Walking

by Cindy Ruskin

Dear friends, 

A friend told me this week that he walks 12,000 steps every day. I don't walk around with my phone on me much of the time so I have no idea how many steps I take. But since I was curious, I started counting my steps. I was amazed to discover that walking to the end of my block, less than a minute walk, takes around 100 steps. Walking from my bedroom to the kitchen takes about 50. Even on lazy days we each walk thousands of steps, almost all of them without paying attention. 

I'm thinking a lot about walking since our theme for the holidays this year is Pilgrimage. In this Shabbat's parasha we are given the commandment to make pilgrimage three times a year to Jerusalem. How many steps did it take our ancestors to walk from wherever they lived to Jerusalem and back? Once they were in front of the temple there were an additional fifteen steps to walk up. And once they were in the temple, how many steps did they take there? The answer is: who cares?

The more interesting question is how many of the steps they took did they pay attention to? I imagine that those fifteen steps up were mindful steps. These final fifteen steps were taken barefoot. The Levites would stand at either side of the stairway singing the fifteen Songs of Ascent, one poem for each step. They called on the pilgrims to notice, to be present, to pay attention to where they were and how they were bringing themselves into the temple. 

Now that the temple is gone, we don't have a commandment to make pilgrimage. Instead, the rabbis encourage us to be in a state of pilgrimage at all times; to treat every step we take as though it were one of those final fifteen steps into the temple.

These High Holidays we are planning on including some walking meditation, a practice which I learned at Blue Cliff Monastery, a Zen Buddhist monastery in the Catskills in the tradition of the late master Thich Nhat Hahn. Every day at noon the sisters, brothers and guests gather to take a walk. They sing a song of gathering, and then embark together silently on their way through the woods, walking slowly so as to feel their feet on the ground, to notice their breath and the nature around them. 

In his book, How to Walk, Thich Nhat Hahn writes:

"Walking brings the mind and body together. Only when mind and body are united are we truly in the here and the now. When we walk, we come home to ourselves. If you’re busy talking while you walk, or planning ahead, you won’t enjoy your in breath and out breath. You won’t enjoy being fully in the present moment. We don’t have to force ourselves to breathe in, because we are breathing in and out all the time anyway. We only need to focus our attention on the breath and the walking. In no time at all you go home to your body, and there you are, well established in the here and the now."

Maybe this Shabbat we can take a few pilgrimage-type steps toward that God of our feet, who often showers us with gifts of calm and peace, the present moment.

Shabbat shalom, 
Rabbi Misha