Zen master Shimon entered the hall and address the monk saying, all of you put your staffs over your shoulder and go traveling, leaving one monastery and traveling to the next. How many different types of monasteries do you say there are? It's either a sandalwood monastery surrounded by sandalwood, or it's a thistle monastery surrounded by thistles. Or it could be a fissile monastery surrounded by sandalwood, or a sandalwood monastery, surrounded by thistles. Of these four types of monasteries, in which type is each of you willing to spend your life if you don't find a place to pass your life securely, then you're just wearing out your sandals for no reason. And eventually, the day will come when the King of Hell will take away all of your sandal money. In Chinese mythology, the King of Hell judges the the feet of the dead. And here's Shimon is referring to a habit that apparently sung monks had of going from one temple to another, touring the country, meeting people checking them out, comparing and contrasting various teachers. You know, of course, pilgrimages are not inherently bad, they can be deeply enriching to one's practice. But if you're just traveling around to see the sights, which is what Jim is talking about, one can see that it's not genuine practice. Perhaps it's an avoidance strategy. It's looking outward, rather than inward. And there are probably some current day Zen practitioners who do the same, they might hop around from Zen Center to Zen Center, checking them out. And a variation of the scenario could be finding ways to distract ourselves and keep busy. With no time to settle down, no time to sit and do the work. always on the go. Filling our lives with stuff to do. Places to be boxes, to check off on one's bucket list. Netflix episodes to watch And we can see this kind of behavior as an escape mechanism.