Ontario Hare Krishna leader Bhaktimarga Swami, 61, visited Osoyoos early last week as he’s near completing his fourth walk across Canada. Swami is known by many of his followers as ‘The Walking Monk’ for his long journeys across the world’s second largest country. He is seen with longtime followers Karuna Sindhu (left) and Daruka Das from Winnipeg, who brought along his Blue Front Amazon parrot named Billie. (Keith Lacey photo)
An Ontario Hare Krishna monk knows better than almost anyone just how big and beautiful Canada is.
Bhaktimarga Swami, 61, made a brief pit stop in Osoyoos last week as part of his fourth cross-Canada journey over the past 30 years.
He was headed towards Victoria after leaving Osoyoos.
Born in Chatham, Ontario, Swami has lived the past 40 years of his life in Toronto, where he moved as a young man to seek a spiritual quest that landed him in the Hare Krishna movement.
Because of the massive amounts of publicity that have been generated by his cross-Canada walking tours, Swami is better known as The Walking Monk.
In search of spiritual enlightenment, Swami participated in his first cross-Canada walking tour back in 1996. At age 44, he walked from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria in seven and a half months.
He completed his second journey in 2003. His third jaunt across the world’s second-largest country was divided into two sections in 2007 and 2008.
The current tour, which will wrap up in Victoria in the next couple of weeks, has been split into three sections, starting in 2012, continuing last summer and finishing up this summer, he said.
He was suffering from lower back problems and other physical ailments when he started to walk long distances back in 1996.
He thought walking across Canada would be an excellent way to honour and pay tribute to his spiritual master named Srila Prabhupada, a well-known Indian religious writer and guru.
“My guru would have been 100 years old back in 1996 and I wanted to honour him with a nice gift and thought walking across this beautiful country to spread his message would be a wonderful way to pay homage,” he said. “I had such an amazing experience, that I made these long walks a part of my life.
“To be completing my fourth cross-Canada journey is something I’m very proud of.”
Swami was featured in “The Longest Road”, a recent National Film Board documentary dealing with the history of the people who shaped or were shaped by the Trans Canada Highway, the world’s longest continuous maintained road.
While best known for his cross-Canada walks, Swami is also a practitioner of bhakti yoga and mantra meditation.
With a background in the fine arts as a younger man, under the name John Peter Vis, Swami has also developed a passion for the performing arts. He has taken an active role in theatrical productions and has participated in casting, scripting and directing “morality plays from ancient Indian origins” that have been performed in venues across North America, Africa and India.
Through walking long distances and continuous chanting, Swami says he has found the peace and harmony he has sought for so long.
“My life is about trying to find the balance between the physical and spiritual world,” he said. “When you’re out walking long distances, you have the time to think and find clarity you can’t otherwise find in our busy world.”
Constant meditation has taught him to “deal with and get rid of traits like anger and greed and all vices,” he said.
All of the walking he has done over the past four decades has paid off handsomely as Swami appears to be in tremendous physical shape and looks much younger than his 61 years.
During his trip to Osoyoos, Swami was joined by Daruka Das, a Winnipeg man who met him 12 years ago and accompanied him on half of his trip across Canada back in 2007, as well as Karuna Sindhu, a young man from Germany who he met a couple of years ago.
Swami said this is the second time he has passed through Osoyoos and he is amazed at the beauty and natural surroundings of this town and the entire South Okanagan.
“I grew up in farm country near Chatham, where there are a lot of beautiful orchards, and this place reminds me of my youth, but it’s even more beautiful here,” he said.
Swami hopes to walk across the United States in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Hare Krishna movement in North America.
“I have a strong desire to walk across America to celebrate that anniversary and look forward to it as long as my health stays good,” he said.
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
