These were the words Bhikkhu Pannakara spoke as he stood before thousands of people who came to welcome us at Catawba Baptist Church in Rock Hill,SC the night of Day 80. His heart was so deeply touched by the ocean of kindness and warmth that surrounded us.
I have been in commerce with two inner avenues for embracing my world. In past weeks, I have felt a core level pull to “fight back” and protest, while simultaneously responding to a strong alignment with the embodiment of Peace in the walking Monks. Bringing my attention to the atrocities being visited upon my country’s citizens, all of our citizens, awakens so much in my bone memory. Although it may not be in my present life experience, demanding my own freedom to live peacefully is written someplace in this life vessel.
My inner monitor of Peace has been tracking the Buddhist monks who have offered themselves with such loving intention. They seek to awaken each person’s Inner Peace, not to bring Peace, but to be Peace. They bring the meditative super strength of their monastic life, and compassion for all life. They are walking as Pilgrims to cross the South East part of our country in a Walk for Peace, 85 days so far 20+ mile per day from Texas to Washington, DC arriving sometime in February. In all, 2300 miles through a hundred small towns they are touching so much of us here in the US.
Watching the daily posts and the comments, I was inspired by their online presence. The postings from individuals at the “side of the road” set the tone for me, I was in it before I arrived. I decided on a Pilgrimage of my own design. I went to find them in North Carolina. From my temporary spot in Florida this is not so far in US terms, 700 miles or so. I chose to travel by train, allowing 26 hours of contemplation in “slow travel” mode. I gifted myself a “Roomette,” with mostly Ette and not so much Room, but exquisitely perfect for privacy and quiet. Our only US train company, Amtrak is not the efficient counterpart to the European and UK train system. What it lacks in speed and comfort, is offset by the joy I feel in moving slowly through tiny towns and countryside. The train provides the proverbial “other side of the tracks” scene that offers a voyeur’s view on other’s lives in an intimate and anonymous way. From my window I can send loving attention to that frail old man on the platform, and enjoy the child’s face when the train passes. I do love train travel.
A map of their route with stops for lunch and dinner, and their overnight place are offered on the website Walk for Peace on Facebook. The Monk’s journey is updated often throughout the day. “The Monks” are easy to find.
The Racetrack I had my first encounter with Walk for Peace energies as the sun set in Concord, North Carolina, just north of Charlotte in the vast parking lot of a drag car race track. The dichotomy of how they walk, and where they land each day, is part of the mystery for me. The monks eat their daily meal at noon and speak to the gathered at lunch, and again at the end of the day’s journey, stopping at places offered by the community. Some are municipal parks, they sleep in tents on the ground, sometimes churches, or community centers. On this cold night they would rest inside. There had been many thousands that walked behind them in the city of Charlotte the day before. I think the host officials were preparing for an unknown number of followers, this fit the need. The care of the Police in each county is touching, respectful and cautious of their safety. Think of that dichotomy, they are in the proximity and protection of pure loving energy.
Across a few hours in the unusual below-freezing evening, hundreds of people arrived, ultimately more than a thousand. We all huddled under and at the edges of a open metal shed building while the monks walked, step by step towards us from the South. In an experience that will remain in my bones, I joined every race of human, every age, infirm and strong, expensive jackets pressed against Goodwill hoodies waiting for “The Monks.” Some wrapped in blankets, all of us cold, all of us human beings waiting in anticipation of something yet unexperienced. The Monks have asked that when people gather that the crowds be quiet, it helps them. When they arrived, we were exuberant and amazingly silent. The energy of the crowd was extraordinary. Most were smiling, excited, bumping into each other and making space for another. I have never been in this energy of happy, peaceful patience, ever. The elements of possibility and probability were intersecting in my thoughts, moving together as if traveling on an infinity sign. This occurs to me now that this is the shape of the racetrack!
Waiting for Peace
Standing on a low stage the leader, Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra, guided us in a Forgiveness meditation, a process practiced in most stops. Think of how many people have chosen to do this, even once. Together, a thousand beings with hands on our hearts, are offered an opportunity to focus on forgiveness others and ourselves for every mistake and hurt given and received in our lifetime, and those of our ancestors. Supported, held, and elevated by the loving intent from the Monks praying quietly on the stage, we sought our personal Inner Peace. There is no judgement or reasoning about who is wrong, or how I could be a better person, it is only about being in what is here today.Being, not a new concept. This being starts with each breath anew. It begins with, “Imagine the faces of your Mother and Father, see them there on your heart.” I felt a flood of released energies, like a flock of birds flying together. It was an energy of relief, joy, freedom. I was grateful for the people around me, rooted deeply on cold concrete, all of us being collective emissaries of a reimagined life.
“Let it go, and if you fall down, stand back up and try again.” He said. All is forgiven, so simple, so powerful. The Grace offered is palpable.
Back in my hotel room later, I wrote in my journal, “When we are in Peace, it isn’t only my resources to tap into, it is from the WHOLE…always available and able to hold all that we encounter. I am Peaceful, Resourced, and Held, not in any way separate from Anything.”
Friday Morning
Everyone is invited to “see them off” in the early morning darkness each day as they set out on the day’s journey. I returned to the Race track at 6:30 am with a tiny sliver of a moon in 19 degrees F, my bones remembered the cold. There were maybe forty people there, all in good humor and waiting with great anticipation of being close to Monks. We watched and heard their morning prayer, chanted in a line facing the Police entourage that would guide and protect them front, back, and side all along their route on the highways. On the roadways people have been gathering, sometimes hours in advance to greet, to see them. Their energy precedes them I think, and permeates us and the surroundings in ways that requires many hearts to hold, this is not a journey of individual enlightenment.
I took one picture as they came to us, pocketed my phone and took in each face as separate beings. Their bodies are wrapped in shades of saffron fabric, twisted and rolled into unique configurations, their faces reflect youth and age and contentment. The pace is surprisingly fast. Infused with their energetic clarity, I could feel into myself and all the places of contraction. I forgave myself in layer after layer.
I encountered them one more time that day, and left for the train shortly after. This crowd was different, a bit less cohered in nature. It was a large cemetery on Mt Olivet, almost the “Mount of Olives,” but not quite. People were spaced out, with not much interaction between groups. I had a chance to practice being in nonjudgement and holding the premise that all is forgiven. Each time I fell down, I stood up and tried again.
I felt the impact of my own inquiry into my conundrum of Peace or Protest on the last leg of my journey. A coach bus connects the Amtrak train lines to trackless towns in Southwest Florida. A dozen passengers transferred from the chronically delayed overnight train. We all looked and felt, a little “worse for wear.” As we approached a bridge across the bay, high enough for the largest cruise ships to pass into Port of Tampa, (a personal nemesis of mine), I looked up to see an older woman leaning over the driver. “Get back!! I can’t see, sit down!!”the driver shouted. Shock and anger followed, a heated argument erupted between the grey-haired driver, who was now maneuvering the lumbering bus to the side of the highway, and this distraught equally irate passenger She hadn’t gotten off at her unidentified stop, and was now headed to parts unknown. It escalated instantly, with shocking intensity. They screamed at each other, he threatened to call the police or leave her on the road, she responded in kind. I heard myself say, “Please let me help you.” The words were mine, the energy arose from a new place. It was apparently received because the driver stopped his call, went back to his seat and drove on and the woman turned, sat next to me and we worked a plan to recover her to her destination.
It was extraordinary. It couldn’t have had a clearer answer to my inquiry of “defend” or “nonconfrontation.” It will take some practice, but I intend to bring my best version of myself as a being in Peace. Will the world be a different place because they walked? For the thousands that experience the Walk for Peace first hand, I know it already has, I am different, I am Peaceful. This is my Peaceful day.
Most images are from the Walk for Peace Facebook Photos, Many are marked with Michael A. Anderson, thank you for sharing these!
The imagination is not a state, it is the human existence itself.-William Blake
On a sunny Florida day in February our ‘round the corner neighbor erected a 10-feet tall wooden cross on their pocket sized front lawn. The towering rood mocked the cheerful “Alleluia” of pink plastic tulips lining church parking lot across Nokomis Avenue. Heavy beams tilted at an angle suggesting the bearing of weight. Red paint smeared and dripped from the bent spikes and onto the lawn. The assemblage was illuminated 24/7 against the dark southern spring evening with red rope lights. This was a serious installation, scaled to intimidate the passersby onto a one-way track of strong emotions: Fear Submission Repentance Anger Intolerance, they are all human flavors. What was missing was “Grace.”
killscreendaily.com
When I first saw it standing right there in my temporary ‘hood, a chill of fear washed through my body. “That’s no way to get people to love each other,” I grumbled to myself, wiping sweaty palms on Khaki shorts. I felt bullied. There was more going on than a rapid heart and manipulated anxiety. A wordless wave of recognition swept through in my inner landscape. The first psyche searchers returned with only garbled bits and thought fragments.
“I have forgotten something important, was it a memory? Was it a task?
No, it was a dream. The far seeing elves of Onus and Obligation were dispatched immediately to the misty corners of my right brain. They mined memories, poked the unprocessed, systematically uncompiling countless bits of dream imagery. Unearthed bushel baskets of half processed emotions stood before soggy cartons of unfinished business.
In this well-guarded corner of my psyche they exposed a dream box marked:
“Really Big Dream”.
It was there, on a dusty shelf, towards the back of an unconscious cave labeled:
“Probably Shouldn’t.”
As it came back into the light, I remembered the dream in Technicolor detail. It was a vision really, and we all have them. The revelation caused a small explosion of nervous sweat that gathered about the hairline at the back of my neck. By this time the alarms had sounded in my stodgy, conscientious, yet cautious left-brain. Verbal abilities coming back on line, this regulator of reason announced, “Your revelation could be another’s blaspheme! “
A far distant ancestor unfurled her flag from my DNA to remind, to warn, to encourage. She had such a dream as this one in a far away time. Its beauty was trussed up with stout cord to the memory of toasty toes and the smell of burnt hair. But a dream unspoken is only half dreamt.
In my dream I walked down an empty dirt road and came upon Jesus Christ on the cross. In my dream, he looked exactly like a million crucifixes I have seen; blood, thorns, mutilation, agony, disappointment, pain
… until he looked up with a most beatific smile and said,
“If you take me down and put me back on the ground again we could get something done!”
I recall the sensation of illumination; the divine being was rummaging around in my psyche for just the right memory and experience to keep me from ejecting myself out of this modern day Passion Play. Even when the iconic image is deeply embedded in our physical experience and collective mind, there are actions that must come from mortal hands. We must participate; we must step forward in support of divine causes.
So I did. I helped him down off that instrument of torture and he stood beaming with joy, his feet once again on Mother Earth. The rest of the dream was a colorful expression of love and exquisite beauty in all manner of things. Hate, separation, sadness, cruelty all receded like a storm tide: no longer needed.
The high Winds of human conflict and injustice were replaced with gentle waves of acceptance of our ignorance, the offering of wisdom, and endless boundless compassion. Compassion for our lack of evolution, compassion for our wounds. Compassion for our fear. It was beautiful. It was Peaceful. There was no fear.
It was a dream.
In dreamtime, all thoughts are acceptable and miracles are within reach. It’s when the dream drops into the circumspect atmosphere of my “self-conscious” conscious that the bonfire of potentiality is extinguished.
I suppose it is my humanity that shuts down this unreasonable magnificence. Communing with Divinities, and experiencing “Really Big Dreams” must be trimmed to a more manageable size.
There were no rules, no judgments about my worthiness.
It was a dream.
After all, who am I to question 2000 years of belief and dogma intended to explain why we aren’t all personally responsible for creating a loving and just world in this magnificent magical world?
Am I to imagine that I can report,
“We have all been fearfully frozen long enough! Let’s get back to he business of loving and learning see what we really have “under the hood!”
The possibility and potency of this high-octane dream was quite overwhelming. I wrote it down and put it away, for a year, and then another. The first year I was in a transitional place. My parents were now gone from this life, but there was still childhood furniture in my psyche. Rocking the Religion boat felt risky. It has been yet another year and the dream remains untold.
A dream unspoken is only half dreamt.
This dream was about love and acceptance, peace on earth, honoring and acknowledging a divine being. Not so controversial, but I still put it away. Is it easier to express negativity, like a bloody cross, than love and compassion?
This is the Wizard of Oz paradox.
Hope and pray for something extraordinary.
Receive that gift, (wisher beware: true change is like getting a puppy)
Immediately upon receiving your prayer/wish we then deny its beauty and holler to go home where it’s “safe.”
And all that we, “Send me over the rainbow type” folks, actually require for our safety and sanity in this new reality is a bucket of water, and a wish.
What if Christ, Allah, Buddha are all walking around somewhere? Or everywhere? Or even… together? What if they ARE that child, that old man, that smelly street person?
And wait, where’s the divine women? With rare exception on this planet it requires male and female. Her voice is here, can you hear it?
I can’t imagine that our best shot at peace, beauty, and love was 1000s of years ago.
“Keep your eyes peeled” we used to say, they must be here someplace.
William Blake Biography
Born: November 28, 1757
London, England
Died: August 12, 1827
London, England English poet, engraver, and painter
The Age of Aquarius has dawned. There will be peace and prosperity for all. There will be no hunger or hatred. Love will prevail. The only snag in this Opus de Optimist is the pesky detail of responsibility. Who will recognize love, hold the light and pass it on? Certainly we can’t expect some dusty saints and oft-misquoted prophets to mould the whole ball of wax. This is our time, and our planet, and we are responsible for what we put in our minds and how we live our lives.
Whose job is it to hold the frequency of love and respect?
This morning it was my task to take a few bags of “camping” dirty clothes to the modern day riverside flat rock. Laundromat USA has taken the place of pounding stones and water to clear the sweat from garments of labor. I have never understood how beating anything with rocks would cleanse, but it certainly makes a rich metaphor for so many misguided efforts.
The narrow storefront held two aisles of machines in cramped space, ringed by tall-unadorned white walls and high ceilings. With two other Washers present, we did the bob and weave, avoiding all but the most rudimentary contact. “Excuse me,” and “Is this your sock?” was the only exchange. There is something a bit too intimate about seeing your delicates pirouetting about in the dryer face to hold any face-to-face conversation with strangers.
In these places of public necessity; the intersections of life travelers, I have often found pithy notes in strategic places. Direction and guidance from an invisible overseer of the laundry, thumb tacked, wrinkled missives written by hand in block print.
It’s OK to open the door
As long as you close it
A meter long TV was mounted from the ceiling, volume loud enough to be heard over dryers and humming front loaders. I initially ignored the Beelzebub over my head until I heard the sound of piteous whimpers, screams for help, pleas for mercy. Over my head glared the image of a young girl being tortured and sexually assaulted in High Def clarity. Gut churning horror reached out to wrap cold fingers of “what if” around my neck. Without warning the shadow side of humanity loomed dark and large. The media gods laughed at my shock, demanded my attention and manipulated my nervous system. Right there in the pleasant mid morning of small town USA I was played. I wanted to vomit.
Some might say “Not to worry, it was TV, nothing real here. “
Except to my nervous system, the fear was palpable, her pretend agony; visceral. Hands fisted, my heart pounding: I was having the appropriate human response to danger. Out of the three preset mammalian programs for danger: flight, fight, or freeze. I was experiencing freeze. Thankfully I have an intact cerebral cortex and I thawed fast enough to experience the next rush of emotion with all its colors.
It was anger. How could something so evil as torture is used for entertainment? I was enraged that images of such horror create fear that is sent mindfully into the ethers, infecting innocents with violence. I felt repulsion that this cruelty to psyches is a vehicle for creating wealth for some, at the expense of all. I felt profound disappointment, realizing that some still watch the pain and terror of others for pleasure. These images go into our homes by choice our choice,
I felt the eyes of real people upon us. People who live in places where torture is a real and daily event, an inescapable part of their lives. Human to human violence is served up here in our living rooms on a big screen over the fireplace with a Crucifix on the wall.
I imagined a “tyrant of terror” tossing daily doses of fear to the masses through the TV. Hyperaroused newsrooms searching for the worst of humanity. As tame ducks on a pond, the viewers snap at the easy garbage, ignoring the riches just beneath the surface. Their wild relatives know better. Fear is the most potent weapon of controlling mammals. Too bad the tyrant is us, no one to blame but ourselves for continuing this charade of good and evil. Evil isn’t just “out there,” it exists with our permission.
Is it possible to pollute your mind? Is it possible to hold love and light in the same consciousness that contains these images? Why eat poison when there is nectar available?
I asked the other Washer the name of this atrocity.
“CriminalMinds” she said.
Her eyes moved quickly back to the screen.
“It’s terrible! How can that be on TV?!” I asked.
She appeared not to hear, the heroes were about to solve the murder with comic book dialog in flat intonation. Lost in adrenalin nirvana, she leaned in closer to the screen, gaze unflinching. Her hands clenched and released around the hard plastic handles of her laundry basket filled to the top with neatly folded children’s clothing. Her body was trying to regulate her nervous system; but the images just kept coming.
I could see the super hero underwear; toddler size, and the tiny jeans. I imagined the big TV and the small children listening to the victims cries for help as they pretended to sleep. I asked again,
“How can that be on TV?”
She wiped sweaty palms on mechanically ripped jeans and ignored me.
Believe in yourself and deny the bête noire his nightly meal of innocence.
The planets aligned, the earth shook and we all returned to center by gazing into our iPhone faces. Flood and drought, disease and miracle; we turn on the TV to monitor the catastrophe and never turn it off. The vapid and the violent have taken up residence in our homes, with our permission. They sell their fabulous elixir of emotions and hormonal highs for a high price. Are we selling our souls for a jolt of adrenalin, a fleeting feeling of being alive by witnessing the trauma of others?
I would sooner bathe in a sewer than then let that darkness in my soul.
Fight back, turn it off, and live free. Feel the real emotions: your own. In this glorious time, we all hold a piece of light; let’s shine it at each other and laugh at the pitiful darkness.
Addendum February 17, 2018
The darkness felt powerful this week. I thought of this blog written three years ago and wondered how far we have come down this path. Our constant connection to “electronic senses” mainlines a relentless stimuli of anger, fear, sorrow and “warm fuzzy feelings.” We are emotion junkies living for our next fix, just “Tell me what to feel…”
The images from a school in Florida were real. Lives ended in senseless violence by a person whose mind was in disconnect. We could find a scapegoat. Or we could ask what part did we each play in preventing this tragedy. How can we do it differently next time?
I came back to this; fight back. Fight back with love for everyone, no exceptions. Fight back with exquisite attention to what we plant in the gardens of our mind, and the minds of our children. Fight back with actions that neutralize; answer a fearful face with a smile, and a hunched stance with a handshake. We are responsible for the way we wear the privilege of being a human being. We all have the power to change to change everything.
Minerva On The Road 
