Imagine All the People

Forty-five minutes before the monks arrived, I got dropped off in a nearly empty parking lot a mile and a half south of downtown Salisbury.

It was 9:30 a.m. on January 17, and there was only one other car in the Tool Rental Depot lot. Its driver, Sherman Black, and I inhabit two different worlds. The owner of a transport company, he spent four years in the U.S. Army in the early 1990s; the closest I’ve ever gotten to “serving” was a two-month stint as a busboy. He roots for the Washington Commanders football team; I prefer their archrival, the Dallas Cowboys. And his 80-pound pit bull mix, Kilo, sports a flashy chain featuring a crown with the word “KING” just below it, whereas my 15-pound shih tzu, Butter, is more likely to be found wearing pink doggie pajamas. 

Despite our differences, Black and I were there for the same reason: to observe the Walk for Peace, the four-month, 2,300-mile trek a group of Buddhist monks and their dog, Aloka, are taking from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C.

Black, who is 52 and has lived in Salisbury since 2007, was grateful the monks were stopping in his hometown but hoped their visit would be more sedate than their previous two stops, footage of which he’d observed online. “Kannapolis was too crazy,” he said, “and you’d have thought China Grove was New York City.” 

Salisbury was calmer, but not by much. Cars were starting to pour into the parking lot and South Main Street was much busier than usual. “There’s not traffic like this on this road ever,” Black said.

In the weeks following their October 26 departure from the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center, the monks’ excursion flew under the radar. Chiên Lê, a secretary at the center and part of the 10-person organizing team for the Carolinas portion of the trip, said that changed on November 19, when a truck hit one of their support vehicles northeast of Houston. Two monks were injured. One of them, Bhante Dam Phommasan, had to have his left leg amputated.

Online, tragedy equals eyeballs. Word of the accident quickly spread, provoking questions. Did the truck driver intentionally ram the support vehicle? No. Why were the monks walking to D.C.? To ask Congress to make Vesak—the day that commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha—a federal holiday, and to promote mindfulness, loving kindness, and peace. And what was up with the dog? Aloka was a stray who started following the monks during a similar walk in India in 2022 and now rarely leaves their side.

Commentary quickly shifted from confusion to appreciation. Helped by a savvy social media team that has posted daily updates about the trip, the monks started blowing up. By the time they got to South Carolina, their Facebook page had more than a million followers. It now has 2.2 million and counting.

The monks are hosting peace gatherings and giving talks outside of the capitol buildings in all nine states they are walking through. When I saw reports that nearly 20,000 people had greeted them in Columbia, South Carolina, I decided to avoid Raleigh. With fewer than 40,000 residents, Salisbury seemed ideal.

Traveling to see the monks reminded me of when I drove to Ohio in 2024 to be in a solar eclipse’s path of totality, a rare event that’s worth going out of your way to observe. Some people I spoke with in Salisbury compared the Walk for Peace to the Summer Olympics torch relay, which passed through on its way to Atlanta in 1996.

Black thought the Walk for Peace resembled the Million Man March, which he’d participated in while stationed in D.C. in 1995, but a “march” carries a military connotation and implies protesting against something. A “walk” is a more neutral term. I wondered if that might encourage more people to take part. 

I was also curious to see what sort of people would come. Ten minutes after Black and I started talking, the parking lot was nearly full. As people emerged from their cars, I discovered the answer: a pleasantly wide range.

What’s Going on Right Now

The morning was overcast and cold. Wearing a gray down jacket over a teal hoodie, Angel Black (no relation to Sherman) waited for the monks out of the wind under the overhang of the Tool Rental Depot. A 43-year-old photographer, she was born in Salisbury, moved away after graduating from Catawba College, and, after living in seven other states, returned five years ago.

The night before, she’d watched the monks walk past the Food Lion on South Main Street in China Grove. “It was peaceful,” she said. “They approached, and everyone just—” She made a calming gesture with her hands. “It was really nice.”She was so moved that she hugged the woman standing next to her, and together they cried.

Buddhist monks have led peace walks for thousands of years. Hoping to heal the pain that lingered in Cambodia from the genocide orchestrated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, Maha Ghosananda organized one that gained international attention in 1992. Strife in the United States hasn’t risen to that level, but for many it’s uncomfortably high right now. “Every time you turn on the television, it’s something negative,” Black said. “When I saw this on social media, it was like a shiny beacon of hope.”

Black has been using her phone to track the monks’ progress. Their website features a live map of their exact location. An even better indication of their proximity, she told me, is the flashing blue lights of their police escort.

A soon as I saw these lights, I took up a position on the side of the road next to Linnae Barnhart, a 36-year-old originally from Miami. She had been living in Salisbury for six years and had started following the monks’ journey when their Facebook page only had 10,000 followers.

“I’ve been so excited for them to get here because to me this is the next best thing before you go see the Lord,” she said. “Just to be in their presence means so much. I know as soon as I see them I’m going to start crying.”

Barnhart thought the Walk for Peace was a healthy antidote to the mass deportations Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is currently carrying out, most recently in Minneapolis. 

“We need to love each other. We don’t need what’s going on right now,” she said. “My family’s from Sweden. We’re immigrants. But the color of my skin makes me superior to some people? It’s not like that. We’re just as immigrant as everybody else.”

As the monks passed in a single-file line, a reverential hush rippled through the crowd. One person held a homemade sign that read, “You Are Changing Lives.” Others whispered, “Thank you,” bowed their heads, or simply stood in silence.

The monks’ journey has largely been subsidized by donations. Barnhart had brought fruit, peanuts, bottled water, and roses. A few of the monks briefly paused to accept a flower or water. Most continued walking at their usual steady pace. Barnhart didn’t mind that they hadn’t accepted most of the things she’d offered. She was too caught up in the moment. “It feels amazing,” she said, beaming. “It’s just so surreal.”

Peace From Within

I followed the monks up Main Street. If they paused to acknowledge the crowds lining the road, it was usually to give a flower to a small child or someone with a significant injury or disability. Every interaction they had was brief, until a 10-minute pitstop at City Hall, where they met with local officials.

When the monks resumed walking, hundreds of people followed them—so many that a sheriff yelled at a man who was walking too close. A phalanx of police officers using cars, motorcycles, and bicycles protected the monks from overzealous observers and oncoming traffic. Forming relationships with law enforcement agencies has been such an important aspect of the Walk for Peace that head monk Bhikkhu Pannakara displays the pins they’ve given him on his saffron and ocher robe.

The only other time the monks paused before their lunch stop was to ring the large bell Abraham Bonowitz, head of Death Penalty Action, had brought with him. Bonowitz explained that citizens of Delaware who opposed the death penalty had rung the bell outside prisons during executions until the state abolished capital punishment in September 2024.

The monks ate their final meal of the day—they don’t eat after noon—in a pavilion beside the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer, about 4 miles northeast of Salisbury. The crowd that gathered around them was so large it formed a wall 20-people deep.

Susan Sherlock, who’d driven from her home in Valdese in the foothills, retreated to a bench on the edge of the crowd. A retired schoolteacher, she had enjoyed getting to know people who were as interested in seeing the monks as she was. “I stood on the side of the road for two hours just getting to know the people around me,” she said. “We had conversations and learned about each other’s lives. It was a coming together of strangers in a peaceful way.”

She wasn’t as thrilled about the people who were selling Walk for Peace T-shirts or filming the monks as they ate. She tried to be respectful, especially when the monks walked past her earlier in the day. “I wanted to get some photos,” she said, “but it didn’t feel like the right time and place … I wanted to be in the moment and feel the experience.”

Asked what that moment had felt like, Sherlock was briefly overwhelmed by tears. “They’re spreading the message of peace. I mean, how much better can it get?”

Like Barnhart, Sherlock viewed the Walk for Peace as a remedy for some of the ailments plaguing modern-day life, particularly the depression and stress that she thinks social media and the news create. After she started having cardiac issues last year, she deleted all her social media accounts except for Facebook, which she “tightly filtered.”

“I follow the news to get the need-to-know information, but I don’t need all the spin, and I don’t need the drip, drip, drip all day long,” she said. “I think that’s where a lot of people are struggling right now.”

The inner peace Sherlock was striving to attain was actually the focus of the talk Pannakara gave after lunch in Spencer. He told the crowd that meditation begets mindfulness, which in turn brings peace. The 30-minute introduction-to-meditation talk was chock-full of insights—and humor. “Probably for one hour of meditation, you spend 59 minutes following your thoughts,” he said at one point. “But it’s alright. I’ve been there, done that. Keep practicing, and it will reduce it to 58 minutes.”

As the sun started to peek through the clouds, Pannakara told the audience that a simple way to cultivate inner peace is to write “Today is going to be my peaceful day” on a piece of paper and read it throughout the day. 

“In this world, we’ll have no peace if in ourselves we have no peace,” he said. “Peace always begins from within.”

And The World Will Live as One

Every evening of their walk, the monks had given a public talk, until the day I planned to attend, when they didn’t schedule one. I was disappointed, but understood. After rising each day at 4 a.m. to meditate and chant, and walking, on average, more than 20 miles a day, the monks deserved a night to themselves.

By the time they reached North Carolina, the journey had started to take its toll. Aloka had to have surgery on one of his legs and was undergoing physical therapy when I saw the peace walk. The monks, who’d slept in tents for most of their trek, had started spending the night in churches and recreation centers due to the cold weather.

I planned to see them again during their lunch stop at the First Lutheran Church in Lexington the following day, but on my way there I noticed a crowd congregating along the road outside the Sheetz on South Main Street. With easily accessible bathrooms and plenty of parking, it seemed like the perfect place to observe—despite songs like ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses” blaring from the speakers above the gas pumps.

At many of the spots the monks passed, it felt like time stood still and the fuss and tumult of a regular day momentarily disappeared. Many of the businesses in Salisbury had closed so their employees could observe the Walk for Peace. More than one postal worker had paused mid-route to take in the spectacle. Another postal worker I talked to in Salisbury didn’t want his name mentioned because he’d called in sick.

Even people who had gone to work found ways to participate. Ramsey Rimawi, a 22-year-old wearing glasses, a surgical facemask, and a Sheetz uniform, joined the crowd along the road during his morning break. Unlike everyone else I spoke with, he had no idea the monks were coming to Lexington until that morning. “I came into work and my coworker looks at me and she’s like, ‘The monks are coming to town,’” Rimawi said. “I thought she was pulling a joke on me.” 

Rimawi wondered aloud if the monks were cold, before telling a story about a monk who raised his body temperature simply by looking at a fire. Apocryphal or not, it reminded me of something Chiên Lê had said the day before: “By training your mind to be strong, you can overcome physical pain.” The monks were a living testament to that assertion.

After the monks passed the Sheetz, everyone quickly scrambled to get back into their cars—except two women who were still standing by the side of the road several minutes later. Fern Blair and Aria Novi live in Salisbury but had been in Charlotte when the monks came through. They had waited almost an hour at the Sheetz for another chance to see them and considered it time well spent.

“Things like this usually don’t come to you,” said Blair. “And if it does, I think you need to make the time and space to participate.”

She confessed to being surprised by her own reaction. “I thought I would cry more,” she said. “I’ve been so sad for so long, but I felt some joy, which was really lovely.”

Novi expressed a similar mix of emotions. “I definitely needed this today because I’m angry,” she said. “It’s like every week we’re losing more and more of our human rights.”

But hope had replaced anger as she watched the monks. “John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ popped into my head, and I started singing it,” she said. “I was like, ‘This is what he was feeling when he wrote that song.’”

The moment had been so powerful, they were hesitant to leave. They lingered, refusing to let go of that peace, until a car pulled up alongside them and jolted them back to reality. Its driver, late to the game and mildly frantic, asked where the monks were. 

“They passed already,” Blair said, pointing up the road. “They’re heading to High Point.”