The sight of a country boat with an oar might evoke a deep longing in spiritually sensitive people in many cultures. In India we are steeped in imageries of theerthadana (pilgrimage). Theertha is crossing - crossing the ocean and any water body like lakes and rivers. (The picture shows a little boat on the Kodoor as the river swelled). In most Indian languages we are familiar with the expression Samsara Sagara, the world-ocean. That is what we should cross to accomplish the pilgrimage of life. The huge risks involved in launching out to tumultuous seas are obvious. Yet the vast ocean, seemingly infinite and unchartered, serves as the metaphor for our world of daily existence, of deceptions and contradictions. Raging waves of most religious establishments and political structures hinder the path of sincere seekers. They are, therefore, expected to brace the challenge of the world and cross over it. Great spiritual figures have undertaken journeys and crossings that marked their lives. Jesus, for instance, seems to have enjoyed crossing the sea of Galilee. He often tells his fishermen friends to take him across to the other side, and he could relax and sleep comfortably in a storm-tossed boat.
In fact, the idea of pilgrimage constitutes a common ground for all religions though the form and content are different in each. In all religious traditions the pilgrims, unsure of eventual return, leave behind their homes and all their belongings and homely comforts even if it is only for a short while. They enter a transitional state. They are on the way. The keynote of all pilgrimages is that we are wayfarers. By tradition in all religions, we literally walk the way, even barefooted, sometimes carrying with us a small, light bundle of very essential things. Suddenly all the rest becomes non-essential, a burden devoid of meaning. But we are clearly oriented to the sacred spot, our destination. Still ‘we returned to our places, these Kingdoms', wrote T S Eliot in the Journey of the Magi, 'but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.'
Reminiscing about the many journeys I was led to, two of them may be mentioned because of their arduousness - the one to the Mount Kailas and the other to the Mount Sinai. In the one, we crossed the legendary lake, touching and bathing in the pristine water of Mansarovar fed by the snow-clad mountains in Tibet. In the other we crossed the arid desert of Sinai in Egypt, and reached the summit of the stern, rocky Mt Sinai, crossing a dark night, partly on foot and partly on camelback.
Desert and ocean, mountain chains and deep forests, day and night, space and time are all crossings for the pilgrim. We never cease to wonder at that far-off transcendent glow that drives them on and on??
The invisible virus has now closed all grand routes for any visible, external journey. But our inner ocean space is infinite and so far not blocked by any power whatsoever. Our own will, however, may block it by not willing to travel deeper and deeper, farther and farther in search of the Theertha. Challenge our unwilling will.
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