Update: In the previous episode, Robert Sibley had a brush with Zen (or was it hallucination?) at a small temple near Komatsu as he finished his sixth week on the pilgrimage trail.

I wandered through the garden of the Buddhas. There were hundreds of them at Unpenji Temple: Concrete statues symbolizing the infinite dimensions of human nature. The life-sized figures lined the pathways around the temple halls, clustered in groups in the corners of the courtyard, lurked half-hidden in the forest, formed phalanxes around the pagodas and prayer shrines. It was oddly disturbing to confront the massed ranks of statuary.

My companions and I -- Shuji Niwano and his 25-year-old son Jun and Yukuo Tanaka -- reached Temple 66 one misty morning about a week before we completed our two-month trek along the Shikoku no Michi, the ancient pilgrimage path that follows the legendary footsteps of the Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi. The route takes in 88 temples strung like prayer beads around the island of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. Unpenji, at 1,000 metres above sea level, is the highest temple on the circuit. From the Temple of the Hovering Clouds, you can look out across the surrounding mountains in all directions toward three of Shikoku's four prefectures, Tokushima, Ehime and Kagawa.

But Unpenji's is best known for its garden of statuary. They represent the myriad manifestations, good and bad, of the human

psyche in its struggles to attain wisdom. The collection is dominated by 500 rakkan, disciples of Buddha who have through their meditative and spiritual efforts achieved enlightenment, the knowledge of their true mind. It is said that if you study the rakkan closely you will find your own true face.

We performed our pilgrim rituals and got our nokyo-chos stamped and then found a spot under the eaves of the temple to eat lunch out of the drizzling rain. Afterwards, while my companions rested -- it had been a hard climb to Temple 66 -- I wandered among the rakkan, studying the faces. It was hypnotic and unsettling.

After seven weeks on the Henro Michi, as the pilgrimage is traditionally called, I was settled into pilgrim existence. I sometimes felt I could walk forever. Psychologically, too, I had received everything I hoped for in undertaking the pilgrimage. A couple of days earlier, at a small temple near Komatsu, I experienced what I can only describe as a sharp sense of being there, a feeling of abiding stillness into which, for a brief eternity, I -- or my chattering ego -- disappeared. That feeling of harmony had stayed with me. But now, walking amongst the statues, my sense of quietude weakened.

I saw joy and laughter, care and compassion on the stone faces. There was love and longing, serenity and wisdom. But there were other faces, too, faces you encounter in the dark alleys of the subconscious. Lips curled in a snarl of hate, eyes wide with fear, mouths stretched in a rictus of horror. I was walking through a gallery-in-stone of human psychology: Love and compassion, yes, but also greed, lust, jealousy, envy, despair and rage. I was dismayed at how readily I recognized the nightmare faces. Looking down a pathway lined on each side with sculpted armies, I imagined all that psychic energy cracking free of the stone in an orgy of slaughter. It was not a vision I wanted for my pilgrimage. But then the path to Buddha-hood is not necessarily pleasant.

Shuji restored something of my earlier equilibrium when I returned to the temple courtyard. He showed me a small stone monument commemorating a visit to Unpenji in 1939 by the poet Taneda Santoka, who died in 1940 at the age of 57 after a tragedy-filled life. When he was 11, his mother committed suicide by jumping down a well. At the age of 43, after a failed marriage and a botched suicide attempt (somebody pulled him from the path of a train), he was ordained as a Soto Zen monk. He spent the rest of his life wandering Japan as a mendicant. He kept a diary of his travels and wrote haiku that is now much admired. One critic describes his poems as "fragments of experience," singular moments of attention so sharp and poignant the banal becomes profound and the insignificant extraordinary.

In one of his diaries, Santoka explained his wanderlust: "I go on a wandering pilgrimage feeling disillusion at the bottom of my heart. I keep walking. I may be nothing but a beggar, drifting like a floating weed from this shore to that shore, but I enjoy wandering and I can't stop myself. I sometimes pity myself but I also enjoy and feel pride in this wretched tranquillity."

I knew Santoka's poetry, but had no idea he'd been a Shikoku pilgrim. I thanked Shuji for showing me the monument, pleased at the serendipity of encountering the poet in such place. "You will have to write hokku no haikai for your visit, too," I said to Shuji. I often saw him writing haiku in his journal and once expressed the wish to read them. He'd smiled shyly and said, "I am only amateur."

Gazing around the compound at the grey-tile roofs, shiny from the morning rain, the mist clinging to the tops of trees on the slopes behind the temple, I imagined the poet standing here 65 years ago. I wondered if he had any foreshadowing of his death a few months later. I remembered one of his haiku:

It's drizzling.

Here I am,

Still alive.

The poem seemed to fit the moment, letting me push away the images in the garden of the Buddhas.

After Temple 66, the remaining 22 tem-ples of the Shikoku no Michi come in clusters. On some days we visited three, four or more temples. Inevitably, they blurred into one another. This shifted the psychology of the pilgrimage. Not only did it seem to speed up as we counted off several temples each day, but we started to focus on reaching the end.

I didn't like this shift. I felt the pilgrim-mindedness I had acquired during the long weeks of walking slipping away. I did not want that sense of thereness I had attained to fade. I did not want the pilgrimage to end just as I was feeling like a real pilgrim.

We were also plagued by small annoyances. The sunshine surrendered to on-and-off cloudbursts. Tanaka's right ankle gave him trouble again. Shuji had more difficulties with Jun, either getting him moving in the mornings or keeping him walking. I sometimes walked with Jun, cajoling him with the mantra of "no excuses, no complaints, just keep walking." I made him give me more language lessons. It worked for a few kilometres, but then he would complain about wanting a break. I worried that Jun's "condition" was dragging Shuji down. I told Tanaka-san I was worried Shuji might quit so close to the end because of Jun.

"That would be bad karma," he said.

Karma is a Sanskrit word used in Buddhism to refer to a person's fate as it has accumulated through successive reincarnations. Karma refers to the notion that every action has consequences, rebounding to the person most associated with the behaviour.

"Problems develop when one fails to take heed of the spiritual repercussions of one's actions," says anthropologist Ian Reader, pointing out that many Japanese believe modern medicine and psychiatry are inadequate because they don't acknowledge that the "root cause" of many psychological maladies "is located in the spiritual realm." Worse, karma can be transmitted across generations and needs to be expiated by rituals such as prayer, acts of purification and pilgrimage. "Karma is inherited," Reader says, and the task facing the individual in overcoming "spiritual impediments" is karumu o kiru, or "cutting one's karma."

Is that what Shuji was doing? Was his pilgrimage an attempt to cut his karmic cord? It seemed a nonsensical notion. I'd been raised to believe we inherit DNA from our parents, not their spiritual misdeeds. Mental illness is the product of chemical imbalances in the brain or socially induced psychological trauma, not the product of spiritual neglect, irritated ancestors or beyond-the-grave guilt. But it hardly mattered what I thought. What did Shuji believe?

When I met Shuji and Jun in the first days of my pilgrimage, neither dressed nor conducted themselves as spiritually motivated pilgrims. But now, 1,000 kilometres later, Shuji at least was decked out in henro garb and diligent in performing the temple rituals and chanting the Hannya Shingyo, the Heart Sutra, that encapsulates the essence of Buddhist teaching. Had Shuji's pilgrimage awakened him to his karmic burden?

The day after Unpenji, we visited four temples, following the path along the Saita River before cutting across a plain of rice fields, vegetable farms and quiet back roads to Iyadaniji, Temple 71. The following day we hiked 25 kilometres and arrived at six temples, thinking we'd call it quits at Doryuji, Temple 77, and stay the night at the Plaza Hotel in Marugame. It was a day I would rather forget. Tanaka-san's foot was giving him pain, so he decided to take a taxi from Temple 77 to the hotel. I was tempted to go with him, but Shuji, if not Jun, was committed to walking as much as he could. It might have been better if we had cheated.

It was late afternoon by the time we got to Temple 77. We still had five kilometres to tramp along Highway 21 to reach the hotel. We were tired and sweaty, but Jun was walking slower and slower, stopping for his cigarette breaks. Which is probably why Shuji and I got too far ahead of him and weren't aware of anything wrong until a police car pulled up beside us.

I had a moment of panic, thinking something had happened to my family. But then I saw Jun in the backseat. The police officers, two hefty men in dark suits, got out of the car and approached Shuji. As they talked -- I didn't understand what was said, of course -- Shuji seemed to shrink. His shoulders slumped and weariness pulled at his long face. He leaned in the window to talk to Jun. When he stepped away he said something to the police and then to me.

"Sumimasen, Sibley-san," he said. "I am sorry. Please, you go to the hotel. Jun has made some trouble. I must go to keisatsusho."

I recognized the word for police station. Shuji was embarrassed and ashamed. That was plain to see. But most of all I saw his sadness, as though he realized that his hopes for the pilgrimage had come to nothing.

After I found the Plaza Hotel and checked in, I knocked on Tanaka-san's door to tell him what happened.

Later, I was sprawled on the futon reading the haiku in Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior when Shuji, accompanied by Tanaka-san, knocked on my door. Shuji had a cut above his left eye, and a scrape on his right cheek. Shuji, Tanaka-san said, wanted to apologize for what happened. He also wanted my advice. I insisted on treating Shuji's cuts with iodine and bandages from my kit before we talked. It gave me a chance to tamp my anger.

With Tanaka-san translating, Shuji explained that Jun had walked into a convenience store when we were out of sight, grabbed snacks and walked out shouting o-settai. The store clerk didn't agree the goods were a pilgrim donation and phoned the police. Shuji had spent the past few hours apologizing to the clerk, paying for the snacks and explaining Jun's "condition" to the police. When they got to the hotel, Jun wanted to find a restaurant. Shuji said they would eat in their room. Jun started shouting, hit Shuji and ran out. Jun apologized when he returned, but Shuji phoned his wife. She thought they should quit the pilgrimage.

"Shuji would like your view on this matter," Tanaka-san said.

What advice could I give? My first impulse was to belt Jun. I was even tempted to suggest Shuji charge him with assault. When I first began walking with them, Shuji told me Jun had never fully recovered from a nervous collapse when he was in school. He often refused to leave the house or, sometimes, even his room.

One of the odder phenomena of contemporary Japan is hikikomori, or "social withdrawal." Hundreds of thousands of young men and women have rejected joining society, refusing to get jobs, go to school or even leave their homes. Novelist Ryu Murakami calls them "Japan's Lost Generation." I prefer sociologist Masahiro Yamada's term, "parasite singles." Millions of young Japanese -- 60 per cent of men and 80 per cent of women -- between the ages of 20 and 34 continue to live with their parents for a much longer time than in earlier generations, he writes in The Age of Parasite Singles.

Yamada says that Japan's economic slump during the 1990s is partially to blame for the indolence of the young. At the same time, though, they couldn't afford to be socially withdrawn if mom and dad didn't have the money to keep them in the luxury to which they've become accustomed -- cars, mobile phones, computers.

Jun fit the hikikomori profile in some ways, but not in others. For one thing, he was gregarious, often desperately so. And his impulsiveness struck me as more emotional immaturity than social pathology. Besides, he could also be bright, funny and friendly. He was always offering me food or drink.

Yet, one night several weeks after meeting Shuji and Jun, as we celebrated reaching the halfway point on the pilgrimage with a bottle of shochu, Shuji, in a moment of candour or out of some desperate need to share his burden, told us about Jun's occasional violent attacks on his younger brother. His wife was afraid of Jun. Shuji feared for the future as he and his wife grew older. He had hoped the rigors of the pilgrimage would help Jun regain a sense of self-worth, but he had also taken Jun on the walk because his wife could no longer deal with his behaviour. Shuji wept as he confessed to sometimes thinking of killing his son, and how he prayed to be forgiven for such thoughts.

Facing Shuji now, I had no solutions, no cure. I only knew that he had to complete the pilgrimage. "You must keep walking," I said. "You will be unhappy if you don't finish after having gone so far. And Jun needs to finish, too. Maybe it can still help him."

Tanaka-san translated, and Shuji nodded as if in agreement.

"But Jun must apologize to you, in front of all of us," I said.

I wasn't sure I believed what I was saying. I had grown used to Jun's acts of contrition, how he would apologize for some impulsive act, but then do something similar the next day. Jun, I thought, used his "condition" to avoid taking responsibility for himself. Maybe the "parasite" label applied to Jun. Maybe not. Maybe I was too harsh in my judgment. When I returned home I described Jun's behaviour to a psychiatrist, especially his impulsiveness and apparent inability to learn from his mistakes. The psychiatrist speculated Jun's "condition" might be more biological than cultural. Jun may have been suffering a form of psychosis as a result of inadequate brain development.

Perhaps, but for some reason he seemed to respond to my cajoling. After we had been together for several weeks, he often looked to me for approval before acting, especially his habit of running up to every dog or child we encountered or lighting a cigarette at every momentary pause in the hike. Both Shuji and Tanaka-san remarked on Jun's apparent willingness to do as I urged. Maybe that's why I thought my advice not unreasonable: Both Shuji and Jun had to complete the pilgrimage for their own sakes. To quit so close to the end would erase whatever they had accomplished.

Tanaka-san and Shuji talked amongst themselves. Then Tanaka-san said, "I have told Shuji I think you are right. I said he is close to the end and it would be a disappointment for him not to finish. I said we would help him with Jun."

"Will Jun apologize to his father?"

"He already has," Tanaka-san said.

"Jun needs to apologize to us, too, be-cause ... " I paused until I remembered the Japanese word wa. The concept of wa, or "the harmony of the group," is rooted in Confucian morality that Japan inherited from China 1,400 years ago. Wa privileges good relations with others over notions of individual self-assertion. It's not that the Japanese deny individuality; rather, they recognize that individuality depends on relationships. Without others, there is no self. Wa is the glue that gives Japanese society its sense of cohesion. "Jun has disturbed our harmony," I said.

Tanaka-san went down the hall to get Jun. When they returned, I offered Jun a beer. He sat on the tatami looking abashed, almost fearful. I wasn't sure if he was genuinely regretful of his behaviour or merely sorry he'd been caught. I was also flummoxed by the situation: What was I, a gaikokujin, an out-of-country person, doing offering advice on the domestic problems of a Japanese family? I just wanted to be a pilgrim, enjoy the scenery and indulge in a few minor epiphanies. Instead, I was pretending to wisdom I didn't possess. I wasn't that good at maintaining harmony in my own life. Nevertheless, by some bizarre twist of fate -- karma? -- I was sharing my pilgrimage with three people who thought I could help.

No doubt, Kobo Daishi would have offered wise counsel. The best I could do was tell Jun that Tanaka-san and I couldn't walk with him if he did not apologize to his father and to us. I think Jun got most of it in English, but Tanaka-san translated anyway. Jun seemed shocked. I had the feeling no adult had ever threatened him with the consequences of his actions. He protested that he'd already apologized to his father.

"Not good enough," I said. "We are all pilgrims together. You have to apologize to all of us."

Jun asked for another beer. I shook my head. We waited. Finally, looking at the floor, Jun apologized to Tanaka-san and me.

"Your father, too," I said. "He is your father and you must honour him."

Jun didn't stand to bow, but he looked at Shuji and bent his head and said, "Sumimasen, otosan." "I am sorry, father."

Was he sincere? I'd like to think so. During the next few days, he walked without complaint. There was a curb on impulsiveness. He even joined his father a few times in performing temple prayers. It made the last days of our pilgrimage more enjoyable than they otherwise might have been.