What I've Learned

The big wrap-up.

I write this post in the throes of the most brutal jet lag of my life. After finishing up the pilgrimage, I took a trip to Mt. Koya to visit the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi, and then shuffled back to Tokyo to take a flight that saw me return to the USA approximately 3 days before the flight took off. Since returning to America last Monday, I have settled into a 7am-1pm sleep schedule that will probably take weeks to break. After a brutal zombie period from 1pm to 4pm, I usually enter a totally unproductive period of consciousness from about 7pm to 3am. Welcome to the suck, as they say.

What an adventure. The biggest of my life. Bigger than climbing Mt. Fuji, bigger than my ill-conceived NY-and-back road trip, bigger than my periodic escapades to Enterprise, Alabama during my Army days. I saw more, experienced more, and learned more than I ever thought possible. My sister says that I found enlightenment! I wouldn't go that far, but the journey most certainly was illuminating. And what was illuminated, you ask? Allow me to list my revelations.

1. Kristine is the one. Kristine Sinajon is my fiancé, the woman I am going to marry in about 5 months. One of the most brutal moments of the pilgrimage was a dream I had where I took an early flight back to the US, stepped back into my house, and called up Kristine, who was doing laundry at her parents' house. "Hey babe, go back to the house, I've got a big surprise for you." While I was waiting for her to come home, I woke up to find myself alone in a dingy hotel room in some crummy Japanese port town. That was as tough a wake up as I've experienced since the Army. Me and Kristine fell in love through music, but the fact that she would stay by my side, even if I never touch the piano again, has taught me what real love means, and what it feels like. Her love is the greatest blessing of my life, and doing the pilgrimage made me appreciate that love like never before.

2. I'm not actually Buddhist! Lol, surprise. At the very least, I'm not an adherent of Shingon Buddhism, the esoteric sect of Buddhism founded by Kobo Daishi. My inner scientist just doesn't allow me to fully believe in a religion devoted to thousand-armed Boddhisatvas, hungry ghosts, and wrathful guardian gods. Don't get me wrong though; I have enormous respect for this Buddhist sect, and I am in awe of the faith and devotion of its adherents. More broadly, though I practice meditation for its physical and mental health benefits, I discovered, through the pilgrimage, that I just WANT too many things for me to be a true Buddhist. I want a wife. I want to make music. I want to work, and I want to make money, enough money to be comfortable in the place I want to live in more than anywhere in the world, the San Francisco Bay Area. That's a lot of wants for a religion founded on not wanting anything. In fact, in Buddhism, if you want enlightenment too badly, it will keep you from getting enlightenment!! What a crock of horse s***! So, no, I'm not actually a Buddhist. Despite that. . .

3. I believe in Kobo Daishi! Confused yet? Because I sure am. Through the trials and tribulations of the pilgrimage, I found out that I was just normal-old Christian, same as I always was. However, during my long walk, I really did feel the presence of Kobo Daishi. If I screwed up, he would punish me; if I asked for help, he would provide it. When I would cuss in one of my extended monologues designed to keep my own sanity, I would apologize to the staff. I even took home some mementos from the trail to bring part of the Kobo Daishi spirit back to San Bruno! (I figure that since Kobo Daishi is more of a friendly ghost, as opposed to an angry volcano god like Pele, I won't suffer the dreaded Hawaiian black sand curse.) On a less mumbo-jumbo wacky level, I feel enormous admiration for the way that Kobo Daishi lived his life, and enormous gratitude to his compassionate vision that has helped me and countless others find greater meaning and clarity in their lives through the 88 temple pilgrimage. I figure that if I think of him as a patron saint (patron saint of blisters and foot fungus?), I can jimmy him into my already jumbled belief system without too much trouble. I'd buy him a beer if I could! Or just a cup of barley tea; Buddhist monks don't get drunk, right? Except for Drunken Master, but that's something else entirely.

4. Forgiveness is my personal key to happiness. I laid this philosophy out in my previous blog entry, so just refer back to that for a full explanation. If you're not gonna live alone on top of a mountain, you gotta learn to forgive, because if you live in society among the people, people WILL screw up and hurt you. It is guaranteed, it is inevitable. There just isn't a way around it. So the key is to forgive. For me at least. Especially in the case of people you're never gonna see again, you gotta forgive them, because the longer you hate them, the longer you're just hurting yourself. This is a hard one, but I got time to practice it.

5. I'm turning into more of a people person. Even though I'm so jet-lagged that I can barely function, all I want to do right now is throw get-togethers and see all the people who helped me take this journey. This is way different from how I used to be. I would have much rather stayed home reading old entries in the rotten.com library on Friday night than go to a party, much less throw one. This transformation was beginning before the pilgrimage, and being forced to interact with people in a foreign language just to survive did even more to eradicate my shyness. In fact, I just hosted a thank you event/question and answer session with my primary investors (aka my parents) yesterday, and it was a smashing success! Looking forward to great things in the next quarter.

6. There's more than one way to make music. Pay attention, I'm about to go all SAT test on you. If Music = Art, and Art = Painting, doesn't that mean that Music = Painting? Sort of? Maybe that's wrong. Meh, whatever. Anyway, I found out that I'm interested not just in music, but art in general. Calligraphy, creative writing, photography, it's all got music in there. Or to be more accurate, all good art has tension and release. That's courtesy of my old SF State jazz theory teacher Mike Zisman. My decades of music making have given me an incredible foundation to branch out to almost any endeavor, creative or otherwise. I want to learn all kinds of stuff, from audio recording to video editing. Even figuring out how to cover next month's rent is an art! An art I desperately have to figure out, extremely quickly.

7. I might have to become a different type of musician. I was talking to my Uncle Ed from Monson, Massachusetts before I left. I told him I was doing the pilgrimage in order to help my tendons recover so that I could return to the piano. "But once you start playing again, won't you just get tendonitis again?" he asked. Huh, good point. Don't get me wrong, being able to play the piano again is my greatest life goal right now. But if I play music the way I did before, i.e. exhausting 3 hour gigs where I am overplaying with bad technique just to hear myself above an overcranked sound system, my tendonitis will indeed return in a matter of weeks. This means that, not only do I have to play music differently, I have to look at music in an entirely different light. My days as a workhorse gigging musician are most likely over forever. However, that means that when I play the piano, it's actually got to count. I have no choice now but to only play music that truly means something to me. No more drawn out KC and the Sunshine Band covers for drunk bridesmaids. When I play again, it has to be music that means something to me; songs by my friends, songs that I love, songs that I wrote. This probably means that I can't make a living as a purely gigging musician anymore. And guess what? I'm fine with that.

When I started developing symptoms of tendonitis, I began to dread the future. Every time I touched the piano, it was with the fear that I was digging myself into an ever-deeper hole, a hole that would inevitably end with my hands crippled. The only future I could conceive was that of an unemployable dropout living on government benefits on the margins of society. When I decided to quit the piano indefinitely, I finally started to look to the future with hope. Maybe I actually would be able to heal and lead a normal life. But now that I've done the pilgrimage, now that I have done something extraordinary, it makes me confident that I can strive for something a little more ambitious, a little more interesting than just a normal life. For the first time I can remember, my brain is overflowing with ideas, compositions, plans, schemes, and possibilities. The reason for this awakening is the pilgrimage.

And the reason I was able to make the pilgrimage was because of the support I received from friends, loved ones, acquaintances, long-lost relatives, and even people I have never even met before. Whether you supported me with a message, or a meal, or a financial contribution, or a cup of tea, or by reading this blog, or letting me stay at your house for a week (Auntie Emiko), let me just say Thank You once again. Thank You. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, from the absolute bottom of my heart. Thank you for allowing me to make this journey, to go on this adventure, and to find knowledge and healing in ways I never could have imagined possible. In this moment, my heart overflows. I've never felt like this. I didn't know I could feel like this. Thank you, so much. And with that, the pilgrimage comes to a close.

NOT!!!!! The pilgrimage will continue! In different forms, in different places, and in different ways. Now that I've brought some of Kobo Daishi back to San Bruno, the Bay Area is officially Pilgrimage Territory. I got back just in time to see the Warriors win it all, so who knows? Maybe I brought some Kobo Daishi good luck back with me from Shikoku. For the indiegogo donors, watch your doorstep or mailbox for the thank you gift package, and always remember: though you may encounter enemies on your journey, remember to show them compassion and forgiveness; they too are trapped in the world of illusion, and they will one day, after 100,000 lifetimes, join you as brothers and sisters in the Pure Land of the Cosmic Buddha, Amida Nyorai. And as the Buddha always says. . .

You know why they hate us? Cause they ain't us.

Just kidding, I think Pauly D said that.

Thanks again, and I love all you guys!

Yours Truly,

Mark Tayag Davis
MTD