Pilgrimage

Cino

Cino

Big Love! (Atheist mystic)
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I'm on vacation, there is a Catholic pilgrimage shrine in the town next to where I'm staying. Pilgrims get here by bus, they can borrow a wooden cross and circumambulate the chapel containing an icon of Mary.

It's a fascinating mix of devotion, sacred space, commercialism, mass tourism, the mundane lives of the local population, and so on.

Pilgrimage sites fascinate me because of these tensions and the visibly complex social fabric.

What are your experiences with modern-day pilgrimage?
 
What has modernity to do with pilgrimage, other than one travels by air, rail, buses and cars; and not as they used to do in older times, on foot, on carts.
People still take the vows. Fast, pierce parts of body, go by prostrating all the way. Some just enjoy the outing with an audience with their deity at the end of the journey.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...oofs-on-guru-purnima/articleshow/59516151.cms
 
Thinking about it, I guess my wife and I have ventured off on a kind of pilgrimage ourselves from time to time. When we were a bit younger, every few years or so as money and time permitted, we use to head to the Fiji Islands. That's more than a 24 hour trip for us counting flight time and layovers. We made the journey mainly to spend time with family and friends, but each time we did, the wife always made arrangements to have a Hindu religious service done at the home where she grew up.

Others do this as well and there's always a huge turn out whenever such veneration is performed. Most Hindu families in Fiji have there own outdoor shrine for such things, but the one at my wife's place seems to be one of the more popular for some reason. Nothing special about it really, just a big concrete pad, but the whole village turns out whenever a veneration is done there.

We haven't been able to get back to Fiji for some time now, but the wife always makes sure that someone back home proceeds on her behalf at regular intervals. Sort of a pilgrimage by proxy I guess.
 
A Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage can be particularly harsh. It is common for a Tibetan Buddhist pilgrim to do a full prostration, take a couple of steps, then do another prostration. Take a look at this video at 1:48 and watch them as they step, prostrate, step, etc. (They even wear special wooden protection for their hands for multiple prostrations.)

 
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