The 2009 World Peace Pilgrimage to Mt. Baldy

by Danny Fisher

This past Sunday, I participated in the World Peace Pilgrimage to Mt. Baldy with some of my colleagues from the University of the West.

The event was described as “a coming together of spiritual brothers and sisters from many faiths on a powerful and holy mountain in the San Gabriel Mountains–Mount Baldy.”

    From this sacred ground we will send out a stream of uplifting spiritual energy that will be a potent wedge of healing light into our suffering world.

We offered prayers, chanting, and so on from different traditions throughout the day. Our group of Buddhist practitioners from Rosemead offered the Heart Sutra as well as a prayer for world peace from Master Hsing Yun.

One particularly powerful moment came when one single prayer book was whipped up into the air during a chant and kept rising…rising…rising…until we couldn’t see it anymore. When the chanting was done, one of the organizers quipped, “If there was any doubt that our prayers were being carried up to Heaven…”

I took some pictures with my film camera, so I won’t be able to share those with you until they get developed. I do have a couple from my friends Nathan Michon and Jacky Liu, though, which are posted just below.

One note: this pilgrimage was an official pre-2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions event. The fifth such parliament to take place in a 116-year period, that event will be held from December 3rd-9th in Melbourne, Australia. For more about the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religion, check out my past interview with executive director Dirk Ficca.

Also, for those interested to know more about the site, I’ve previously blogged about Mt. Baldy here.

Nathan and I look down from our ski lift. Photo by Nathan Michon.
Nathan and I stop near the top for a picture. Photo by Jacky Liu.
At the top of Mt. Baldy–finally at the top! Photo by Jacky Liu.