since 23 April 2026
WalkingTemple.
A street, a song, an evening. The remembrance of God, for once, comes looking for you.
since 23 April 2026
A street, a song, an evening. The remembrance of God, for once, comes looking for you.
when moved
from the first walk · Bangalore · 23.04.2026
why the form walks
हृदयीं वसे विठ्ठल
A temple is a place we go when we remember to. Most days we do not remember. The city is too quick, the evening too short, and by the hour for temple the body is already tired.
The walking temple is the opposite gesture. The form (a small garlanded murti, a few singers, an hour of slow walking) moves through the street toward whoever happens, that evening, to be there. The walk does not interrupt the city. It passes through the city at a slower clock, with the Name. So the remembrance of God, which does not depend on a building, can find a person on the way home.
And the form is not the destination either. The form is a doorway. The destination is the same one Tukaram kept pointing at as he walked. Three centuries later, Ramana pointed at it again from the other side: the temple inside the chest, the small lit room behind the breath, where the formless lives. The antaryāmin. The Self. The Beloved by every name.
The tarpa dance · Warli wall painting
A musician at the centre. The dancers move in a circle around him, never turning their backs to the tarpa. The earliest form of devotional procession recorded on the walls of this country.
Wikimedia Commons · public domain
A walking temple · Bangalore, 23 April 2026
A small group in white, standing barefoot in a circle in front of the temple at night. A woman at the centre holds Vitthala-Rukmini. The hands have come together; the Name has come down to a hum. The same shape, in this century’s clothes.
from the first journal entry
seven doors
Folio I · 23.04.2026 · Bangalore
Twelve of us, in white, with two small murtis. Vitthal and Rukmini, garlanded that morning at home. An hour’s walk down Old Airport Road, in the HAL / Rustumbagh stretch. We had only agreed to walk.
What we did not know was what would happen to the street.
