SIMPLICITY – Traveling Light

“How much should I carry with me?” is the quintessential question for any journey, especially the journey of life.

Twelve hundred years ago in China a middle-aged man named P’ang Yun loaded everything he owned onto a boat and sank it all in the Ting-t’ing Lake. After that, we are told, “he lived like a single leaf.”

See him there in the early morning, treading water in the middle of the lake, watching the last bubbles rise from the depths. The air crisp and quiet. The lake misty and as still as sky. Then turning, stroking toward the shore.

Traveling light - imagine this meaning: unencumbered journeying, a graceful way of traveling through life like a single leaf. Now imagine another: the light by which we journey, the light that shows the way. Our traveling Light.

What would it mean to live like a single leaf? What would it mean to make one's life a journey of simplicity? a journey unencumbered, uncluttered, without distraction - a journey of focus and intention? a journey of lightness and light?

In 1889, at age 17, my grandfather left family and friends in Sweden and sailed to America. He packed all his worldly goods in a small wooden chest. Today I have that chest near my writing desk. Its wooden slats weave around a rectangular frame; the hinged lid curves upward. The wood itself, now broken in places, has darkened.

Pondering this old chest, I see a young farm boy , fear and adventure in his eyes, setting inside all but the essential as he packs for his journey, summoning from within himself a quiet simplcity. I watch him board a boat in the early morning mist and launch into the deep.

I have not traveled much myself, but I do keep some handsome suitcase in my attic. Also two backpacks and three knacksacks, a duffel bag, a briefcase, several tote bags, a canvas rucksack, an ash-woven pack basket, three sleeping bag, and a tent or two. Looking at my grandfather's wooden chest, I realize it could not possibly hold everything I now require for a summer picnic. And unlike P'ang Yun, I cannot imagine where I would find a boat large enough to row all I own to the middle of some lake. Evidently, I intend to keep my worldly goods very much afloat.

Why? Do the lack the necessary lightness? the neccessary Light?


“We take delight in things; we take delight in being loosed from things. Between the two delights, we must dance our lives”


Taken from Journeys of Simplicity by Philip Harnden.