Spliced In Day 15

During the month of July There will be featured here at Lunch Break haiku related essays; original copyright remains with the websites and to their respective writers.


Spliced In - Day 15

The pilgrim-poet Bashô called it looking for a “glimpse of the underglimmer.” Goethe called it the “holy longing.” For the Sufis it was the ability to see with “the eyes of the heart.” Emerson looked for “the undersong” in things. For the Muslims it was Mecca and for Christians and Jews it was a journey to Jerusalem. For the holy men of Japan or hijiri it was following the solitary way. For Buddhists paying homage to Buddha it was visiting those sites of Buddha’s birth and enlightenment. For Australian aborigines this journey was called a “walk-about” which follows the dreamtracks or songlines of the ancients. For American Indians it was a vision quest. A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place; on a more poetic level the term pilgrim has its roots in the Latin per agrum or “through the field.”

Read the essay The Return Message: A Pilgrim’s Way of Longing by Marjorie Buettner


This post has been edited to correct authorship of the featured haiku which i credited to Basho, but really, is the work of Marjorie Buettner; thank you Marjorie for alerting me
much love
gillena