Shikoku. A Pilgrimage from Maturity to Old Age.

By Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

Espinosa Rugarcia decided to prepare herself for the transition with wisdom between adulthood and old age. With this aim, she made a deep inner journey, backed by a pilgrimage to Buddhist monasteries in Shikoku, Japan. She describes the existential preparations that she carried out resorting to past and present episodes for projecting the future that she aspires to build day by day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DEMAC A.C.
• Release date: Oct 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311968036

Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía currently heads the Center for Women’s Studies and Documentation (Spanish initials DEMAC, www.demac.org.mx). Its prime objective to stimulate the written expression of Mexican and Latin American women through DEMAC Awards For Women Who Dare to Tell Their Story® and to publish and present the best biography and autobiography. Amparo is also President of the Espinosa Rugarcía Foundation, member of the Board of the Espinosa Yglesias Research Center and an avid entrepreneur and business woman. Doctorate in Human Development by the Ibero-American University and doctorate in Psychoanalysis by the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis. Her extensive fields of study include theology, research on moral development on children, divorce and the search of authenticity in middle-aged women. Some of her publications include There Was Once My Family (1980), Words of a Woman (1990), Survival Guide for Women (1992), Mountain Carvers (1998), The Last Call to Heroism (1999), Shikoku. A Pilgrimage from Maturity to Old Age (2002). She lives in Mexico but has lived in the United Kingdom and Germany where she learned English and German. She is a very proud mother of one daughter and two sons and very happy grandmother of two granddaughters and three grandchildren. - Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía fundó y dirige Documentación y Estudios de Mujeres, A.C. y la empresa Promecasa. Es presidenta de la Fundación Espinosa Rugarcía y miembro del Comité Directivo del Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias. Tiene una maestría y doctorado en Desarrollo Humano por la Universidad Iberoamericana, donde también ha tomado cursos de teología, y es doctora en Psicoanálisis por el Instituto Mexicano de Psicoanálisis, A.C. Ha realizado investigaciones sobre el desarrollo moral en niños y sobre el divorcio y la búsqueda de autenticidad en mujeres de mediana edad. Entre sus publicaciones: Había un vez mi familia (1980), Palabras de mujer (1990), Manual de supervivencia para la mujer (1992), Talladoras de montaña (1998), Última llamada al heroísmo (1999), Shikoku. Peregrinaje de la madurez a la vejez (2002). Tiene una hija, dos hijos, tres nietas y dos nietos.

Book preview

Shikoku

A Pilgrimage from Maturity to Old Age

Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

First English Edition, 2015

First Spanish Edition, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by:

AMPARO ESPINOSA RUGARCÍA

José de Teresa No. 253, col. Campestre,

Del. Álvaro Obregón, 01040, México, D. F.

This edition and its features are the property of

DOCUMENTACIÓN Y ESTUDIOS DE MUJERES, A.C.

José de Teresa No. 253, col. Campestre,

Del. Álvaro Obregón, 01040, México, D. F.

©Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

First e-book published through Smashwords for DEMAC. A.C. by 3Ecrans SAPI de CV.

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PH, Bosques de las Lomas

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Translated by Robert A. Haas.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage, information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

First station

Second station

Third station

Fourth station

Fifth station

Sixth station

Seventh station

Eighth station

Ninth station

Tenth station

Eleventh station

Twelfth station

Thirteenth station

Fourteenth station

Fifteenth station

Sixteenth station

Seventeenth station

Epilogue

To my daughter Amparín, and my sons Julio and Manuel,

and to my daughter-in-law Paty and my son-in-law David,

so that you always adhere to the pilgrim’s slogan

and you only retain what you love.

To Manuel, also, for his faith in Shikoku.

To Yiya, because she taught us to love unconditionally.

INTRODUCTION

The day I celebrated my birthday number sixty, at the moment of blowing off the candles of the imperative Sanborn’s cake, I made up my mind: I would mark the beginning of the my life’s last stage with a pilgrimage to Shikoku.

Some days before our first trip to Japan with my family, some months before my birthday, I found out that there was an island called Shikoku that had eighty Buddhist monasteries arranged in a course that Japanese go over in pilgrimage for more than one thousand years in anticipation of old age. In some moment, I thought of including in our trip a visit to that island. But our departure was already imminent and we only had ten days left. Moreover, if for my daughter, my two sons, my daughter-in-law and me, that experience seemed physically feasible, for my granddaughters Amparo Alexia and Camila, five and seven years old respectively, it seemed excessive. They were too young to behave with the solemnity required by a pilgrimage such as that of Shikoku which, now I know it, destiny had in store only for me.

I know that it is impossible to predict how many years we will live, but there are people who say that we can make a fairly close calculation. I descend from a long-lived family where reaching a century is nothing extraordinary and, besides, there is the natural increase in the life expectancy of Mexican women. Although I cannot guarantee it, at my sixty years of age maybe I can aspire to another fifteen or twenty years on this land. Anyhow, there is something I’m sure of: no matter how many years they will be, they will be my last chance of squeezing out life and spill its juices at my leisure. I want to hand over to death only my skeleton.

There was some time since I had already begun to say goodbye to an ego who was crying out for retirement. Routines, activities and relationships that had defined me for years, seemed only transient incidents more or less picturesque in the light of my sixth decade. Preserved in photos of faces and different scenarios, I had been storing them ritually, in albums that I keep in my library, in case the passage of time makes me doubt their veracity. At the time, they were glorious. But it was time to hand over the space they had occupied for years in the country of my days, to other activities, to other routines, to other relationships more in accord to my new ego engendered as of my last menstrual period and whose imminent birth was announced by the peace I felt when I stood up off my chair, solemnly, to blow off, with some nostalgia and a lot of expectation , the candles on a cake covered with meringue and topped with two thick candles in the form of a six and a zero where, as I use to, I placed my ring to wish myself luck before blowing them out.

When he turned forty-five years old, Montaigne said that time had arrived to think about death. During fifteen years I turned a deaf ear to the call of the famous essayist, but my time was running out. I could not delay the start of a task that I would carry out at my own pace or forced by the nearness of the end, but inevitably. Life was inviting me to tackle it with a pilgrimage and I could not disregard its offer.

I had to prepare my trip to Japan with delicacy, according to the venerability implicit in the mission of revering and welcoming the turning point that would seal for the whole eternity my amazing, my bloodcurdling, my wonderful passage through this planet. One way to do it was by initiating the adventure before leaving Mexico through brief visits to earlier stages of my life: to places, characters and readings which still were part of my conscious story. I would fill the spiritual luggage that I would carry to Shikoku with my most tenacious memories: those which, for some mysterious reason, were not yet reduced to one page of any of my albums, and were determined to be part of a today not belonging to them anymore. If these memories accompanied me through the monastic circuit of the smallest of the Japanese islands, perhaps they would disclose me the reasons for their stubborn presence; if, on the other hand, they insisted on upholding their secrecy, I would ask them to at least describe me in detail anecdotes of my biography that are unclear to me so that I could record them, with my best handwriting, in some hardcover notebook that I use as diaries. To do an existential assessment, without mercy and with honesty, requires a precise accounting that must be recorded beautifully and in writing. I was determined to start my final stage with a very clear vision of my performance as a human being. Only that way I would squeeze to the last drop each of the years that I might still have to live as I yearned to do so and thus say good-bye in peace.

The great pilgrimage to Shikoku entails visiting all the temples clockwise. I knew, before I started my visit, that in this first approach it would be impossible for me to fulfill to the letter this and all the other requirements. Some temples are very far from highways and the time that I had was scarce, as usual. Even before leaving I was facing one of my most deep-rooted traits that at times seem a virtue and others one of my worst vices: my perpetual rush, a hyperactivity that almost accompanies me since I was born. Would it be a typical feature that I would have to moderate in the future?

I didn’t know any Mexican who had made the Shikoku pilgrimage, so I resorted to Laura, my usual travel agent, for information. She didn’t know anything about this island either, so she called Luisa Fernanda, a friend of hers specializing in itineraries to the Far East, and asked her to help her organizing my trip. She also requested her to talk to me. The meeting between Luisa