By Cindy Sheehan

I was honored and humbled to be in the presence of a holy man, Thich Nhat Hanh, today [October 8, 2005] at MacArthur Park in a Hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Thay (teacher), as he is known, walks with an aura of peace and acceptance radiating from him. Thay teaches: “Every day we do things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life, our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive.” This is what we see Thay doing.

In a speech I delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City on the one-year anniversary of my son Casey’s death, which was also the thirty-seventh anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., I said: “We must all do one thing for peace each day.” I now know that is not enough. We must live peace and embody peace if we want peace on earth. Our entire lives must be for peace. Not just one activity a day.

Every Step Is Peace

That was the theme for today’s walk in MacArthur Park. Thay reminded us to be in the present and take every step in peace and know that we are walking on the earth in peace. He lovingly admonished the hundreds of people who came to hear him, to do everything in peace: eat, walk, talk, breathe, sleep, work, play, etc. There was to be no yelling, no angry words, no harsh statements. This admonishment struck me to the bone, because I have been so strident in my criticism of the Bush administration in what I have seen as a greedy and destructive quest for power. The way Thay teaches can truly help our country to live in eternal peace and not eternal war.

“I have arrived. I am home. “

This was the first sign we passed as we started on our walk. Thay told us we should say with every step, “I have arrived, I am home,” and that every second we newly arrive in the present. I see so much conflict and struggle in our world because we don’t live in this second. Instead, we are worried about the next second and are mourning the past second. Camp Casey taught me to live each moment in the arrival moment. One of the reasons I have been able to remain calm in the face of an onslaught of troubles and calamity is because I realized in Camp Casey that I could not struggle against the current of my life and change my destiny any more than I could bring my son back from the land of the dead. Each second of each day is our precious arrival and we should honor each moment. Jesus Christ also said: Why worry about tomorrow? Today has enough worries of its own.

I Am Home

I met a new friend today named Jewel, whose son was a medic on the front lines in Iraq and has tried to commit suicide three times since he returned from the desert of pain. The distraught mother is beside herself with worry, said she feels her boy is dying. His superiors will not allow him to be diagnosed with PTSD so he can’t get the treatment he desperately needs. Jewel is Buddhist and I told her: “You realize your son died in Iraq.” She replied to me: “We have all died because of this war.” She is right. On April 4, 2004, Cindy Sheehan died, and Cindy Sheehan was born. The dead Cindy Sheehan lived for her home and family. She kept a neat and tidy house, often cooked meals, did everyone’s laundry, entertained friends, laughed more than she cried, worked at various jobs, and her family meant the entire world to her. She lived an insulated life filled with Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays and other celebrations.

The Cindy who was born on 04/04/04 still adores her family above all things but now knows that the human family is worth struggling for too. The lifelong cause of peace with justice is worth leaving her home for and traveling around and being home wherever she is. I pray for Jewel and especially for her son, that he realizes that he “died” in Iraq but he can be a much better person than the one who left his loving home and mother. Tragically, the story of Jewel and her son is not an uncommon one.

“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

This has been one of my feelings and themes for months. I know that during the terrible war [in Vietnam] Thay had no enemies, but the perceived enemy was communism. Now, in this evil war that we are struggling against, the perceived enemy is terrorism. I just saw a poll that said only thirteen percent of Americans fear a terrorist attack but the war machine has taken over and created this perceived enemy.

Last week, George Bush said things were going to be far worse in Iraq in the next few months. He likened Iraq with World War 1. Why do we allow our leaders to sacrifice our young to the war machine? War will stop when we as parents, educators, religious leaders, brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives refuse to live and think in a way that allows our loved ones to be taken to a war of someone’s choice and killed. I wish I had refused to allow Casey to go to Iraq. I wish I had knocked him out and taken him to Canada or anywhere far enough away from the war monster, but I know that that would not be enough to stop the war. We all need to change our way of living and thinking so that young men no longer need to be sacrificed. I pray that the sacrifice of my son’s life will help me and others to dedicate ourselves to walking in peace.

Thay has said: “Some people think it’s a miracle to walk on water. I think it is a miracle to walk on the earth in peace.”

If we don’t learn how to do this as a people we are in for a hard time. Thay has shown hundreds of thousands of people in the world how to walk in peace. Now that we have identified the war in Iraq as insane, we need to walk on earth in peace in order to go forward. I am committing my life and Casey’s life to peace. An exit strategy from Iraq is not enough if we cannot learn to change our way of walking.

Let’s walk each step away from the killing, and walk each step in peace towards the answer. Let us join hands in working always for peace, in peace: being peace.

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, made international news when she traveled to Crawford, Texas and camped there to get President Bush’s attention. She is a founding member of Gold Star Families for Peace.