The slow eye
- cherylmurfin
- Sep 13
- 5 min read
The walking on the first day along this ancient kodo–road–was short, a mere 3 miles give or take. Still, my intel put me on notice that it would be one of the steeper climbs of the pilgrimage so I suggested our retreat start with a meditation walk. My hope was to turn those three miles into at least three hours of immersive nature, and hopefully all walkers feeling no pain at the end. A meditation walk is that slow.
You ask: How did you approach the medication walk? I’m glad you asked, because I’ve been an avid hiker for about 40 years and this was a first for me. It changed everything for me. Here’s what to do, in case you’d like to try it:
Begin a walking meditation by standing still. Close your eyes and focus on your feet. Stamp them on the ground and make the connection that you are connected to the earth below you. Consider all the minute motions that keep you upright, and balanced as you breathe in and out. Notice them.
As you start your walk, focus on your body starting with those feet on the ground. Then moving up and naming and feeling each body part.
Moving slowly forward with your first steps, focus on your emotional and mental states, both in heart and mind.
Continue moving forward for thee steps. Pause on the fourth step. So the pattern of the meditation walk is this: Step, Step, Step, Pause. Step, Step, Step, Pause.
On each pause, inhale and exhale while looking left, right, up and down.
Proceed in this way, looking deeply at the environment around you. There is no talking during a meditation walk. Just listening, feeling, smelling…engaging your senses.
So, why a meditation walk?
I’ve never hiked with a group of eight people without a whole lot of words being exchanged.
I notice when I talk and walk, the scenery flies by and quite suddenly I am there—whereever that destination happens to be. And just often when I am there, at the end, I can’t remember what I saw and heard. I can’t help but wonder what I may have missed along the way.
I also notice that in a group, everyone tends to hike at a good clip trying to keep up with each other. I’ll add that at a quick pace, I largely hike looking at my feet so I won’t trip and break my face. Which I did several years ago while not looking at my feet in France. Broke four bones in my face.
I found that the meditation rhythm and space allowed me to be truly present to the path. The pace was so slow that I was able to move my eyes from my boots and the forest floor and take in the whole picture. In the silence of our walking from Takijiri to Takahara, my eyes were like macro lenses: The lima bean-shaped peelings of Japanese Stewartia bark, rocks covered brilliant green moss that at close range very much resembles its own forest, a shadow, a cairn glowing in a spot of light, an altar hidden in the foliage.
As I took each in with my eyes and heart, I felt my breath extending out, a piece of myself, in exchange. I have done similar, far shooter, meditative “mountain walking,” so this slow-breath-in-receive-space-slow-breath-out-give is not a new way of looking and seeing the world for me. But most of the time, mine is a mind that races and whurrs and produces. I fall into thinkiness easily. Every time I move in this mindful way to become fully present, it feels like something of a miracle to me.
Toward the end of the walk, about two and a half hours in, we brought the meditation walk to a close. I allowed my heart to go wherever it wanted to go.
It fell to my brother. I found myself marveling at the life walks we have been on, together and separate, for the past 55 years. He was unable to join us on the Kumano physically, but he asked me to carry him with me (and to send photos). A little background: There was a long time when we did not communicate, many years, for reasons I don’t quite understand but also don’t have any need to understand. He needed that time. There was a time when I too pulled in and away. Our reasons don’t matter, these are simply our paths.
Who would have thought that our mother’s death was a doorway for us? I like to think she pinned the invitation to us to return to each other; her passing through the veil brought us each of us to a different veil, the one that allows us to be different people but see each other more clearly than we could before.
So, as I slowly walked up those ancient stone steps and passed over tree roots, I felt my brother’s blood in my veins. I understood him as a valve in my heart and on one particular beat, I understood these things were not unlike the roots and stones overwhich I walked, entangled, embracing, growing deeper. Likewise we reach out to each other and flow just as we are meant to.
We started the walk on this first day at Takijiri, a small shrine that is “the spiritual beginning” of the Kumano Kodo. Since it was formed in the 9th century, millions have started the path with these same first steps—emperors and their entourages, city dwellers and simple villagers alike. In my mind’s eye I can see the groups of women who have moved up through these mountains seeking spiritual purification and rejuvenation through rigorous religious rites. And also to ease their losses.
This way of beginning for me was, indeed, spiritual. It opened a space in me that I was unaware needed affirmation: That is, my great gratitude that I have learned to walk quietly, with my eyes open, my mouth shut, and my heart listening.
The word we carried with us while walking were “silence.”
Writing from the road
Sound Walking
By Cheryl Murfin
Walking through woods
A soundbath
Without gong
Or mallet
The red-headed
Bird
Types a message
On cedar trunk
While forrest mouse
Chit chit chits
In the underbrush
There are no sugar feeders here
No honeysuckle vines
No bee balms
No columbines
No hollyhocks
And yet
Beneath
this tender verdant canopy
Hangs a silence
As buzzing and invisible
As hummingbird wings
Is one sounding space
More sacred than another?
Can holy be heard
In the whirr of traffic
At the corner of Elm and Grove?
In the yapping
Of a neighbor’s dog
Or the hush of office gossip
Can it be heard
In the made up world of child’s play?
Perhaps
Perhaps
Holy is a symphony
Seated across my world
Walking through woods
A soundbath
Without gong
Or mallet
My footfall
Is a mantra
My breath a meditation
Between them
The rustling of bow
and needle and leaf
And even their absence in the calm
Is windchimes
To the soul who listens hard enough
Comments