THE PRESCOTT-RUSSELL NEWS AUGUST 17, 2007 P. 7
THE WALKING MONK PILGRIM WALKS THROUGH CASSELMAN
Marie Cicchini CASSELMAN
Jon Peter Vis, a.k.a. the walking monk, passed through Russell, Embrun and Casselman August 7 in his third pilgrimage across Canada to promote spiritual solutions to the material problems of life. The newspaper caught up with the 54-year-old born in Chatham, Ontario, in the middle of a sunny summer afternoon. He was sitting on the shaded lawn of the former agricultural museum in Casselman and had already socialized with the retired owner, Jean Dumontier. Wearing a peach-coloured robe, traditional Hare Krishna garb, the hairless monk had walked down Bank Street through Metcalfe, Russell and Embrun, accompanied by Doug Kretchmer, a video production business owner who joined the trek at the Ontario border on May 10 with his pet bird, a female parrot named Billie. The 7800 km walk that will take him to Cape Spear, Newfoundland by the end of September is not a fundraiser, he says. At 20 years of age, as a fine arts student in need of a spiritual outlet, Vis adopted a monastic lifestyle in the Hare Krishna movement in the order of the Swamis, as well as the name of Bhaktimarga (which means path of devotion). Vis started teaching yoga and mantra meditation based on a popular Hindu text. He manages to take an active role in theatrical productions, scripting, casting and directing morality theatre. He has a spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, famous for his work The Bhagavad Gita as it is. Heading east, the walking monk is trekking the second half of the country this summer. Kretchmer is there to drive and secure accommodation as needed. This third pilgrimage is broken up in two this time because the walking monk has commitments with youth groups. In 1996, he crossed the country from coast to coast, and completed the circle in 2003, walking from Cape Spear back to Vancouver Island. Swami was featured in The Longest Road, a National Film Board documentary detailing the history of the people who shaped the Trans- Canada Highway. On a typical day, starting at 4:00 a.m., the walking monk travels 40km on average, chanting a Maha mantra with chanting beads, a strand of 108 round beads in a bead bag, ending the meditation well into nightfall. This time, people understand the purpose behind it. The vibrations are better. They are curious and stop to chat. Some of them will open up their home and offer hospitality, said the amiable monk. The pilgrimage gives him a chance to connect with people, he says. Walking, meditating, and communicating with other travelers allows him to eradicate a modern-day culprit which he calls race- ism. Some of us tend to brush each other off so very easily at the slightest provocation, he says, blaming what appears to be a vacuum of virtues in society. So the pilgrimage is fortifying him. It's a matter of personal growth, which he believes can be achieved by working on his inner strength. The moments of strain in the walk and the unpredictable weather humble him and build up his tolerance, while connecting with other travelers along the way softens him a little. The message I am conveying is an encouragement to integrate long walks and meditation into your lifestyle, he says for those who are not already treading a path of spiritualism. One can also participate in the walking culture through donations to the 108 club at www.thewalkingmonk.org.
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