and finally got to the part of the trail I missed on that first day. I made my way through the rice fields, past a mother and her two kids, and followed the yellow signs back to the Okuda guesthouse. I knocked on the door.

"Mark-san! You surprised me! I thought you were gonna call!" said Mr. Okuda.
"Sorry about that," I replied, sheepishly. "I wanted to walk one more time."