Completing the 88 Temple Pilgrimage on Shodoshima
To express gratitude for having come through a difficult period in his life, Del Bagno travelled to Kamakura, Japan to complete the 33 Temple Pilgrimage which is dedicated to Kannon Bosatsu (Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva) who was instrumental in helping him through that time. It was during this pilgrimage that he learned of Amida Butsu’s (Amitabha Buddha’s) offer of help.
“The Japanese people were so incredibly kind and helpful to me. If you go, be a good guest and respectful of their traditions. We owe them a great debt for maintaining their spiritual sites so well that someone like me, from the new country of the USA, can come and walk up temple stairs worn deep with the footsteps of Buddhist devotees across the centuries. With my modern, perpetually distracted mind, it is soothing to be able to physically link up with those generations of practitioners.“
“A Pilgrim at Night”
by John Del Bagno