The Nomadic Alternative – Page 186

From luxury plus the monotonous rhythm of the walk effectively

dissolve the ego. Necessity, not the rational will, drives the
dervish on his travels. Not he but some unseen force propels his
legs. And the Kashf al-Mahjub also makes it quite clear where the
vehicle of poverty is going. "When his affairs are freed from the
bonds of acquisition, then he is the Way, not the wayfarer." "The
dervish", says the commentary, "is a place over which something is
passing, not a wayfarer following his own free will."

The Indian subcontinent is a reservoir of ecstatic techniques,

and five verses of the Aitareya Brahmana explain, perhaps as no
other text, the concept of terrestrial locomotion as a vehicle to
enlightenment. Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy* said they are the verses of
a pilgrim song and likened them to the refrains that wayfarers sang
on the roads to the shrine of St. James at Compostella. The verses
exhort Rohita, a young Indian householder, to make a 'great going
forth' from home and travel. Only by wandering in the world will
he escape the painful mortality to which he has been dedicated
since birth. Indra, the god of the weather, offers to guide the
traveller along the road. Rohita's name, even, derives from the
Sanskrit meaning to 'burn' or 'blaze' and is synonymous with the
perpetual flame of the sun. Cara-eva - "Keep on going!" chants the
refrain. The traveller, Rohita, is a revolutionary, like Nietzsche's
"wheel rolling of itself" or tireless as the sun on its course -
"the Red Bird that has no nest".

In Indian thought the nest signifies home, a family and possess-
ions. Rohita must forego them. His aim is to be a vidvan or seer -
one whose knowledge of all things is absolute - by taking to the
road and becoming a parivrājika ('poor man going') as opposed to a
settled forest anchorite, gradually dissolving his attachments to

*Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Pilgrim's Way, in "The Journal of the
Bihar and Orissa Oriental Research Society", XXIII, 1937, pt. 4, pp. 1-29.