Empowered Walker

Five breaths per step is human but three is sublime, if you are on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, following him in a mindful walking meditation. For the past month, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk has been teaching his practice from Marin County to Santa Barbara and San Diego. His worldwide coordinator, Arnold Kotler, says Nhat Hanh’s 6:30 a.m. walks have attracted as many as 2,500 people daily.

“It’s an easy technique that calms us and lowers our stress,” Kotler explains of the experience. For similar results, he suggests, try the measured breathing only, in a traffic jam.

Over the past 30 years, Nhat Hanh has pioneered an activist approach to Zen that he calls “engaged Buddhism.” He first applied it during the Vietnam War, where he founded schools and health clinics and helped rebuild villages destroyed by bombs. In the late 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated the Zen master for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The California coastline makes a fine setting for mindful walking, but Kotler has seen Nhat Hanh practice it in the New York subway, with 40 people behind him. “To watch Thich Nhat Hanh walk is an experience you never forget,” says Kotler.

Judge for yourself Tuesday at 7 p.m. when the master mindfully crosses the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. After that he returns to Plum Village, the monastic community in southern France where he lives.