The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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Okay. Okay, so today I would like to talk about Buddhist pilgrimage. And the catalyst for that was I just finished doing a Buddhist pilgrimage.

So it's very fresh in my mind and very much a part of my heart and so I'd like to just speak what's up for me.

The simplest definition of maybe of a pilgrimage that I kind of like is that a pilgrimage is where a

outer journey and an inner journey intersect and support each other.

And so, but conventionally, pilgrimages are often associated with going to a sacred site, and so they're spiritual in nature. Not everyone will, some people

think that our life itself is a pilgrimage.

Some people will call pilgrimage something which is not necessarily spiritual,

but that's often the association.

And I've been on, I've walked four pilgrimage routes in my life.

Two of them were not a pilgrimage for me.

There was other people's pilgrimage routes and so they were people of other religions would enter into it in a deep way because it was the deeply

connected to their faith.

And I went along though partly because they were spiritual.

I felt that was an important part of why I was there.

But I didn't share the same spirituality as them and so the residents of that part wasn't

that strong for me.

And I've been on two which were Buddhist pilgrimages and they were actually part of my faith, part of my spirituality and really felt be important

parts of it.

And one of them just ended two days ago. So that was quite lovely.

The, uh, so, um, so, uh, so a pilgrim So pilgrimage is involved kind of an inner and an outer aspect and the outer one is one that is connected to the places we go to.

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