Walking is indeed a lost art, and its loss has contributed not a little to the erosion both of our natural surroundings and our own inner nature. The former is seen nowadays, more often than not from air conditioned iron cages though bulletproof glass windows whizzing along at breakneck speed, as more of a nuisance, an impediment even, between our jail-house at point A and the executioner’s chair at point B. As to the latter, the pure state of the balanced mind, it has become like a myth, a legend of times gone by. And for he who wonders why, the old adage of wrapping rotten fish up in a leaf – “the leaf stinks just as much.” We are not the island we think, and our rotten surroundings have rotted our hearts as well.
This all comes on a morning almsround, walking 7 km, a short jaunt, certainly, but I am capable of little more these days. Perhaps one day I will be fit, as Thoreau says, to walk – at least I have a good start:
It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps.
…
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again–if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man–then you are ready for a walk.
Yuttadhammo