Monks

Friends,

The Buddhist monks' 2300 mile peace walk has captured the attention, admiration, and, in some cases, even the adulation of millions of ordinary people who may or may not associate the monk’s witness with a religious practice. It was simply an act of profound piety in a call for peace that we all could somehow understand and accept. People stood for hours, lining the roads and sidewalks for miles, often in the cold, just waiting to see the monks and to be in their presence. Some 2.8 million people followed them on Facebook and another 1.3 million on TikTok. Even their dog Aloka had 1 million virtual followers. In so many ways it was such a curious and surprising phenomenon that the whole range of people, young and old, most of them quite unfamiliar with Buddhism, would be so enraptured to the point of adulation for the witness for peace the monks were expressing. And I have spent the better of the week trying to understand why people were so compellingly drawn to see the monks and to be so profoundly moved by the experience.

My thoughts begin with what the monks represent. They are obviously, piously committed to seeking world peace as their primary motivation. And they are so deeply committed to that goal that they were willing to sacrificially and doggedly walk for all those months and miles, often under the harsh, freezing cold, toward the hope that their witness would make a difference in the universal quest for peace. I am not aware of any interviews with any of them about the personal basis of their conviction and their personal history, but I can assume as ethnic Vietnamese they were especially aware of the horrors of the war their families, friends and nation had endured. And perhaps they were trying to somehow heal their moral trauma of war and to prevent others from experiencing it.

And then the most interesting part of the monks’ witness for peace was their impact on all those who were drawn to be personally present to them and to offer various forms of respect and adulation: a simple bow, clasped hands of gratitude, flowers, and even some police along the way gave them their badges out of respect!. Various accounts recorded how individuals were physically and spiritually moved to tears just being near them. My son told me how grateful and privileged he was to be able to join thousands of others in the freezing cold and to receive and share an almost tangible yet mysterious aura they radiated. Like so many he couldn’t really explain why the simple presence of the monks, with no spoken message or political agenda, cold be so profoundly awesome and inspirational.

I have my own theory about why so many people were so deeply moved and inspired by the monks’ walk. I believe the monks evoked or invited our own latent search for meaningful peace and a universal sacred unity that quietly already resides in each of us. And we also want for ourselves a portion of the faith and peace that fills the souls of the monks. In our predominantly secular American culture I believe we subconsciously yearn for a more profound belief in a beneficent transcendent power of love to compensate for all our distrust, skepticism and cynicism of the political and cultural world we now inhabit. And perhaps, being in the presence of the monks, seeing them in front of of us, even on screen, we can also experience some of their spiritual power. When we recognize the monks have something we want, we are like beggars who seek even a pittance of the deep faith that compelled them to suffer and endure so much in their quest for peace.

The monks continue to spend much of their lives in preparation for and expression of their commitment to meditating for peace. And to the extent our lives permit, it is possible for each of us to also practice a similar discipline of education, meditation and prayer that informs our minds, souls and practices about how we, too, may develop the spiritual power to sufficiently enable and empower ourselves - and perhaps others - to denounce war and seek alternatives to violence and war itself. My Quaker pacifism is my path on this quest, and I welcome others to join me. But each of us needs to find their own way. In any case, the ultimate lesson from the monks' peace walk is to believe peace is possible, and to also believe that faith is seeded in our souls. Let us learn to tend and bring forth an inspiring faith as the monks so wondrously have done.

At the end of the walk, the monks’ leader, Bhante Pannakara, told the crowd, “I don’t know what we did to deserve this [attention], but I love you all. This [a profound commitment to peace] is what we need in the world.” Indeed.

Blessed be the witness of the Buddhist monks.

Peace,
Tom