The Pilgrim’s Table: A Buddhist Reflection on Taiwan’s Mazu Pilgrimage

Last week, on a warm April morning, I made my way out to Huatan, a small town in Changhua County, to walk a section of the Mazu Pilgrimage. The plan had been set weeks earlier by two friends from Taichung, one Canadian and one American, both long-time residents of Taiwan. They had committed themselves to walking the full nine-day route, and they had told me that when their feet reached Changhua, they hoped I would come out to meet them. So when a second American friend invited me to join her for that stretch, I said yes. I wanted to walk a piece of the procession myself, and I wanted to keep my promise to the two friends arriving from Taichung.

A Procession at the Scale of an Island

The Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage — known across Taiwan simply as Rao Jing (遶境) — is one of the largest religious processions in the world. Each spring, several hundred thousand people walk for nine days through the towns and rice fields of central Taiwan, following the palanquin of Mazu, the beloved sea goddess and protector of Taiwan’s coastal communities. The route stretches across nearly the entire length of the island’s middle waist, from Dajia in Taichung down through Changhua, Yunlin, and Chiayi, and back again.

To understand the procession, it helps to know what Mazu means in everyday Taiwanese life. She is one of the most widely venerated figures on the island, and her temples are familiar landmarks in many towns, especially in the old communities of the western plain. The annual pilgrimage is the moment when this quiet, year-round devotion steps out of the temple gates and onto the open road.

What We Walked Through

All along the route, ordinary families had set up small offering stations by the roadside. Most were giving out bottled water. Others handed out paper cups of barley tea, steamed baozi, or fresh bread. Many of these volunteers had driven out hours before the procession was due to pass, parked their cars on the shoulder, and waited patiently until walkers came by. What looks effortless on the road is built on hours of preparation and waiting.

None of these volunteers asked who we were. None of them asked whether we believed. They simply pressed food and drink into our hands, smiled, and said, gently, “Jiā yóu” — keep going.

My Canadian friend said something to me that stayed in my mind. As a Westerner, he told me, large crowds usually make him uneasy. There is always, somewhere in the back of the mind, a quiet expectation of disorder, of violence breaking out. But on this road, with so many walkers stretched out along the way, that expectation had simply disappeared. He could not feel any of it. What he felt instead was kindness. Strangers had pressed food and drink into his hands. Some people had even opened their homes to him — a place to shower, a bed for the night, a meal at the table. He had been a stranger walking past their door, and they had treated him like family. He told me, plainly, that he was deeply moved.

The First Virtue the Buddha Taught

In the Buddhist tradition, what I saw on that road has a name. It is Dāna — the practice of giving freely, without expectation of return. The Buddha taught that Dāna is the very first virtue on the path, and that giving comes in three forms:

1. The Giving of Wealth — both external (food, drink, money, resources) and internal (one’s time, labor, and life energy).

2. The Giving of Wisdom — sharing knowledge, skill, or perspective that helps another person navigate life.

3. The Giving of Fearlessness — offering safety, comfort, and encouragement to those who feel anxious or alone.

Walk the Mazu route, and you will see all three practiced openly, by ordinary people, in plain daylight.

The people who set up tables and bring food are giving wealth — the cost of what they offer and the hours they wait by the road. Those who help walkers along the way are giving wisdom — pointing people to rest stops, answering questions, explaining the rituals to first-timers. And those who call out “Jiā yóu” as pilgrims pass are giving fearlessness. A blistered walker takes ten more steps because of that voice.

Reverence as the Soil of Practice

There is more on this road than generosity alone. There is also reverence — and reverence is, in its own quiet way, just as important to the Buddhist path.

The devotion that Taiwanese people hold for Mazu is generations deep. It is the trust of families who have lived under her gaze for centuries; people willing to walk in the heat for nine days, willing to set up tables for strangers, willing to bow before something larger than themselves. That capacity for sustained, sincere reverence — across generations, in good times and in hard ones — is itself a kind of strength.

When I see hearts that have already learned how to honor what is sacred, hearts that have already learned how to give without counting, hearts that have already learned how to belong to something bigger than the self — I do not see something foreign to the Dharma. I see soil that has been quietly tilled for many lifetimes.

What the Road Was Really Teaching

What I came home with from this stretch of the Mazu road was simple. I saw two virtues at work that we in the Buddhist tradition also hold dear: generosity and reverence. These are not virtues we claim as ours alone — they are common ground. Generosity, giving freely without expectation of return, was visible all along the road, in the hands that set up tables and carried food and water out for strangers. Reverence, the willingness to bow before something larger than the self, was visible in the people willing to walk for nine days, year after year, carrying a devotion passed down through generations.

What these two virtues produce, woven together across an entire society, is a kinder, more peaceful Taiwan, where strangers care for strangers and people are willing to help each other. That is something worth honoring — for any society, in any tradition. It is the same kindness I felt on the Mazu road, and the kindness that, multiplied across an island, makes Taiwan the kind of place where strangers feel welcome.