(Alisa Tang)
Good morning, DMV. It’s Thursday, Feb. 12.
As a longtime reporter and editor, I’ve long felt a responsibility to bear witness at newsy events, so I went the past two days to see the Buddhist monks of the Walk for Peace. I went by myself Tuesday to their gathering at the Washington National Cathedral. Yesterday, I went with friends to St. Mark’s church on Capitol Hill, and we walked nearly 3 miles alongside the monks down the Hill and west along the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial.
(Alisa Tang)
Thousands of people lined the roads as the monks passed. At the Lincoln Memorial, the crowd was several times larger than the one that had gone to see the monks at the cathedral.
In a brief introduction at the start of the event, a speaker named all the monks who walked from Texas, and I was surprised to learn that many were from temples in Thailand, which is where my family is from and where I lived and worked for more than a decade as a foreign correspondent.
The walk and speeches lasted several hours. As the sun dropped behind the Lincoln Memorial, leaving us in shadow, the temperature plummeted. My friends and I jumped up and down to stay warm. As speaker after speaker went to the podium, the crowd thinned.
The second to last speaker, a monk, gave a moving account: Bhante Dam Phommasan described the moment he had been hit by a car on Nov. 19 during the Walk for Peace. He ultimately had to have his leg amputated.
The final speaker was Bhikkhu Pannakara, who led the monks on their 2,300-mile journey. Toward the end of his address, he shared these vows:
May every nation live in safety, stability and dignity, free from fear, chaos and unnecessary suffering.
May every person be heard, respected and protected, regardless of their race, their background, their faith and the language that they speak.
May fear be replaced with understanding, and may misunderstanding never again become a reason for violence.
May hatred be transformed into compassion, so pain is met with care instead of blame.
May peace exist not only in words and speeches, but in laws, policies, communities and daily life.
May true strength be measured not by control, force or weapons, but by how we protect one another, especially our children and the vulnerable.
May progress always walk together with morality, and may growth never be built on human suffering.
May dialogue be chosen over confrontation and listening over judgment in families, societies and nations.
May people find peace within their own hearts so that the world no longer needs violence to survive.
May the path to peace require no enemies, only human beings returning to morality, to responsibility and to one another.
📷 Reader-submitted photo
(Tess Fardon)
Tess Fardon sent in this photo she took last week at the Great Falls overlook on the Maryland side.
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Thank you, and see you tomorrow!
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