Even following the injury of two of its members as a result of a truck striking their procession, a group of Buddhist monks continues with their walking trek across much of the U.S. to bring about peace.
The group of approximately two dozen monks came to Georgia on their way to Washington, D. C., on Nov. 11, when they began their trip in Fort Worth, Texas, on Oct. 26, emphasizing that activism on the peace issue has long been a tradition of Buddhism.
The group was to make its latest stretch, through Georgia, on 30th December, between the town of Morrow and Decatur, on the eastern side of Atlanta. On day 66 of the walk, the group called on the people to a Peace Gathering in Decatur on Tuesday afternoon.
The monks and their close friend dog Aloka are on their way to Washington, D.C., visiting 10 states. They will traverse or be very near to the cities of Athens, Georgia; North Carolina, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Richmond, Virginia, in the next few days, on their way to the capital city of the nation.
The group has built a massive following on the social media platform, and it has over 400,000 followers on Facebook. The hashtag of Aloka is called AlokathePeaceDog, and the name of the hashtag is named after a Sanskrit word that translates to enlightenment.
The Facebook page of the group is regularly updated with progress reports, inspirational notes, and poems.
“We do not walk alone. With each one of you, whose heart has been opened by the light of peace, whose spirit by the light of kindness has made its choice; whose day-to-day existence has turned into a garden where the bloom of knowledge flourishes,” the group posted.
“The expedition has not been a hazard-free one. The monks were walking on one side of a highway north of Dayton, Texas, last month, when their escort vehicle, with its hazard lights on, was struck by a truck,” Dayton Interim Police Chief Shane Burleigh said.
The truck failed to realize how slow the vehicle was moving, attempted to execute an evasive maneuver to pass around the vehicle, and failed to do so in time, according to what Burleigh stated at the time. It hit the escort car in the back-left, and moved the escort into two of the monks.
Burleigh said that one of the monks had sustained substantial injuries to his legs and was flown to a hospital in Houston by helicopter. The other monk, who had less severe injuries, was transported via ambulance to another hospital in the suburbs of Houston. A monk who suffered a severe leg injury was supposed to get a series of surgeries to mend a broken bone, but his recovery prognosis was good, according to one of the group spokesmen.
Buddhism is a religion and a philosophy that developed out of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, who was a prince but became a teacher and is believed to have lived in northern India and reached enlightenment in the 6th century to 4th century B.C. His death increased the spread of the religion to the rest of Asia, and it arrived in the West in the 20th century.
According to the Buddha, the way to cease suffering and get free of the process of birth, death, and rebirth involves non-violence, mental discipline by meditation, and compassion with all beings.
Although Buddhism has, over the centuries, developed into various sects, it has maintained its peace activism tradition. Its social pedagogy was first advanced by leaders, such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, who have integrated the fundamental concepts of compassion and non-violence into political, environmental, and social justice, and peace-building initiatives throughout the world.
