Like others on the hippie trail to India, I thought of myself as a traveler rather than a mere tourist, someone on an indeterminate quest rather than a journey with a prescribed beginning and end. Had I been asked what I was seeking, I doubt my answer would have been very coherent. I had no destination, either of the geographical or spiritual kind. I was simply “on the road,” in that anarchic and ecstatic sense celebrated by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other role models I revered at the time.
British Buddhist philosopher
Stephen Batchelor (born 7 April 1953) is a Scottish Buddhist author and teacher, known for his writings on Buddhist subjects and his leadership of meditation retreats worldwide. He is a noted proponent of agnostic or secular Buddhism.
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I enjoyed nothing more than simply being on the way to somewhere else. I was quite content to peer for hours through the grimy, grease-smeared windows of a rattling bus with cooped chickens in the aisle, observing farmers bent over as they toiled in fields, women carrying babies on their backs, barefoot children playing in the dust, old men seated in the shade smoking hookahs, and all the shabby little towns and villages at which we stopped for sweet tea and unleavened bread. Yet as soon as we entered the telltale suburban sprawl of the city of our destination, my stomach would contract and I would feel anxious and restless again. I did not want to stop. My craving to keep moving was like an addiction.