Listen to the replay at the link above (28 minutes, 45 seconds audio .mp3). Thank you.

Vegan Nation interview (Part 2) with Dr. Will Tuttle, discussing his new book, Food for Freedom: Reclaiming our Health and Rescuing Our World. (“Tortoise” by Madeleine Tuttle)  Music: “Alive”, “FishSong”, “CalveSong”, “From the Mountain Top” by Will Tuttle (Madeleine on silver flute); and “Leader” by Vegan Queen V.

Part 1 Replay (28 minutes, 35 seconds audio .mp3):

Tune in Tuesday, August 27, 2024, 4 PM EDT. Vegan Nation WCUW 91.3 FM. Listen online at: wcuw.org/listen. Hosted by Marlene Narrow, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Archives: vegansradio.com PHOTOS Vegan Nation is in The LOBE!

Vegan Nation is a 1/2 hour radio show featuring vegan music, news, events, and interviews. On-Air since 2015. Much thanks for caring enough to hear & be heard, for your support of nonprofit Community radio, free speech, and your compassionate Vegan activism. Stay tuned in…immediately following each show is a rebroadcast of the previous week’s show.

During the second half of this Aug 27th show, Marlene shared a short snippet of a recent quote by Dr. Will Tuttle (8/19/24). Here’s the full quote (audio transcript):

“In the Buddhist tradition, it’s well understood that there are…we don’t call them Commandments but it’s precepts not to kill not to harm not to steal not to abuse sexually abuse others; and in the Buddhist tradition, it’s not confined to humans. It’s very specific that it’s all sentient beings.  So in the Buddhist tradition, when the Buddha brought this tradition…when he had his Enlightenment experience 500 BC in India, it was really a reform movement in India and moved the entire subcontinent of India away from meat eating and away from animal sacrifices toward vegetarianism, and when it spread to Eastern Asia like to China and to the Eastern Asia where they didn’t do dairy, it just basically introduced veganism into the world for the first time. When I was a Zen Buddhist monk in Korea, I was in a monastery that had been practicing vegan living for 850 years – no meat no dairy no eggs no wool no silk no leather no killing of insects – the whole thing is based on ahimsa.  Ahimsa is the Sanskrit word that means nonviolence, and the whole idea is that if we’re really serious about Spiritual Awakening, we’re not going to be needlessly abusing other living beings in any way, and that that’s really the foundation of spiritual maturity, of moral morality, and of a society where peace and Justice and freedom are actually possible.  So it’s really hardwired into the Buddhist teaching – nonviolence and what we would call today veganism.  There was an old word in Japanese, Shojin, which means refraining from eating animal foods for ethical reasons, right, it’s basically…this is an ancient teaching; it goes way back before we coined the word vegan. In the Buddhist tradition, it goes way back, so it’s foundational really to the Buddhist practice.  It doesn’t mean everybody does it.  Buddhism has been strongly influenced by the West and has been pushed away from these teachings, but foundationally it’s…it is kind of baked into Buddhism.

One of the ideas in the Buddhist tradition is getting away from the idea of Good and Evil and more toward the idea of skillful and unskillful actions; and the basic idea is that unskillful actions lead to suffering for oneself and others, that all life is completely interconnected, and whatever we sow, we’re going to reap.  This is a foundational teaching in the Buddhist tradition.  So there’s also reincarnation or the idea of rebirth, that whatever we…whatever seeds we sow, we’re going to experience in future lifetimes.  So if we’re going to insist on being an agent of violence and abuse toward other sensient beings, then we will experience that ourselves.  So there’s this sense of it’s unskillful because it causes more suffering to myself, it reduces my spiritual capacity, and it causes suffering to others; and there’s one life living through all of us, so that basic idea goes contrary. And skillful actions essentially are in alignment with what’s called Dharmata – is the way the universe is. It’s one life living through all of us…we…there’s no fundamentally separate self.  In Buddhism, we are all expressions of a life, so this…this body is not what we are…we have.  That’s the delusion.  So when we see others merely as a physical object, like when we see a cow just as something to be used, that’s a delusion that’s unskillful and it causes suffering.  So the whole idea is in Buddhism to come back to our wisdom, our true nature, which is wise and awake.  It’s fundamentally a very positive, optimistic view; and then to live that way skillfully with compassion for all…” – Dr. Will Tuttle