The Way of the 88 Temples: Journeys on the Shikoku Pilgrimage

Epilogue

Epilogue It had rained in the night, and I stepped carefully as the winding path descended through a copse of dripping cedars. Rounding a curve in the trail, I spotted the red bench half-hidden in a cavern of sumac on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I sat for a few minutes to absorb the view of the sun-sparkled water and the long stretch of the coastline of Washington state’s Olympic peninsula across the strait. I tried to recall the last time I’d been here—was it really three decades ago?—before I continued along the twisting trail until I emerged from the woods onto a cliff edge overlooking the crescent beach. I scrambled down the rocky path to the sand. The tide was out, and as I walked toward the shelter of the rocks on the far side of the beach, I looked back to see my boot prints following me in the sand. Nothing had changed at Point-No-Point. The rocky outcrops at the top of the beach, all smooth and rounded and marbled black, crouched at the base of the cliff like smooth-shouldered beasts huddled with their backs to the sea. The fissured cliff soared overhead, containing the beach in a curving embrace. Salt rime dried on exposed stones. Tidal pools swirled with their secret worlds. Feather-like cirrus clouds stretched across the blue sky. But what struck me most powerfully was the smell of the sea—stranded kelp, seaweed, wet sand, cedar. It was the same sea smell that I’d encountered for the first time in my life when I’d arrived in Victoria, bc, to attend the university there. The hauntingly familiar smells surged through the subterranean caverns of my memory like an incoming tide. I could feel the buried treasures shifting. I found a place among the rocks and out of the wind. Leaning  the way of the  temples against them, I looked out at the water and squinted against the broken fragments of the sun. A ship was in the strait. I followed it as it moved slowly westward toward the Pacific Ocean. I lifted my face to the sun, absorbing its warmth. It was the end of January. I’d taken a few days off work to fly to Victoria. It was as close as I could get to Japan. I roamed the University of Victoria campus, following the ghost of my younger self through the corridors, lecture rooms, and library carrels. I looked up addresses where I’d once lived, conjuring the rooms and apartments I’d occupied. I stalked the streets and the beaches and coves that had once been my favorite retreats. Everything was both familiar and strange. I’d spent one day walking myself into exhaustion, hiking from my downtown hotel, the Cherry Bank on Burdett Avenue, to Cadboro Bay, following Beach Drive and trying to keep the ocean in sight. It was the best I could do to replicate the coastline of Shikoku, not to mention the blister I acquired after several hours of walking. The day before I flew home, I drove out to Point-No-Point, near the town of Sooke, north of Victoria. I thought of how, only a few months earlier, I’d been with Shūji at Katsurahama Beach, where I’d had a vision of my youthful discovery of Point-No-Point. It was oddly disorienting to recall those few moments on a Japanese beach where I’d felt displaced by my remembrance of this Canadian one. But then it seemed strange to have reached an age when I have memories of memories , when there is more behind me than ahead. A nonsensical thought flitted across my mind: where do our memories go when we die? As I crouched among the rocks, images of Shikoku washed over me. I thought about Shūji, wondering if his pilgrimage had been a preparation for death, a final attempt to cut the karmic cord. Buddhists, I’d read, believe that until we gain enlightenment, we’re stuck in a cycle of transmigration, revolving through various worlds and spiritual realms. Our fate in the next life, whether we’re reborn as human or animal or end up in hell, depends on our behavior in this life. When we die, our souls exist for a time in a state between death and the new life to come. This suspended state lasts for...