Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

In the end, Sunday was warm and dry. I had led a roam on Saturday, around Lake Merced and Pine Lake, which was very pleasant except for continued back pain – mostly manifesting as hip and knee pain the further I walked.

My bike was out of action (flat tyres from riding in the rain, none of my spare tubes managing to stay inflated, timing not working out for getting to the bike shop), so I had to walk to a bus, transfer to the streetcar and walk the last few blocks to Zen Center. I soon realised I was overdressed, so my jacket and base layer both went in my bag, and I did the whole thing just wearing a T-shirt.

There were plenty of people milling about in front of 300 Page St when I got there – I had been working on the timings I had been given in the initial briefing document, and it looked like the plan was to get underway sooner than I had expected. Nannette, who had done the organising, addressed the attendees, and then I said a few words. We had discussed how silent to be, and my suggestion was that we start up the hill in silence, and then saw how we felt.

Two things surprised me: the first was that the silence prevailed over the whole walk. There were one or two conversations to be heard, but otherwise it was a two-hundred-odd group of people walking quietly. The second was that some people we in a big hurry to get to the ocean. I tried reining in the front runners a few times, and in the end, the people carrying the banner were often going a little quicker than I would have prefered (and probably a few others as well).

We managed to navigate the busy crossings in and out of the Panhandle safely enough, and regroup for the first stretch of the park, before taking a break at the music concourse – this was not only close to the half-way mark, but was also a place where I could imagine space for a hundred people sitting down.

Many people in the park were curious about what we were doing, and several joined in, from what I heard. My joints started aching a fair amount through the second half, but I was happy to keep going, along very familiar paths, until the windmill, and shortly afterwards, the beach.

The original plan had been to arrive for sunset, but we were probably an hour early altogether. We did a short service and people hung about, chatted, and slowly dispersed. We agreed it could hardly have gone better, and several people were asking about doing it again.

As to the impact we had – it is unknowable. Maybe some people felt inspired, maybe some of them will act as a result of it. At the very least, we walked, together, with a common purpose, and that was very precious.