01/26/2026
Business as Usual
Several times today, I attempted to get out my front door to take a few photos of the snow and ice pack. I couldn’t get out because of a solidly frozen drift of snow, sleet, and freezing rain. The few inches I could push out the door let me know I didn’t need to be out there. The windchill was 11 degrees, the dampness deeply penetrating. The white noise of the world has been frozen into silence, trapped in the snow and ice. Business as usual has been stopped dead in its tracks.
Or was it? For some intrepid souls, it seemed it was business as usual: peel off the hard floor at o dark thirty, put on a minimum of winter wear, get out the door, line up single file, and march on snow and ice covered roads in an 11-degree windchill with a wintry admixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain spitting throughout the day. This sounded like and looked like one of the forced pogrom marches into the brittle and lethal cold of Siberian winter. All day long, ‘our’ venerable monks walked mile after mile over snow and ice, by their own choice.
Ascetic disciplines stipulate only one meal per day in the present case. There would be no evening repast to warm and fortify their bodies and souls. That warmth would have to come from within.
A large number of well-wishers have expressed strong concern, even to the level of indignance about the monks walking on snow and ice and wearing minimal clothing. These peace makers know what they signed up for. Some Buddhist monks living in extreme environments at 18,000 feet in the Himalayan Mountains practice what is called tummo or ‘inner heat meditation’ in unheated stone monasteries. They can increase their core temperature by several degrees and retain their body heat at 2 degrees F while only wearing thin robes. They can also reduce their metabolism by half or more.
And I didn’t have the wherewithal to get out my own door? Our messengers of peace have the persistence, commitment, discipline, and profound sense of sacrifice to stay the course all day and on into the frigid night. They will sleep on the cement floor in a church gymnasium and repeat the process tomorrow. And the day after, and the day after. The only difference is the next two nights are forecast to be much colder with a windchill index of 1.7 degree. Freezing (at 32 degrees) will look tropical to these men of extreme endurance.
Why would anyone sign up for this kind of unpaid gig in a foreign land on the far side of the world? I postulate these big-hearted monks in their signature diaphanous orange robes fly their spirits to 18,000 feet and higher by facing into ultimate challenges in order to deliver a message of peace, love, kindness, and compassion to the millions of us desperately needing it here in our tormented and divided land. They want us to have peace that badly.
These monks will most certainly consider their mission a huge success if a whole lot of us make it our business as usual to daily carry their message of peace to those in our sea-level world and serve it with sides of love, kindness, and compassion.
It’s on us to maintain the heat of our commitment to this beautiful work unfolding in our midst. The monks have demonstrated with their lives how to keep our spirits warm; it’s upon us to show others how to do likewise. As we say in recovery, we can’t keep that which we don’t give away.
Blessed be,
Craig C. Johnson
The photo is not mine. It was taken 1-25-26 by Travis Long north of Raleigh, NC
