The Seba library treats Wandering in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Evans-Wentz, W. Y., Bowlby, John, Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine).
When, through great attachment, [we are] wandering in the Saṃsāra… When, through intense jealousy, [we are] wandering in the Saṃsāra… When, through intense stupidity, [we are] wandering in the Saṃsāra
The Bardo Thödol frames wandering as the defining condition of unenlightened existence — a compulsive, passion-driven drift through cyclic becoming from which the Bodhisattvas must rescue the deceased consciousness.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis
compulsive wandering with amnesia is associated commonly with pseudologia, episodic depression and impulses to commit suicide… the high frequency of serious disturbance in the patients’ relationship to parents in childhood, in particular losses due to death or separation
Bowlby identifies compulsive wandering as a clinical sequela of childhood parental loss, linking fugue-state peregrination to the traumatic disruption of attachment bonds.
, Loss: Sadness and Depression (Attachment and Loss, Volume III), 1980thesis
at the age of 10.9, Geraldine had been found wandering in a dazed state. She did not know who she was or where she lived
The case of Geraldine illustrates wandering as a psychosomatic expression of unresolved grief — the child’s loss of identity and orientation as a direct expression of unmourned bereavement.
, Loss: Sadness and Depression (Attachment and Loss, Volume III), 1980supporting
a winding, turning, looping, crisscrossing, occasionally backtracking peregrination — the ancient name for ‘pilgrimage’ that conveys its wandering essence
Kurtz reframes wandering as the constitutive movement of pilgrimage and spiritual identity, distinguishing authentic spiritual progress from linear certainty by its inherently wandering, open-ended quality.
, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994thesis
pothos is love’s spiritual portion… the motive force that drives desire ever onward, as the portion of love that is never satisfied by actual loving and actual possession of the object
Hillman’s treatment of pothos recasts wandering as an erotic-spiritual dynamic — the soul’s ceaseless movement toward the unattainable constitutes the deepest longing within both love and spirit.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
as soon as he started to travel along the new trade routes… he would have been struck by the large crowds of wandering bhikkhus in their yellow robes, carrying their begging bowls
Armstrong frames the wandering renunciant as a culturally legible archetype encountered by the young Gotama — organized, purposeful homelessness as the visible form of spiritual apprenticeship.
, Buddha, 2000supporting
A man who has fled into the wilderness… and has lived there in emptiness and isolation for a long time, will be delighted if he hears so much as the rustle of a human footfall
Zhuangzi illustrates the existential cost of exile and prolonged wandering — the deeper the estrangement from one’s origins, the more intensely the wanderer longs for return and recognition.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013supporting
the meaning ‘to drive off course’ derives from ‘to beat’… πλάσσω and πλάζω influenced each other both semantically and formally
Beekes’s etymological analysis of the Greek root underlying ‘wandering’ (πλάζω — to drive off course, to lead astray) grounds the concept linguistically in deviation and errancy rather than voluntary movement.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
πλαγιάζω ‘to turn amiss, sideward; to lead astray’… -ασμός ‘lateral direction, aberrance’
The Greek etymological field of πλάγιος and related forms establishes wandering’s semantic core as lateral deviation and aberrance from a straight or intended course.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside