Your Steps Are Most Important

What activity is most important in your life?  To pass an exam, get
a car or a house, or get a promotion in your career?  There are so
many people who have passed exams, who have bought cars and
houses, who have gotten promotions, but still find themselves without
peace of mind, without joy, and without happiness.  The most
important thing in life is to find this treasure, and then to share it with
other people and with all beings. 

In order to have peace and joy, you must succeed in having peace
within each of your steps.  Your steps are the most important thing. 
They decide everything.  I am lighting a stick of incense and joining
my palms together as a lotus bud to pray for your success.

You Can Do It

Walking meditation is practicing meditation while walking.  It can
bring you joy and peace while you practice it.  Take short steps in
complete relaxation; go slowly with a smile on your lips, with your
heart open to an experience of peace.  You can feel truly at ease with
yourself.  Your steps can be those of the healthiest, most secure
person on earth.  All sorrows and worries can drop away while you
are walking.  To have peace of mind, to attain self-liberation, learn to
walk in this way.  It is not difficult.  You can do it.  Anyone can do
it who has some degree of mindfulness and a true intention to be happy.

Going Without Arriving

In our daily lives, we usually feel pressured to move ahead.  We have
 to hurry.  We seldom ask ourselves where it is that we must hurry to. 

When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll.  You have
no purpose or direction in space or time.  The purpose of walking
meditation is walking meditation itself.  Going is important, not
arriving.  Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end. 
Each step is life; each step is peace and joy.  That is why we don’t
have to hurry.  That is why we slow down.  We seem to move forward,
but we don’t go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal.  Thus we smile
while we are walking.

Trouble-Free Steps

In our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears. 
Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so
our steps lose their natural easiness. 

Our earth is truly beautiful.  There is so much graceful, natural scenery
along paths and roads around the earth!  Do you know how many dirt
lanes there are, lined with bamboo, or winding around scented rice fields? 
Do you know how many forest paths there are, paved with colorful leaves,
offering cool and shade?  They are all available to us, yet we cannot
enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not
at ease.

Walking meditation is learning to walk again with ease.  When you were
about a year old, you began to walk with tottering steps.  Now, in practicing
walking meditation you are learning to walk again.  However, after a few
weeks of practice, you will be able to step solidly, in peace and comfort. 
I am writing these lines to assist you in doing that.  I wish you success.

Shaking Off the Burden of Worries

If I had the Buddha’s eyes and could see through everything, I could discern
the marks of worry and sorrow you leave in your footprints after you pass,
like the scientist who can detect tiny living beings in a drop of pond water
with a microscope.  Walk so that your footprints bear only the marks of
peaceful joy and complete freedom.  To do this, you have to learn to let go –
let go of your sorrows, let go of your worries.  That is the secret of walking
meditation.

This World Contains All the Wonders of the Pure Land

To have peace and joy and inner freedom, you need to learn how to let go
of your sorrows and worries, the elements that create unhappiness.  First
of all, notice that this world contains all the wonders you could expect to
find in the Buddha Land.  It is only because of our veil of sorrows and
worries that we cannot always see these wonders.

I always think that I like this world even better than I would the Pure Land
because I like what this world offers: lemon trees, orange trees, banana
trees, pine trees, apricot trees, and willow trees.  Some people say that in
the Pure Land there are valuable lotus ponds, seven-gem trees, and roads
paved with gold, and that there are special celestial birds.  I don’t think I
would like these very much.  I would rather not walk on roads paved with
gold and silver.  I wouldn’t even use roads that were lined with marble
here on earth.  Dirt roads with meadows on both sides are my favorite;
I love pebbles and leaves covering the ground.  I love bushes, streams,
bamboo fences, and ferries. 

When I was a young novice, I told my Master, ‘If the Pure Land doesn’t
have lemon trees, then I don’t want to go.’  He shook his head and smiled. 
Maybe he thought I was a stubborn youngster.  However, he did not say
that I was right or wrong.  Later when I realized that both the world and
the Pure Land come from the mind, I was very happy.  I was happy since
I knew that lemon trees and star-fruit trees exist also in the Pure Land, with
dirt roads and green grass on all sides.

I knew that if I kept my eyes open in mindfulness and my steps at ease, I
could find my Pure Land.  That is why I do not let a single day pass
without practicing walking meditation.

The Seal of an Emperor

Choose a nice road for your practice, along the shore of a river, in a park,
on the flat roof of a building, in the woods, or along a bamboo fence. 

Such places are ideal, but they are not essential.  I know there are people
who practice walking meditation in reformation camps, even in small
prison cells.

It is best if the road is not too rough or too steep.  Slow down and
concentrate on your steps.  Be aware of each move.  Walk straight
ahead with dignity, calm, and comfort.  Consciously make an
imprint on the ground as you step.  Walk as the Buddha would. 
Place your foot on the surface of the earth the way an emperor would
place his seal on a royal decree.

A royal decree can bring happiness or misery to people.  It can shower
grace on them or it can ruin their lives.  Your steps can do the same. 
If your steps are peaceful, the world will have peace.  If you can take
one peaceful step, you can take two.  You can take one hundred and
eight peaceful steps.

A Lotus Flower Blooms Beneath Each Step

When an artist or a sculptor creates a picture or a statue of Buddha sitting
upon a lotus flower, it is not just to express his reverence towards the
Buddha.  The artist must above all want to show the Buddha’s state of
mind as he sits: the state of complete peace, complete bliss.  We all sit
several times a day, but few of us can sit in peace and with ease, few of us
can sit majestically like the Buddha.  Most of us get restless after a while,
as if we were sitting on hot coals.  The Buddha may sit on the grass or on
a rock, but he looks as serene as he would look sitting on a lotus flower.

When I first entered the monastery, my master taught me to observe this
thought just before sitting: ‘Sitting with my back straight, I wish all beings
may be seated on the platform of enlightenment, their hearts freed from all
illusion and mistaken views.’  Only after I said that would I slowly sit down. 
That is the way to learn to sit like a Buddha.

I have a message for students of Pure Land Buddhism: Sit on a Lotus
Throne right now, at this moment; do not wait until you get to the Pure Land. 
Be reborn on a lotus flower in each present moment.  Don’t wait until you
face death.  If you can experience rebirth on a lotus flower now, if you can
sit on a lotus flower now – then you won’t have any doubt about the existence
of the Pure Land.  The same is true for walking.  The Infant Buddha is
often portrayed taking his first seven steps on earth, causing a lotus flower to
appear in each of his footsteps.  We should all cause a lotus flower to bloom
with each of our peaceful steps.  Next time you practice walking meditation,
please try visualizing a lotus flower opening as your feet touch the ground,
like a newborn Buddha.  Don’t feel unworthy of this vision.  If your steps
are serene, they are worthy of this flowering.  You are a Buddha, and so is
everyone else.  I didn’t make that up.  It was the Buddha himself who said so. 
He said that all beings had the potential to become awakened.  To practice
walking meditation is to practice living in mindfulness.  Mindfulness and
enlightenment are one.  Enlightenment leads to mindfulness and mindfulness
leads to enlightenment.

The Miracle is Walking on Earth

Walking with ease and with peace of mind on the earth is a wonderful miracle. 
Some people say that only walking on burning coals or walking on spikes or
on water are miracles, but I find that simply walking on the earth is a miracle. 
Neige Marchand, when translating The Miracle of Mindfulness into French,
entitled the book La Miracle, C’est de Marcher sur Terre.  I like that title
very much.

Imagine that you and I were two astronauts.  We have landed on the moon,
and we find that we cannot return to earth because the engine of our ship is
broken beyond repair.  We will run out of oxygen before the control center
on earth can send another ship up to rescue us.  We know that we have only
two more days to live.  What would you and I think of, other than going back
to our dear green planet and walking side by side, in peace and without
worries?  Only when confronted with death do we know the precious value
of our steps on the green planet. 

Now let’s imagine ourselves as those astronauts who have somehow survived
their experience.  Let’s celebrate our happiness and our joy at being able to
walk on our dear earth again.  We manifest this miracle in each of our steps. 
Lotus flowers bloom as we walk.

Maintain your practice, aware that your steps are creating miracles.  The
earth appears before your eyes as something miraculous.  With that correct
understanding, with that meditative thought, you will achieve blissful steps
on this planet earth.

Stand on one foot, and be aware that it is resting upon the earth; see the
great sphere upon which it rests.  See it clearly – how wonderfully round
it is.  While walking, look down and anticipate the ground where you are
about to place your foot, and when you do, mindfully experience your foot,
the ground, and the connection between your foot and the ground.  Think
of your foot as an Emperor’s seal.

In the meditation hall, while doing kinhin (walking meditation) remember
‘The Emperor’s Seal’, or ‘Lotus flowers blooming’, or ‘The earth appears’
as themes of your walking meditation.”

Source: http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/G%20-%20TNH/TNH/From%20A%20Guide%20to%20Walking%20Meditation/From%20A%20Guide%20to%20Walking%20Me