The vegan message is the message of the interconnectedness of all life, and the message that love is the ultimate power, that life is a blessing, and that our greatest joy comes from authentically contributing to the welfare of others.
Will and friends...
If you could sum my message up in a simple phrase, it would be: Respect for all life.
Living in our solar-powered “rolling home,” my spouse Madeleine and I
traveled full-time for 18 years sharing the vegan message, and now for the
past 5 years, we are traveling internationally to bring this message to the
world. We have presented thousands of lecture, workshop, and concert events,
primarily through college and university groups, progressive churches,
conferences, and for yoga, meditation, vegetarian, environmental, peace, and
social justice communities. In addition, we offer online training in the
main ideas in my book, The World Peace Diet, for people interested in more
fully understanding and sharing the vegan message of health, sustainable
living, and kindness. My presentations are intended to bring inspiration,
healing, and awakening, and often include evocative paintings by Madeleine,
a visionary artist and musician from Switzerland.
As part of my mission to understand our culture more deeply, I studied and
received an M.A. degree in Humanities at San Francisco State University, and
then went on to the University of California, Berkeley, for my Ph.D. My
doctoral dissertation at Berkeley focused on educating intuition and
altruism in adults, and I subsequently taught a wide variety of college
courses in philosophy, religion, mythology, humanities, music, literature,
history, writing, and creativity. After this, I began traveling as a
lecturer and concert pianist, and have now created eight CD albums of
original piano music.
A healthy, enthusiastic, and profoundly happy vegan since 1980, and Dharma
Master in the Zen Buddhist tradition, I see my mission as one of bringing
the message of radical inclusion to our wounded and fragmented culture. For
this reason, I lecture, teach, and perform so much throughout North America
and worldwide. Because of this, I’m a recipient of The Peace Abbey’s Courage
of Conscience Award, as well as the Empty Cages Prize. Many people know me
from my #1 Amazon best-selling book,
The World Peace Diet, now translated
and published in 16 languages, as well as Circles of Compassion, on the
intersection of social justice issues.
Born in Emerson Hospital in 1953 in Concord, Massachusetts, I learned to
swim in Walden Pond, attended Thoreau School, Alcott School, and was from an
early age immersed in the spiritual aura of the Concord Transcendentalists.
I was the oldest child in our family. My father was a writer, newspaper
publisher, pianist, and outdoor adventurer; my mother was an artist and
writer. I grew up with a love of nature, animals, sports, books, and music
and was a church organist in high school. Attending Colby College in Maine
in the early 1970s, I discovered the power of musical harmony, composition,
and improvisation, as well as the poetry of Walt Whitman and the spiritual
teachings of Zen, Vedanta, Taoism, and mystical Christianity.
Inspired to go on a spiritual pilgrimage following graduation from Colby, I
left home in 1975, with my brother Ed, heading west toward California, in a
dedicated quest for higher consciousness. Our months of walking brought us
eventually to Tennessee, practicing meditation and non-attachment as we
went. We arrived at The Farm, a well-known commune with about 900 people,
and it was there that I became a vegetarian. We continued on, walking to
Huntsville, where we took up residence in a Korean Zen Center, devoting 8-10
hours daily to meditation.
Eventually I moved to northern California, where I lived in and practiced at
Buddhist meditation centers, becoming a vegan in 1980. In 1984, I completed
my M.A. degree in Humanities at San Francisco State University, focusing on
Zen arts, and received the Graduate Student Distinguished Achievement Award.
Shortly after this, I shaved my head and headed to Korea to live as a Zen
monk in Songgwang Sa Zen temple where I undertook a traditional 90-day
silent intensive meditation retreat. Upon returning to the States, I began
teaching college courses in philosophy, humanities, and religion, and
enrolled at U.C., Berkeley, where I studied in the Graduate School of
Education and received a Ph.D. in 1988, focusing on educating intuition. I
had a 4.0+ GPA at Berkeley, and my dissertation was nominated for the Best
Dissertation Award.
After several years of full-time college teaching, I decided to focus on
music composition and performance and began creating albums of original
uplifting piano music, and performing and lecturing extensively throughout
North America and Europe. I spent the next fifteen years creating albums of
original uplifting piano music and performing extensively throughout North
America and Europe. I met my spouse, Madeleine, in Switzerland in 1990, and
we have been traveling full-time since 1995, presenting lectures, concerts,
and workshops.
In late 2005, after working on the writing of it for five years, I published
The World Peace Diet, the first book to present a comprehensive picture of
the consequences of eating animal-sourced foods. I now focus much of my time
on spreading the vegan message through lectures and through training people
to be World Peace Diet Facilitators, so they can more effectively and
confidently spread the message of compassion for all life in communities
throughout the world.
As a 38-year vegan, I am delighted to be sharing life with my wife,
Madeleine, carrying out our mission to help veganize North America and the
world. We don’t go to doctors or carry medical insurance, and haven’t taken
a pill or had a TV in over 40 years.
Besides giving piano concerts throughout North America, I present seminars
on developing spiritual intuition and on the importance of transitioning to
a vegan diet. Madeleine is a gifted artist, and our concerts, lectures and
seminars include her evocative paintings of animals. In addition, she plays
the silver flute and accompanies my piano music, and is a talented chef,
craftsperson, and Waldorf school educator. We also uniquely create
individualized music and art portraits of individuals and couples.
One of my efforts is to help bring the spiritual dimension into veganism
through The World Peace Diet, as well as through essays, lectures, and media
presentations, and my new book, Your Inner Islands.
My perception of veganism is as a modern expression of “ahimsa,” the ancient
core of all spiritual teachings, which is non-violence. Whatever we sow, we
will inevitably reap, and the key to happiness lies in blessing others and
being loving and kind to all beings. Violence in word, thought, and deed
harms oneself more than it does others.
I believe that we are all born into a culture that forces us to participate
in rituals of violence (meals) from infancy. We are injected with a
mentality of reductionism, exclusion, privilege, and might-makes-right:
seeing others as mere instruments to be used for one’s own pleasure and
gain. I teach that veganism is coming home into one’s true heart, and seeing
beings as beings, and respecting them as equally sacred manifestations of
divine life.
My message is that veganism is a philosophy and practice of radical
inclusion, and that going vegan is the most positive, uplifting, and
transformative action any human being can make in our culture today. I see
it as a profound and effective questioning of the core violence of our
culture. I believe that veganism is a loving response that makes us part of
the solution to the crises that beset us, rather than being part of the
problem.
For me, questioning our culture’s food choices and switching to a
plant-based diet for ethical reasons is the first step in a spiritual
adventure that blesses the world. Choosing a vegan path can lead us to
ever-higher states of spiritual awareness, leading to liberation and the
fulfillment of our purpose on this Earth.
I feel that the greatest gift we can give others is the gift of sharing the
vegan message, and living it as deeply as we can. It is the message of the
interconnectedness of all life, and the message that love is the ultimate
power, that life is a blessing, and that our greatest joy comes from
authentically contributing to the welfare of others.
May you who read these lines be happy, free, and at peace!
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