Finding Peace on a Walk Across America: What a Dog, the Deep South, and a Buddhist Monk Teach Us

How Do We Find Peace?

“By practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is the medicine we all need.”

This was the answer given by a Buddhist monk at the Walk for Peace event yesterday in deep south Georgia. And what a moment it was.

A Pilgrimage of Peace in Motion

A group of dedicated Buddhist monks, led by Bhikkhu Pannakara of Texas and his adorable rescue dog Aloka from India, are walking 2,500 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. This pilgrimage, as they call it, is for unity, compassion, and inner peace for the world.

As of yesterday, they happened to be in Good Hope, talk about an apt name, in Georgia, and we had the good fortune of being part of this positive revolution. The size of the crowd stunned us, and the energy of kindness and love was palpable among absolute strangers.

The Universal Hunger for Peace

Pannakara talked about how we, as humans, crave peace. He said that once we acknowledge this among ourselves, we set the baseline for understanding our collective need for peace and happiness. For peace to become actionable, our daily acts must follow our pure thoughts. We must practice the art of mindfulness to stay in the moment and do our best. We must understand that each one of us is suffering in our own way, so why create more violence through our thoughts, words, and actions?

Violence will only lead to three places: a hospital, a jail, or a funeral. When peace begins in our hearts, happiness follows. And when we are happy, we can make our families and our communities happy.

We can’t continue to live with hate in our hearts or with no respect for those who don’t look like us. Our blood is red and our tears are salty and that’s the universal truth of brotherhood. When we understand our common concern for this earth and our collective well-being, universal peace can blossom.

The Battle Within

The first place to start individually is understanding that we are constantly fighting our minds with expectations and desires. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can liberate ourselves from desires, and forgive ourselves and others without expectations, because we are not perfect.

Living with regret is a heavy burden, and we don’t have to live with it. We must give ourselves grace and not repeat mistakes we’ve made in the past.

Two out of the nineteen monks walk barefoot, and they talked about the sores on their feet. When someone asked why they do that, they said they wanted to hold themselves to a very high standard and feel the sensations through their feet of the task at hand. Profound.

A Daily Practice of Intention

Before concluding, Pannakara gave tips on how to get our day started with intentionality: “Today is my peaceful day.”

Write this down and read it out loud, so you set the intention for yourself that you will do whatever it takes to preserve your mental peace for the day. His personal vow to Buddha was to bow down 108 times while saying this out loud.

He then led us through a quick exercise on mindful breathing, asking us to focus on our in-breath and out-breath with our eyes closed, placing our awareness in the space between our nostrils and upper lip.

Just like in any place where good tries to bloom, there’s always an element of society that tries to create disruption. A handful of people kept shouting that Jesus is the only God and that we should not be listening to this “evil man.” Pannakara, mid-speech, looked at the group and asked if Jesus would approve of what they were saying. The crowd cheered.

It was a great troll moment coming from a monk 😂.

Being Mindful In Realtime 

Later, he started taking questions, and one of them was why he decided to walk in the South (of the U.S.). Everyone in the crowd burst out laughing. That’s our reputation now, that we’re becoming a bunch of polarizing haters. It was sad, but we redeemed ourselves with that roaring laughter.

Later, on our drive back home, my husband told us that while standing in line for the bathroom, a gentleman behind him asked if he needed to take a piss or a shit. The man was clearly in a hurry, purely a logistical question at that point. God, I love my fellow Americans so much, and especially my people in the South, for their simple-minded nature and raw authenticity!

If you want to follow the journey of these monks to see if they’ll be near your town, check out the live map for this incredible Walk for Peace. Follow their mindful steps in real time, and please take a moment to send some positive vibes their way: https://dhammacetiya.com/walk-for-peace/live-map/

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