Extreme Pilgrim Episode ONE - Shaolin Monastery

Pete Owen-Jones, a vicar in a Sussex parish, is dissatisfied with some aspects of his faith and sets off on three extreme pilgrimages to China, India and Egypt to explore Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and ascetic Christianity. Owen-Jones is on a quest. By trying the world's more extreme religions, he hopes to find a deeper meaning to life.

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Extreme Pilgrim

Extreme Pilgrim is a compelling new series for BBC Two exploring the physical elements of three of the world's great religions.



Pete Owen-Jones, a vicar in a Sussex parish, is dissatisfied with some aspects of his faith and sets off on three extreme pilgrimages to China, India and Egypt to explore Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and ascetic Christianity.

Pete started as a copy-writer in advertising.
After a crisis of meaning, he found God and gave it all up to be ordained into the Anglican Church.

But now, 15 years later, he feels that the Church of England is too much a faith of the head, and not enough a faith of the soul, the heart or even the body. He now sets off on a quest in search of a more physical and mystical path to enlightment.

Pete says: "What I'm looking for is a spirituality that is absent from western Christianity. A spirituality I know exists in the extremes of world religions.
"I hope to enter worlds where rule book and doctrine are replaced by an individual relationship with God and where the attainment of enlightenment is won by hardship, privation and pain. I have to become an extreme pilgrim."

In a bid to get to the heart of each faith Pete pushes himself to the limit of physical, mental and spiritual endurance: he undergoes hardship and exhaustion, bewilderment and anxiety, and yet throughout he undertakes his journeys with determination, courage and wit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/misc/extremepilgrim.shtml






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