Three steps, one bow
Two monks, an 800-mile pilgrimage, and a lesson in humility.
A long time ago (well… 1977), two Buddhist monks decided to take a walk.
They set out to travel nearly 800 miles along the California coast—from downtown Los Angeles to a monastery, City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Northern California. But they were not simply going to walk the distance.
Their teacher had given them an instruction: If you want to understand humility, bow to every being you meet.
So they created a rhythm that would make forgetting it impossible. Three steps forward. Then a full bow, forehead touching the earth. Stand up. Three steps again. Another bow.
Three steps. One bow.
The monks, Heng Sure and Heng Chau, continued this practice along the highways and towns of California for almost three years. Every few weeks, they wrote letters to their teacher describing what was happening inside them.
One afternoon, a pickup truck sped past them. Someone leaned out of the window and splashed orange juice in their direction. It landed on their robes and the road around them before the truck disappeared down the highway. The monks stood up, took three steps forward, and bowed again.
Later, in a letter, one of them described the moment with a little humour: “We received an offering of orange juice without the benefit of a cup!”
More than 20 years later, reflecting on the pilgrimage in one gathering, Heng Sure said, “When you’re bowing, everything is in a different time.”
At the start of their journey, they were told to be on the road as if they had never left the monastery. And when they returned, they were told to be in the monastery as if they had never left the road.
As Heng Chau once put it: “There are many ways of bowing. You’ve got to be creative.”
Maybe the monks weren’t trying to reach a monastery at all. Maybe they were simply practicing how to move through the world without forgetting the ground.
And maybe we all could use a little of that too.
Bowing down,
Project FUEL
PS: The collection of letters they wrote during this time to their teacher Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua, is republished as Highway Dharma Letters, a fascinating glimpse at their external journey up the coast and their internal journey towards transformation.