The Art of Pilgrimage Quotes

“Uncover what you long for and you will discover who you are.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“On an ordinary journey, one designed for sheer entertainment, diversion, or self-reward for a year of hard work, there would be no obvious need to go out of your way to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger.
But a pilgrimage asks us to do exactly that. The path needs more light. To shine the light of your own natural curiosity into the world of another traveler can reveal wonders. To remember the mysteries you forgot at home.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“The time has come to set out for sacred ground...that will stir our sense of wonder. It is down the path to the deeply real where time stops and we are seized by the mysteries. This is the journey that we cannot Not take.

The old hermit along the side of the road whispers, Stranger, Pass bythat which you donot love.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“What matters most on your journey is how deeply you see, how attentively you hear, how richly the encounters are felt in your heart and soul.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“There is another call, the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does. Sometimes people need a shock; sometimes a tocsin call. It is time for a wake-up call. A man is fired from a job; a child runs away from home; ulcers overtake the body. The ancients called this “soul loss.” Today, the equivalent is the loss of meaning or purpose in our lives. There is a void where there should be what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “juice and joy.” The heart grows cold; life loses its vitality. Our accomplishments seem meaningless. As Tolstoy wrote in his Confessions, “Nothing ahead except ruins.” We seem to be in the thick of the forest without a road. “What, then, must we do?” The long line of myths, legends, poetry, and stories throughout the world tell us that it is at that moment of darkness that the call comes. It arrives in various forms—an itch, a fever, an offer, a ringing, an inspiration, an idea, a voice, words in a book that seem to have been written just for us—or a knock. THE KNOCK The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away. I'm looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. —Robert Pirsig”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Yet the Lord pleads with you still: Ask where the good road is, the godly paths you used to walk in, in the days of long ago. Travel there, and you will find rest for your souls. —Jeremiah 6:16”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“For a journey without challenge, has no meaning; one without purpose, has no soul.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“The wandering French essayist Jacques Reda reminds himself before he leaves his Paris apartment every Sunday morning for his long strolls around the city to see one new thing. . . . he has learned to notice what others ignore.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“One of the ancient functions of pilgrimage is to wake us from our slumber.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“When life has lost its meaning, a pilgrim will risk everything to get back in touch with life. This is why relics, such as a tooth of the Buddha, the dried blood of Christ, or a Shakespeare folio, are objects that must be touched as an integral part of the pilgrimage. This is what the risk is for, the confirmation that the mystery exists at all in a modern world seemingly determined to undermine the sacred as mere superstition.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“What is sacred is what is worthy of our reverence, what evokes awe and wonder in the human heart, and what when contemplated transforms us utterly.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“The point of the pilgrimage,” as a Buddhist priest told the traveling author Oliver Statler on his journey around the Japanese island of Shikoku, “is to improve yourself by enduring and overcoming difficulties.” In other words, if the journey you have chosen is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“For those of us fascinated with the spiritual quest, the deepening of our journeys begins the moment we begin to ask what is sacred to us: architecture, history, music, books, nature, food, religious heritage, family history, the lives of saints, scholars, heroes, artists?”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“What legendary travelers have taught us since Pausanius and Marco Polo is that the art of travel is the art of seeing what is sacred.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Sitting there, sweating profusely in the jungle heat, monks to the left and monks to the right, I thought of that beautiful line by Albert Camus, who wrote that a man's life is nothing more than the rediscovery, through the detours of art, of those one or two images that first opened his heart.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Do the roads around your home seem altered, the food taste different, your everyday thoughts influenced by what you encountered on your pilgrimage? Much may seem changed, but the challenge now is to use the insights gathered on the road to see your everyday life as a pilgrimage. In ways like these, as Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “The path around our home is also the ground of awakening.” Remember again and again that the true pilgrimage is into the undiscovered land of your own imagination, which you could not have explored any other way than through these lands, with gratitude in your satchel and the compassion for all you see as your touchstone.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“In Joseph Campbell's popular book of essays Myths to Live By, he described something pertinent to our theme of sacred journeys: “The ultimate aim of the quest, if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“The Pilgrim's Law”: A soulful traveler replenishes the camp before moving on for those who will follow, and you must share whatever wisdom you've been blessed with on your journey with those who are about to set out on their own journey.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Imagine what the equivalents of a gracious arrival are for you. On the evening of your arrival, read from a sacred text that was written on the holy ground you stand upon. Write down something you want your grandchildren to remember you by. Leave behind an offering. Let your joy show. Savor the moment. Linger a while. Relish the idea that for now you are no longer a stranger in this world. Wonder about the saving grace that came your way. Remember that sacred places are those that eternity shines through, like sunlight through a rose window.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Leo Tolstoy was fond of an old eastern fable that describes the mysterious way that even tragedy lures us back to life. His story is about a traveler on the steppes who was surprised by a rampaging tiger. The traveler ran for his life, but the beast was gaining on him, so he leapt into a dried-up well, which roused a dragon that had been sleeping on the bottom. As the traveler fell, he was alert enough to grab on to a single, slim branch growing between the cracks of the bricks in the well. There he clung for his life—above him the tiger roaring, below him the dragon snapping its jaws. The traveler's arms grew tired, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the tiger swiped at him from above or he fell to his death. Stubbornly, he held on. The moment he began to hope for a way out, he noticed two mice, one black, one white, gnawing away at either side of the tender branch he clung to. His time was almost up. Surely, he would die soon. Then a glint of sunlight fell on the wall of the well. The traveler's eyes widened. There on the leaves of the bush were drops of honey. He felt a rush of happiness and with the few moments he had left, he calmly stretched out his tongue and tasted the precious honey. Imagine the time you have spent working your way through the labyrinth of your travels. What was chasing you? What stares up at you from below? Are there no drops of honey on the leaves right before your eyes?”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Nineteenth-century French poet Théophile Gautier illustrates this in his storied travels through Andalusia, recounted in Wanderings in Spain: Traveling becomes a reality, an action in which you take a part. In a diligence {coach} a man is no longer a man, he is but an inert object, a bale of goods, does not much differ from a portmanteau. He is thrown from one place to the other, and might as well stop at home. The pleasure of traveling consists in the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can any one find in an excursion, when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the ease and comfort which he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventures. Everything is so well arranged, so admirably combined, so plainly labeled, that chance is an utter impossibility; if we go on progressing, in this fashion, towards perfection for another century, every man will be able to foresee everything that will happen to him from the day of his birth to the day of his death. Humanity will be completely annihilated. There will be no more crimes, no more virtues, no more characters, no more originality. It will be impossible to distinguish a Russian from a Spaniard, an Englishman from a Chinese, or a Frenchman from an American. People will not even be able to recognize one another, for every one will be alike. An intense feeling of ennui will then take possession of the universe…. What is remarkable about this passage is Gautier's foresight into the plight of too many modern travelers: the washing out of cultural differences among nationalities, the overarching ennui of trendy cynicism, the lack of pleasure in a journey with no surprises. His remarks are a model for those trying to find a way to allow for synchronicity in their travels.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“THE FIVE EXCELLENT PRACTICES OF PILGRIMAGES Inspired by a fifth-century conversation between Zi Zhang and Confucius about the practices of wise rulers in The Analects, here are five excellent practices for travelers on sacred journeys: Practice the arts of attention and listening.
Practice renewing yourself every day.
Practice meandering toward the center of every place.
Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts.
Practice gratitude and praise-singing.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“Recall the words of Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, who writes, “We are impoverished in our longing and devoid of imagination when it comes to our reaching out to others.…We need to be introduced to our longings, because they guard our mystery.” Ask yourself what mystery is being guarded by your longing. Are you taking the time to find out? The time for this never appears; it is discovered.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

“In other words, if the journey you have chosen is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion.”
― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred