This is a healthy dialogue with a reader who raised objection against the concept of a Pada-yatra. This contains the original article, the objection & response.
1) As published in Life Positive
Letting go is not easy. Each of us holds on to certainty, to security, to convenience, to the sphere of the ‘known’. I had a similar issue. All my life. Until I did an experiment that my master had exhorted many of us to do. My master, the late Guruji Rishi Prabhakar (founder of SSY), regularly undertook a padyatra, a lone voyage, by and large on foot, as a mendicant. This is actually an ancient practice favoured by Adi Shankara, Buddha, Mahavira and Swami Vivekanand among others.
He gave a definite purpose to it: The purpose was to see God in whoever you meet, make yourself useful wherever you go, and to find security in the middle of the manifest insecurity.