Josh Korda

On October 26, 2025, a group of nineteen monks from the Vietnamese Theravada Buddhist tradition, affiliated with the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center, began a historic pilgrimage from the temple’s center in Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., in an effort to promote peace, compassion, and nonviolence.

Week after week, in our work as a meditation teacher/somatic therapist and a Buddhist pastor, we sit with people who are worn down, frazzled, and sleep-deprived. After endless hours bombarded by proliferating news feeds, the shouting din of social media, and the unrelenting pace of modern life, they feel simply overwhelmed by 2025.

A few years ago, I was invited to teach mindfulness meditation to a group of software engineers at a multinational tech company. The company hoped mindfulness would reduce their coders’ stress levels, and it sounded like it could be of some benefit. But when I met with their employees, I learned how they faced punishing deadlines, frequent overtime demands, constant pressure to quickly fix bugs, intense scrutiny during code reviews, and pervasive job insecurity.