A Moving Temple

On July 12, about one hundred people walked silently and slowly under the bright sun toward the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, the third stop of the Day of Remembering Our Interdependence pilgrimage. The event, organized by a collective called Mahasangha NYC, called on people of different Buddhist lineages and other faiths to join a walk across the five boroughs of New York, with stops for ritual, chanting, speeches, and community building. 

The group came to a stop across from the MDC, where past visitors had affixed handmade signs saying “Happy Birthday, Dad” and “We Love You” to a chain-link fence. The MDC, the only federal prison in New York, currently holds about 1,200 people, including infamous cases like the former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The New York Times has reported on the center’s “dreadful conditions, near perpetual lockdowns, and grave staffing shortages.” Now, the MDC holds hundreds of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the raids and immigration sweeps of the last eighteen months. 

Pilgrimage participants gather at the Metropolitan Detention Center, led by Sister True Vow, Kaira Jewel Lingo, Father Adam Bucko, and Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz. Photo by Matthew Kozan Palevsky.

As Sister True Vow of Blue Cliff Monastery led the group of pilgrims in a song, people inside the prison began banging on the narrow fogged windows, as if to communicate their presence to those outside. “May all live in peace, be protected and safe,” the group sang. Dharma teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo echoed this wish in her remarks: “Every human being in this building behind us is a human being worthy of our love and respect.” Lingo noted she was about the same age as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the man shot and killed by ICE agents in Houston just days before, though the agents were looking for a different person. 

Participants at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn listen as Kaira Jewel Lingo speaks. Photo by Milou Haskin.

The banging continued as Father Adam Bucko offered a prayer in the Christian tradition, followed by remarks from Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, who leads weekly vigils outside the center and works with some of the detainees. People who have been released told him of the horrific conditions inside, which made the notorious Delaney Hall in Newark look like “child’s play.” 

Participants gather for a joyful dedication of merit outside the walls of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where many ICE detainees are held. Photo by Mona Chopra.

Meanwhile, a team of medics wearing red crosses circulated through the crowd offering water, sunscreen, snacks, and fans. Pilgrimage co-organizer Mara Phelan, who is a doctor, knew that the day would be hot and sunny, so she asked her medically trained friends to volunteer. It was one of many small acts of care for the group, some of whom had been outside since 8:00 a.m. that morning. 

Artist and author Tenzin Mingyur Paldron then took the microphone and spoke about meeting a Tibetan woman who was imprisoned for twenty-seven years by Chinese authorities. While in prison, the woman learned that the Dalai Lama was still alive and wanted to tell her fellow prisoners to give them hope. But the prisoners were isolated and not allowed to speak, so she sang a well-known song with the line, “After the snowfall comes the warmth of the sun.” The others reflected, understood the meaning, and rejoiced—all to the confusion of their guards. “They were trying to contain life,” said Paldron. “And we are uncontainable.” Paldron ended with a series of full-body prostrations in front of the MDC as the group chanted. 

Tenzin Mingyur Paldron, a Tibetan transgender artist, author, and community educator, performs prostrations outside the Metropolitan Detention Center while participants recite Shantideva’s prayer. Photo by Mona Chopra.

---

Co-organizer Dorotea Mendoza said the idea for the day came out of a friends gathering in February. Many of them were troubled by the state of the country yet inspired by the Walk for Peace, in which a monastic group traveled barefoot 2,300 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., over 110 days. “It’s like call and response,” said Mendoza. “That was their call, what is our response?” 

Over many conversations and iterations, the group of about ten organizers, mostly women of color, came up with the idea of staging a similar walk. Like the Walk for Peace, they wouldn’t put forth a political message but would instead insist on their deepest values. “I wasn’t there trying to fix anything,” Mendoza said of being outside the MDC. “That in itself feels light.”  

Some pilgrimage organizers, like Stephanie Cates, had met through activist spaces around environmental justice and Palestine, but Cates felt it was important to “bring others in as our own, even the people that I might consider my enemy, like an ICE agent.” Milou Haskin, another organizer, said the pilgrimage wasn’t about making demands. “We’re not actually waiting on anyone,” she said. “We want to insist on how much we love each other and [take] care of each other—for this little microcosm to embody all the things we want the world to be.”

The Day of Remembering Our Interdependence inspired similar walks that weekend in Austin, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Troy, New York. Its emphasis on cross-denominational Buddhism echoes the May We Gather memorials in Los Angeles and Antioch, California, which use ritual to bring attention to historic and current anti-Asian violence. And many participants are connected through other cross-lineage networks like the Buddhist Council of New York and Buddhist Action Coalition. 

Participants gather at the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan as Grandmother Clara Soaring Hawk and Owl Steven Dennison Smith offer blessings. Photo by Ryan Mijumbi.

For the New York pilgrimage, the day began at two separate points: at the 9/11 Memorial on Staten Island, and at the Banana Kelly Double Dutch sculpture in the Bronx, an iconic artwork from 1982 by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. The two groups, using a mix of walking and public transit, converged later that morning at the African Burial Ground National Monument, where two members of the Ramapo Munsee Lenape Nation, Grandmother Clara Soaring Hawk and Owl Steven Dennison Smith, offered blessings. The group then stopped for lunch in Brooklyn before walking to the MDC. Throughout the day, participants were invited to reflect on two questions: What stories does this place hold that I have not yet learned to hear? What would it mean to meet this place with an open heart rather than certainty? 

The event website described it as a “Buddhist-led interfaith” walk where “all are welcome.” Michael Shen, one of the volunteer medics, doesn’t identify as a practicing Buddhist but said, “It was very nice to walk in silence and meditate on our interconnectedness.” He added that it was “heart-wrenching” to hear the taps on the windows of the MDC, which “solidified the fact that there are humans in there,” and that he’s considering returning for the weekly vigils. 

---

The day’s last stop was the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, where organizers had arrived early to set up chairs and a spread of chips, wraps, and pastries. The walkers gathered under the trees overlooking the East River as the sun sank. There was more singing, and speakers emphasized our interdependence with nature and honoring the Lenape Indigenous to the land. Rev. James A. Lynch of the Buddhist Council of New York offered the merit of the day to “those who feel forgotten, abandoned, unseen, or lonely,” among many others. Rev. Doyeon Park of the Won Buddhist community spoke of using the four great vows, including “Sentient beings are numberless; we vow to save them,” as guides for our action, then chanted them in Korean. 

Matthew Menzies prepares to pour water into the East River during a four elements ceremony at the close of the pilgrimage in Queens. Photo by Glenmore Marshall.

To conclude the pilgrimage, Mendoza held up a jar containing water from Staten Island and the Bronx, and invited fellow organizer and environmental activist Matthew Menzies to lead a ceremony. Menzies spoke about his own experience being born on the East River and his Indigenous roots as a way of naming the complexities of where we come from. “Your home flows within you,” he said, then poured the jar into the river so waters from the five boroughs could mingle. 

Phelan stood by the river with tears in her eyes as the day concluded. “I’d been in organizing spaces before, and something was always missing, so I came to the conclusion that organizing wasn’t for me,” she said. Phelan added that protests were absolutely needed, but the Day of Remembering Our Interdependence showed her what she’d been missing. “I really needed the faith piece, I really needed the Buddhist spiritual piece, I really needed the love. It feels like coming home to find the space where I belong, and the people that I want to organize with.”

Participants gather at the final stop of the pilgrimage in Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. Photo by Glenmore Marshall.