Since mid-December I’ve been following the monks who embarked upon a mission late last October, one I couldn’t fathom venturing out on myself, at any point in my life. They had been trekking from Texas with a goal of reaching Washington DC in 120 days. The distance was traveled on foot, and some of those feet were most often bare. At a pace between twenty to thirty miles per day, they walked in a straight line alongside rural roads, through fields, and right onto the highway. They walked for only one reason; to spread the word that peace was freely available to each of us individually, regardless of what is happening in the world around us.
Rising for an early start each day they chanted their thanks to the campsite, firehouse, church, family home, school, or hotel that had given them a place to rest. Each carrying an alms bowl, used to receive food offerings which they would eat once a day, always before noon. During their lunch break and at their stop for their evening rest they held peace-sharing talks.
Strangers waited shoulder to shoulder for hours to experience their presence and present offerings as they passed by, sometimes very quickly. Their rest stops, originally consisting of a few people conversing very closely with the monks grew to thousands of people gathered, sometimes in freezing cold, rain and snow. In a few short weeks of my tuning in crowds had tripled in size, their path became lined with people for many miles.
Across the world people were tuning in to their social media and more often than not the impact was immensely powerful. Many spoke of being brought to tears regularly, myself among them. It took me a while to define those feelings, but it began with relief. In a time when some actively sought to destroy comradery, berate empathy, and bully anyone who disagreed with their opinions this group of monks were offering exactly what the majority of the world had always sought: peace in the form of hope, compassion, loving kindness, harmony, and love. They were humbly offering themselves freely to their mission of drawing awareness to the possibility of peace.
Having myself been on a journey of reflection and growth the messages of mindfulness mirrored my lived experiences of learning emotional self-awareness. They spoke of caring for the inner child which was something I’d been working through in hypnotherapy for years. Brilliantly, these peace talks offered millions of people the basic coping skills that generations of us had not been given. After decades of emotionally unavailable parenting, there before us were this group of robed men, who had forsaken all possessions, who ate only when food was offered, walking for months modeling more emotional stability than most of us had ever encountered. And it was exactly what we needed.
In my writing, on my business card, it states “it all starts with you”. All of the work I had done was verified with each step the monks took, and every word spoken on their stops. We needed to release the garbage of greed, hatred, and delusion from our minds and stop chasing the world. They spoke of slowing down, to stop multi-tasking, and commit to making each day a peaceful one.
Mindfulness is the state of being present for the moments. We can’t change the past with worry or predict the future with certainty. But we can be happy and peaceful in the moment if we stay in it. As venerable Pannakara has said often, “we are the only ones who can mess it up”. He was speaking the language of all I had learned but in a way that could easily resonate and for that I was very grateful. As I continue to follow the walk and the direction each of the monks who walked have taken I am continually amazed at the light they extend in our direction.
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