In this episode, through questions posed by the panelists, Supreme Master Ching Hai explains how media, education, and grassroots efforts can help promote awareness of compassionate living.
(What a fascinating conversation and discussion we’re having. If only every human being on the planet could hear this discussion.
And as we continue our discussion, Lionel Friedberg, do you have another question for Supreme Master regarding this issue of spirituality and evolution, and how we need to regard other life as sacred if we were to survive?)
I would like to get some feedback from You as to Your audience: Are we actually getting this message through to people? And if so, how are we able to extend it? I think Supreme Master Television is a wonderful institution, and I want to commend You, from the depth of my heart, for what You are doing. How can we get more of this into the world, into society? How can we reach more people? Is there anything that You can advise us on this?)
Master: Thank you, sir, for trusting me. We are doing just whatever we can. Not just on television, but the people from the Association, they are going out of their way – they’re printing thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of leaflets containing the information about global warming, SOS, and the alternative lifestyle of a vegan diet. And they go out, they put the flyers in their pocket, in their handbags, and they distribute it wherever they go – on the bus, on the train, in the restaurant. I even do it myself whenever I go out. And when I see some appropriate situation, I would also hand out a leaflet about SOS and vegan diet.
And also, nowadays we have emails, we have internet, we do whatever we can. There is no other way that I can even suggest. What you are doing already is very wonderful and what Dr. Tuttle has been doing is wonderful. He wrote books. Some people wrote books. Some people go on TV. Some people go on the radio. Some people write articles in the newspapers. Some people go out and distribute flyers. And some people gather information about vegan diet and the urgency of our planet and they just give it to everyone they can. And that’s all we can do for now, sir. Or else, I think we can hire airplanes and go in the air and let all the flyers fly down everywhere. Or what else do you think we should do? Maybe you have better ideas.
The governments must [get] involved. The media must [get] involved because it should be official – the vegan diet. Vegan should be the norm in society right now, should be the official solution, the immediate solution, the immediate effect for our planet. The government, the media should please help.
Anyway, we could spread out whatever way we can, because if the government and the media don’t join us, then we are a little bit short, and maybe slow, but we do it. We do individually, whatever we can. All the vegan people out there, please just print any leaflet you can concerning urgency of the planet and the benefit of vegan diet in connection with saving the planet. Please do it. Please don’t be shy anymore. It’s time now. I know you don’t want to boast about your being vegan, but why not? This is a noble way of life. (Thank You, Supreme Master, for such appropriate advice.) Thank you, sir.
(Well, I loved hearing Supreme Master. And as we listen to an amazing panel that we have here today and try to process all of this, it occurs to me that, while we are here pushing for evolution and pushing for compassion and pushing for kindness, unfortunately, a lot of the country is being brainwashed by hamburger ads, and being conditioned to eat more and more meat.) That’s right. (And so, I was hoping that perhaps Supreme Master could share some of Her experience and wisdom about how we get to change the media’s outlook, so that the mainstream media does promote healthy diet, given all we know about global warming and the impact of a high cholesterol diet on health. How do we make the mainstream media take a fair approach to this issue and not minimize it or ridicule it?)
Yes, Jane, I was asking myself the same. But you see, somebody has informed me that the media are sometimes, or often times are controlled by big corporate companies. And sometimes they’re even (animal-people) meat corporations. So, we can go directly to these so-called bosses, by approaching them personally, talking to them or sending them emails, giving them leaflets; we change from the root. And once the bosses change, maybe their employees change.
And I also do hope that the journalists, the reporters, the media agents do remember their noble job as informative agents for the people. That’s why people buy newspapers; that’s why people watch television – because in their daily life, everyone is so busy – busy to earn a living. So they rely on the noble journalism to inform them what’s going on on the planet. They also rely on the government to do this job for them, to lead them into the right and beneficial direction.
Well, just in case some people want to know about how precious our life is and how we are really treating this kind of precious life, I’m going to give you a very brief info. I think you know some of it already, and maybe some of you don’t know. Some people out there don’t know. So I’m going to inform you about the cost of (animal-people) meat diet in our lives. Apart from costing lives, they are costing a lot of taxpayers’ money. And I’m surprised that we are paying all that and have no complaints. Hard earned money just wasted down the drain.
According to the University of Pennsylvania, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Colin Campbell, all these three agents have told us that, the cost of (animal- people) meat for health alone, to take care of the people who are sick because of (animal-people) meat, the cost of it in the United States alone is around US$120 to US$150 billions of dollars per year, just to take care of meat-related diseases. That’s how we treat our lives, because we eat (animal-people) meat, we get sick, and then we have to work hard to pay tax, to go to the hospital and get dissected and get poked and get injected.
OK, now the cost of cigarettes per year for taking care of Health-related problems concerning cigarettes. alone in the United States, is US$96 billion.
The cost of alcohol-related illnesses for the United States alone is US$186.4 billion. Up to now it’s all billions. And the cost of drug-related problems per year in the United States is US$181 billion per year. And now, the cost of war per year in the United States right now is US$192 billion per year. Add them all together.
This is all your money – down the drain it went. And all this is from the World Health Organization statements, from the White House statements about drug control policy, and from US Congressional Research about Arms Control and Non- Proliferation. It’s not from me. And the war cost is about weapons yet, it’s nothing to do with even damage or rebuilding or helping the wounded personnels and soldiers and innocent civilians as well, etc., etc.
So this is really too much. When we think of how we treasure our life, how we want to live long, how we want to be healthy, how we love life as is – nobody really wants to die, nobody really wants to get sick – but look at how we treat our life. We poison our system of the body by (animal-people) meat, by cigarettes, by alcohol, by drugs, and by war as well. This is not the way we should treat the precious life that we got. The more we say we love life, the more we should look at all these facts and turn around. I’m not talking about spirituality yet. This is only the cost of all the poisons that we’ve been taking into our precious temple of God, which is the body. I’m surprised, how can people not think about it?
All this talk about protecting lives and protecting health and all the kinds of preventive systems to protect the health of the people, it comes to nothing if we continue to poison our bodies with (animal-people) meat, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and making war as well. Because all this money is a waste. We could have had a better life, for every citizen in the United States, if all this spending money were given to them in a better education or helping the underprivileged, building better schools, getting better information for everybody, helping the disabled, helping the terminally ill children, spend it on research for medical treatment, etc., etc.
And continue for this trend – one serving of (cow-people flesh) beef, we use 1,200 gallons of clean good water; one serving of (chicken-people flesh) chicken, 330 gallons of water, clean and good; and one complete vegan meal, including rice or bread, or tofu, that is full of protein, and vegetables, it costs only 98 gallons of water.
Now we are complaining about shortage of water everywhere on the planet. We’re complaining about shortage of food. We use 90% of grain to feed animal(-people) instead, and we leave 862 million people hungry. That is in 2008 alone. For the grain that we use for livestock, we can feed two billion people. Many times over for the world hunger people that we have right now. So I do not understand, Truly, with all the intelligence that I have, would someone explain to me what kind of world we are living in and what kind of policy we are following and what kind of kindness we’re doing to ourselves and our fellow beings, not to talk about animal(-people) yet? Because we cannot even love our own species. So, it would be incomprehensible of course, for many to understand how to love animal(-people). Now you know why.
Photo Caption: “Love to Touch the Feet That Walk in Love”
