Walking Buddy
No pilgrim ever walks alone. They carry with them a kongō-zue, or wooden staff . The staff is said to represent the founder of the 88 Temple pilgrimage, Kōbō-Daishi. Inscribed on it is the chant Namu-Daishi-Henjō-Kongō and Dōgyō-Ninin meaning "We two pilgrims together”.
On this morning “we two pilgrims” started together, but by the end of the day my Kōbō-Daishi was lost. He went missing somewhere between Kamojima and Kō train stations. It started while waiting for our train, a preoccupation with flowers growing on a set of abandoned train tracks distracted me. My backpack was quickly placed on a bench, the staff right beside it. For the next handful of minutes I took images of the tall, lavender colored flowers gently flowing in the wind. With our train quickly approaching the camera was put away, I grabbed my belongings and boarded the train. Immediately my hands felt idle and the knowledge that something was missing washed over me with uneasiness. Looking around the car there was no sign of the staff. We decided to get off at the next stop. Explaining our predicament to the attendant on duty we asked if she could call the previous station to see if the staff was there. She phoned, but they told her there were no signs of him anywhere, not the platform and not inside the station. They even checked the toilet. He was gone.
One of the goals of pilgrimage is to practice being in the moment. Was appreciating the flowers being in the moment or a distraction? Empty handed and disheartened we waited for the next train to continue on. We spent some time talking about how things happen for a reason. Losing the staff created a chain of events. It made us get off at an earlier station. There we spoke with a kind lady and interacted cheerfully with a toddler. The loss had caused me to be in those moments!
Rain threaten us as we returned to the walking path. We ducked into Joyfull, our favorite restaurant, for lunch. There we dressed in our brand new rain gear and hit the road. It worked! We were very aware, every moment, of how dry we stayed the rest of the day.
