From what path do we talk about after all as there are so many either in East and in West, even though not traditionally in the last one? In this forum we deal with the Path of Periegesis and its seekers, the "periegetas" or peregrines. For us, however, it is simply the Path, as peregrine it is what we call conscience, the "non being" whose intention is to return to the Absolute Principle. To do so, they use the procedures and "non-procedures" taught and demonstrated by the Paragons, the immanent or transcendent ideal peregrines, their "mentors" and "models of excellence". The main practice of the Path is the "pilgrimage", or conscious walking towards the Principle, which is quite different from just traveling to "holy places".
That is what the traditional peregrines do, or the searching for "powerful places" from certain explorers we know about, since both do that as conditioned beings or selves. Traditionally, it is accomplished in a religious context, be it a Christian one or any other. As we consider that religion exists for the crowd inside the society, contrary to the paths that exist to be traveled by non-selves that are beyond the social level, these two motions are unlike and almost exclusive. They are not entirely so only because since long ago the great religions have remained anterooms to inner paths that sprouted and grew up being more or less (in major or minor degree) perceived and accepted as religious manifestations.
Such as the Catharism and Gnostic Movement inside Christianity, the Sufism inside the Islamism, the cabala and the Hasidim inside Judaism, the so-called "inner paths" that branched from the Buddhism and Hinduism, aside from many others based either in official religions or not. However, the peregrination has other meaning more used among us that is revealing the returning path to the Origin. Besides, there are many elective practices pertinent to the Path, as well as the so called non-practices. Actually, the consciousness of the paragon, the messenger from the Higher Order, does not require any practice to be whole here and now. Let us search for the Higher Order and find out its consciousness level!
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A Zen Story:
Once, a long time ago, there was a wise Zen master. People from far and near would seek his counsel and ask for his wisdom. Many would come and ask him to teach them, enlighten them in the way of Zen. He seldom turned any away. One day an important man, a man used to command and obedience, came to visit the master. “I have come today to ask you to teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The tone of the important man’s voice was one used to getting his own way. The Zen master smiled and said that they should discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the tea was served, the master poured his visitor a cup. He poured, and he poured, and the tea rose to the rim and began to spill over the table and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. Finally the visitor shouted, “Enough. You are spilling the tea all over. Can’t you see the cup is full?” The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest. “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”
* The correlative term in Portuguese is “paragão”. That is the native language of these peregrines, but such a term is not widespread at all. We do not use it in the Path because it has different meanings; those of similarity, resemblance or comparison between beings, things or ideas; confrontation. And yet because in the sense of a model, according to the Houaiss Dictionary, it is unspecific and means only a type that can be reproduced. Therefore, we borrowed the English term with a Latin ending in the same sense, "paragom", which the proper plural is "paragons" as well, but both with the stress in the last syllable unlike in English. This neologism has the undeniable advantage of being malleable and therefore more useful to our aims.