Dear Friends,
As many of you know, the Season For Nonviolence begins on January 30, anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, and runs for 64 days, to the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination on April 4. It is a time to commemorate the teachings and example of these two great human beings. There will be many events in cities throughout North America during this time to educate, inspire, and celebrate nonviolence, and I hope that we can all begin to realize and reduce the immense violence we commit towards animals used for food, and help raise consciousness in our culture that nonviolence begins on our plates. As I discuss in The World Peace Diet, if we yearn to contribute to peace, a terrific opportunity for all of us is to move ever closer to a vegan way of being in the world, and spread the word to others through our efforts and example. Veganism is radical inclusion--including all sentient beings within the sphere of our compassion. King said, "Violence anywhere hurts everyone everywhere," and Gandhi's basic entreaty was to "Be the change you want to see in the world." These two teachings point to the interconnectedness of all of us, and to the necessity for an awakening to this truth at the daily life level.
With the new administration of Barack Obama, there is still a palpable sense of relief and optimism in the air, even in the midst of what everyone recognizes are enormous challenges. We must never forget that all change comes from the grass roots, and that Presidents are under enormous pressure from the plutocracy to divide, exploit, and confuse. As we insist on peace, justice, sustainability, and equality, and live these values in our lives and communicate them as best we can through all levels of our culture, we will see our leaders responding. I highly recommend boycotting not only the meat,dairy, egg, and other animal abuse industries, but also the pharmaceutical-medical complex and the mass media. Getting news from alternative sources is empowering and illuminating! There are so many, and they are proliferating!
Some good news! A colleague who lives in Chicago and works out in the same gym where Obama also used to exercise, saw him on the last day he was in the gym in late December, and gave him a copy of The World Peace Diet! I had signed it specifically to Obama, and she was able to put it right into his hands, as he smiled and graciously received it! The next day, he and his family left for their Hawaii vacation, and from there went to Washington, DC and the inauguration. Thanks to the angels for this minor miracle, and please, if you have time, write to Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and recommend that they read The World Peace Diet and go vegan as an example of the "Yes We Can" and "Change" themes we have been hearing so much.
A few days ago, a film crew from Supreme Master Television (www.suprememasterTV.com) came down to our rolling home by the edge of the Atlantic here in the Florida Keys and filmed an appeal that I made, urging President Obama and all leaders to switch to an organic, whole foods vegan diet to exemplify their willingness to be the change, and to encourage others to do the same. It is gratifying to see that there are leaders at various levels of government who are courageously urging people to switch to plant-based eating, and are doing it themselves. Please thank them and encourage others also! Also, if you are involved with or interested in the Unity movement, there is an interesting new video that Supreme Master TV has created about the Unity Movement and vegetarianism, entitled, "The Unity School of Christianity and Spiritual Vegetarianism," Part 1 and Part 2. It is eye-opening and encouraging, and is internationally translated and televised, like all SMTV content. Here's the link:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/
Some more good news! Sales of The World Peace Diet broke new records in 2008, and it was again, for the second year in a row, the #1 best selling book of New York's Lantern Books (out of 150 books). It will be going into its fifth printing soon, which will include the long-missed index! In the meantime, you can always download the index for free from our website. The book is still $20, signed, including a free CD and Madeleine's Intuitive Cooking, and there are also several quantity discounts available as well. We also have the book available as an audio book for $20 (physical) or just $15 to download to your computer. Before too long, it'll be available as an audio book on iTunes as well. See http://worldpeacediet.org for details.
There's even more good news! Increasing numbers of people are facilitating study courses and book study groups on The World Peace Diet in cities around North America - and our two leading facilitators, Mark Stroud and Anna Ferguson in Cincinnati are working with a new 501(c)3 non-profit called A.P.E. - Animals, People, Earth -to promote the World Peace Diet in Cincinnati and beyond by encouraging book study groups nationwide, opening a vegan restaurant in Cincinnati, developing a line of vegan foods, and sponsoring a vegan yoga conference in Cincinnati in October of 2009 called, you guessed it, the World Peace Yoga Conference - see you there! For more information on all this, go to: www.worldpeacediet.org/APE.htm.The conference will feature Gabriel Cousens, Andrew Harvey, Sharon Gannon, and many other leaders in the yoga, spirituality, and vegan movements.
And one more thing! Please consider joining us on the vegan Caribbean cruise called the Taste of Health Cruise, leaving from Fort Lauderdale on March 1 until March 8, featuring T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard, Christina Pirello, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and others. For more information, http://www.atasteofhealth.org/
Finally, please join the forums and discussion groups at www.worldpeacediet.net, and feel free to sign up for our free daily "Veg Inspiration For The Day" at www.worldpeacediet.org and/or the Worldwide Prayer Circle For Animals at www.circleofcompassion.org. Also please remember that our continuously updated tour schedule is posted on our website: www.willtuttle.com/schedule.
A big thank-you to all of you who are working diligently to raise consciousness on this Earth. You are making a difference! We are all connected. Bless you all!
That's it for now.
Love and peace,
Will & Madeleine
It sounds like you are the drop of water that could potentially affect change. Thank you for your teaching. I am thankful that your friend was at the right place at the right time to place your book in Pres. Obama's hands. I will be hopeful that he reads it and takes it to heart.
Best wishes,
Jennifer
Posted by: Jennifer | February 04, 2009 at 08:46 AM
Thanks, Jennifer - let's hope so, and do more than just hope so, but continue to spread the word and deepen our understanding of who we actually are.
Will
Posted by: Will | February 04, 2009 at 11:10 AM
We need to build a bridge of harmony not judgemental-
Nichiren never judge anyone purities it’s called karma that people needs to see within them selves. When you are lost and you have conveyed yourself into this empty world. It’s like a blank canvas you have to use different paints to make the canvas to become this pretty picture. When the colors and shapes on it do you judge the way it is showing? Do you need to change this and this? When you are lost into something in your own life everything is lost and it’s gone to its own discreet. Like the canvas you have painted. When Nichiren had to struggle in his own life traveling with no clothes, shoes only his stick to help him walk. He never complains on when he was hungry or tired. He never complain when he meet his predecessors he never judge them on how they look or speak, old and frail or suffering from illness or even death.
Nichiren has given us this wonderful Omandala Gohonzon to rejoice that gives us peace and harmony within you. You will rise above all others with out no judgemental and hatred. We need to build a bridge of harmony, prosperity, happiness and eternity. Once you have build this bridge it’s like shedding your own skin from old to new. Like the weather changes to winter, spring, summer and autumn. When we look at things in a perspective like a tree, limb, leaves, or animals or a channel of catastrophes that this world endures its teaching you to create and not to judge and destroy it.
There are many warnings that people is coming to judgments is not fully motivated and tempered by love and hatred the truth you hear is your own voice. Your darkness to light is to fulfill the richness of love and the immortality of your own life everlasting. It’s your ability to apprehend and understand that there is knowledge and ignorance out there. It’s oneself to be in this normal healthy state of condition of mindfulness. We as human’s beings do have this comprehensions of thinking but at times we do not use mindfulness. We seem to forget who we are and then we make statements and comments of our true nature that you have grasp of ignorance then you judge others.
Buddhahood is defined to the highest state of life condition to characterize by wisdom, hope, courage, confidence, compassion, vitality and endurance. By forming this spiritual strength that enables us to live as human beings regardless of the changes we have made or have destroyed. And even though the challenges of the times and our own society that dictates to us. Society dictates of what and how you should act. If we do what society dictates you to then our society is corrupted by the highest state of life that is being created and characterized of speaking of judgemental of ones self?
We must teach others to live a life for our own values, then that value is the greatest wisdom, or to take daily actions to create value in your own life. Then we are guided by our own wisdom, one will be able to reflect his or hers to enhance this concept of the value of good and against evil, and then direct his or her life on the path of good. By tapping into this inner immortality in the course of our daily life is the equivalent to walking the path of a true human being, and is also the way of the Buddha to be enlightened. Our human heart is the way how we seek the mindfulness to be valued as the true human being in our own daily life. So we can be enlightened as a true Buddha.
The Buddha's intention is for all the people to gain enlightenment into daily reality, for only us to seek that enlightenment of nonjudgmental towards others. That is what Nichiren has taught us and if we do not seek this and take this into our own hearts then the hatred an the dark light will be here to hover over us to keep us at a stand still like a stone that never changes its color or shapes only hardness to refer the blindness like a horse has blinders on and we can not see the reality out there in front of our own face.
The course of one's life, generally is called destiny is pretty self explanatory. The concept of karma is the reluctant condition that is arising from the causes and the effects that you make in your life. Buddhism teaches that the Law of cause and effect is a universal law of phenomena in the universe. The causes and effects that one can accumulate in this life is not just the present of a lifetime but the three existences of past, present and future. This is the Buddhism's view of our eternal life. Only you can accept it as your own conceptions of cause and effect that is the eternal view or the eternal life.
Causes may be negative or positive, but they are accumulated through our thoughts, words and deeds. What we are now is the result of past causes we have made. By the same reason then, what will become of us depends on the causes that we are making now.
What matters the most is the continued effort in laying positive causes, cherishing the present moment as the turning point in your life. The principle for changing in ones life is to bring peace to our own society. This will affect our own society at large and then the world will follow.
A change in value creating we accumulated his or her life is the concept of good, is a positive values in any ones life, the course of leading a life of fulfillment is bringing us to the pursuit of happiness that is bringing mankind to our attention. Happiness we do share it we do not own happiness in any singular way. This is what Nichiren was trying to tell us not to be judging others but to accept things the way they are.
Written by Mary Johnson
Date; April 17, 2009
Friday 5:19 am-When completed
Posted by: Mary Johnson | July 06, 2009 at 04:23 PM