IN HIS TEACHINGS ON mindfulness, Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn advocates walking. At Plum Village, his meditation community in France, he leads groups of monks, nuns and visitors on daily walks through the bucolic countryside. This simple practice, he says, can bring us happiness and peace. It is known as walking meditation.

As elder of the Arabunna people, Kevin Buzzacott, too, practices walking. Raised on the vast flat stretches of the South Australian desert, he spent his youth tracing old dreaming tracks, placing one bare foot after another on the baking crust of the Earth. With each step, Buzzacott says he honors the countryside with all his heart. He calls this “walking the land.”

At first glance, it may seem absurd to draw parallels between traditional Buddhism and the spiritual practices of the Australian indigenous people. The cultural divide alone, would perhaps appear to make their philosophies incompatible. But on deeper reflection, it seems that at their heart, Buddhism and Aboriginal spirituality have remarkable similarities. While Kevin Buzzacott and Thich Nhat Hanh may never have met, they not only share many of the same values, but they also share many methods of practice. Nowhere is this more evident than in the practice of walking.

"Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. We have caused a lot of damage to the Earth. Now it is time to for us to take good care of her…"-- THICH NHAT HAHN, "Peace is Every Step"

WHILE KEVIN BUZZACOT’S SUPPORTERS describe him as the Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King of indigenous Australia, most Australians have never heard of him. To industry and government however, Buzzacott’s protests on political and environmental issues have earned him a reputation as an agitator. He has experienced death threats, court cases and the occasional arrest.

In 1998, a uranium mine situated on Arabunna country, expanded its operations. Buzzacott’s regular wanderings through the desert began to reveal evidence of what he calls the ‘desecration’ of the land and his people. He says he witnessed tailings dams leaching toxic waste into the soil, chimneys emitting hazardous ash and numerous bores sucking millions of liters of water from the artesian basin. These discoveries prompted Buzzacott to set up the ‘Arabunna Going Home Camp’ on the shores of the nearby dry salt Lake Eyre, in an effort to re-establish custodianship of the land. He then formed a group known as ‘Keepers of Lake Eyre’, to monitor the mine’s operations. And in March 1999, he took the mining company in question to the High Court on grounds of genocide.

In June 2000, it was decided that Buzzacott and members of the Keepers of Lake Eyre would take their concerns further afield. Describing it as a ‘peace walk’, they would walk the three thousand kilometers from their camp at Lake Eyre, to the Olympic City of Sydney. “We had this dream,” Buzzacott says. “Since we heard the year 2000 was coming up, and that with the Games the world was going to be looking at Sydney and Australia, we thought we would take our own flame, the ancient flame, to Sydney. We would call it the peace fire and we would encourage people along the way to come and sit around it and begin peace talks -- so we can begin to heal one another and heal this land”.

Some 50 walkers followed rivers and ancient dreaming paths across the arid interior, through scrubby bushland and over mountains capped with snow, sharing their message with indigenous people along the way and with people who greeted them in outlying towns. At a time when the nation’s attention was focused on the travels of the Olympic torch, Kevin and his walkers carried their own flame lit from the sacred fire on the shores of Lake Eyre. They carried it as fire sticks or in bark bowls known as ‘coolamon’, tending it as a peace fire at each new campsite.

BUZZACOTT AND THICH NHAT HAHN both teach that in being disconnected from the Earth, we are disconnected from each other. And that what stops us from taking steps mindfully, stops us from taking the necessary steps toward peace. In his book ‘Peace is Every Step’, Thich Nhat Hanh says that when we walk mindfully, we walk:

"…[Not] in order to arrive, but just to walk. The purpose is to be in the present moment and to enjoy each step. Although we walk all the time, our walking is usually more like running. When we walk like that, we print anxiety and sorrow on the Earth. When we are able to take one step peacefully and happily, we are working for the cause of peace and happiness for the whole of humankind."

While walking, Nhat Hanh invites us to sing the following simple song: “Now I walk in beauty/Beauty is before me/Beauty is behind me/Above and below.” Or to imagine a flower blooming in each of our footprints. In linking these images of beauty and gratitude with the act of walking, we imbue each step with compassion for ourselves and for the land, and affirm our connection to it.

This practice of respect for the land, is at the core of Aboriginal teachings. Their dharma begins with a profound appreciation of the way things naturally are. Where many of us seek to improve on Nature, in traditional Aboriginal culture, rocks, sticks, trees and flowers are revered exactly as they are found. Buzzacott says that on Arabunna land, there are “places where only certain people at certain times of year can visit.” And that “there are even places that none of us can go to. They have been set aside by our creators and we can only look at it and love it from a long way away. By one human being going to one place that is prohibited, we see it as a desecration. Even if they do not dig or turn a stone over. By actually being there it’s a desecration to us”.

This indigenous philosophy seems, in many ways, to encompass a core principle of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, that of 'Interbeing'. Describing it as the way in which all things are interrelated and interdependent, the Vietnamese monk teaches that only in understanding the Interbeing nature of the world, can we stop seeing ourselves as separate and thus allow peace to become a reality – peace within ourselves, with each other and with the Earth itself:

Peace is based on a respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life. Not only do we have to respect the lives of human beings, but we have to respect the lives of animals, vegetables and minerals. Rocks can be alive. A rock can be destroyed. The Earth also. The way we farm, the way we deal with our garbage, all these things are related to each other. (from “Peace is Every Step”)

FOR THE ARABUNNA PEOPLE, Buzzacott says that the land at Lake Eyre not only links them to their spirituality and their ancestors, but provides the source of their very survival. Unique upwellings of artesian water in the Lake Eyre basin called the Mound Springs, hold particular significance to Buzzacott and his people. “There are a lot of legends there. It is very, very sacred," he says. “But since the mine started taking the water, the Mound Springs have gone right down and they don’t function like they used to. Our traditional story is that if the water dries up, then so do the people. As long as the water flows, then we can also continue the cycle”.

Not only does this perception of the people’s interconnectedness with the water reflect the existence of Interbeing, but it also suggests the notion of karma, in Aboriginal understanding.

PAGE 2: A Sickness in Need of Healing

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