THERE IS NOTHING COMPARABLE TO ONE WHO IS AWAKENED.
“DO YOU HAVE A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE?”
Of the many questions I expected a psychiatrist might ask me, I hadn’t expected that one.
I was in his office seeking help for my depression, anxiety, and irritability. For more than a year I’d been struggling with some of my personal relationships, but most especially with my wife Shana and our young sons, who are 8 and 5. I could go from calm to explosive almost as quickly as a firecracker. My boys thought me angry, sometimes mean. Shana and I had been distant for months; I couldn’t recall the last time we’d kissed.
At 53, I had already been through four depressive episodes. I had always resisted taking medication, wanting to feel the full range of my emotions. But with the wellbeing of three other people at stake, I was open to seeing if I could be medicated into a more placid version of myself.
Before I had a chance to stop blinking, the psychiatrist elaborated, asking if I was a member of a religion and went to church, or if perhaps I meditated. He explained he was simply curious to know what sort of outlet I might have.
“Yes, I do.”
I drew a deep breath, and explained: it was the bicycle. The only people who ever understand such a statement are cyclists.
More and more, we know that repetitive movement – activities such as knitting, bread kneading, and drumming – can help people achieve a meditative state and stillness of mind. Meditation is meant to wake us, to drive our attention into the present. Nothing in my life has done this as well as the rhythmic motion of pedalling. Yes, I have a spiritual practice.
I gave him that workable answer, and in turn, I suppose he gave me one as well. I walked out of that office with a prescription for the antidepressant Wellbutrin.
What I didn’t mention was that I was going deep on this idea, that I was already planning a bike tour with a religious underpinning. A month earlier, my friend and former teammate Eric Romney had asked if I wanted to come along on a 10-day reconnaissance of Shikoku, the smallest of the four major islands in the Japanese archipelago. Eric had been living in Japan for the past eight years, and leading bike tours on the island of Kyushu. He was scouting Shikoku for a possible new itinerary
for his guiding company, Japan Cycling Tours.
Shikoku is home to more than 100 Buddhist temples, and a pilgrimage that goes back more than 1 200 years. The pilgrimage is a tradition in Shingon Buddhism, an esoteric sect of the religion, in which Buddhist seekers called henro walk more than 1 200km around the island – it takes most about six weeks – to visit 88 of these temples. The objective is to achieve enlightenment and eventually nirvana, the ultimate goal of Buddhism, a state in which one is released from worldly suffering and desire.
When I learned this, the trip seemed like just what I needed – a spiritual pilgrimage of my own. I understood that central tenets of Buddhism include the principles of serenity and acceptance. These qualities were attractive to me. A calmer, more centred me could make me a better partner, a better parent.
We decided to follow the Buddhist pilgrimage as closely as possible. We wouldn’t hit all 88 temples – that would involve too much urban riding to be enjoyable – but we could stick to the general route, taking the best roads for cycling and detouring from them to visit temples when it made sense. Eric Romney’s then-fiancée (now wife) Soco Kitamura would drive support for us. My friend Eric Smith, a radiologist in his 40s, would tag along, wanting to expand his understanding of Japan. I looked forward to an experience that would take me out of myself, help to exorcise some of my demons. And riding in a place so relatively unaffected by Western influences seemed as far from my life as I could imagine.