The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

264 / the world peace diet
quito season, it was absolutely not an option to kill a mosquito or any
creature. We simply used a mosquito net in the meditation hall.
Through the months of silence and meditation, sitting still for seemingly
endless hours, a deep and joyful feeling emerged within, a sense of
solidarity with all life and of becoming more sensitive to the energy of
situations.
When after four months I returned to the bustle of American life, I
felt a profound shift had occurred, and the vegetarianism I’d been practicing
for about nine years transformed spontaneously and naturally
into veganism with roots that felt as if they extended to the center of my
heart. Until then, I had mistakenly thought that my daily vegan purchases
of food, clothing, and so forth were my personal choices, simply
options. Now I could clearly see that not treating animals as commodities
was not an option or a choice, for animals simply are not commodities.
It would be as unthinkable to eat or wear or justify abusing an animal
as it would be to eat or wear or justify abusing a human. The profound
relief and empowerment of completely realizing and understanding
this in my heart has been enriching beyond words.
When I returned from Korea I was able to begin teaching humanities
and philosophy courses at a college in the San Francisco Bay Area,
through connections I’d made when getting a masters degree at San
Francisco State University just prior to going to Korea. After about six
months of teaching I decided to apply for entrance into a Ph.D. program
in the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Education. For this I was
required to take an aptitude test, the Graduate Record Examination,
and it was interesting that when the results came back they were very
high. Mensa told me that the scores corresponded to an I.Q. that was in
the top one-quarter of one percent of the population. In my younger
years as an omnivore and non-meditator I had never scored particularly
high on such tests, but it’s quite understandable. A vegan way of eating
not only allows our system to run much cleaner, but more essentially,
it frees us mentally to make connections. This ability is the foundation
of intelligence. Regular meditative silence allows our mind to relax
and connect with wellsprings of intuitive potential that also seem to
increase our ability to make connections. Following a vegan diet and