Never the Same River Twice

"Before I arrived in Japan, I was intoxicated by its tradition of wandering poets. They weren't roaming around lakes and hills like Wordsworth, but proceeding along a rough, pointed path, in the way of Matsuo Basho. His most famous work--Narrow Road to the Interior--could suggest both the remote areas of northern Japan through which he was walking, and the inner terrain that the act of walking would awaken. 

Monks in the Zen tradition are called unsui--"drifting like clouds, flowing like water"--to enforce the sense that they follow Buddha on his daily path, sometimes quite literally as they walk around each morning with begging bowls, collecting food. The destination is never the thing; some temples in Kyoto, twenty miles away, greet me at the entrance with Japanese characters on the ground that mean, "Look beneath your feet." Everything you need is here, in other words, if only you're wide-awake enough to see it." 

Pico Iyer shares more in this meditative piece.

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