Out of India and On to China

We have just left India and are now beginning the next leg of our Vegan World Tour to Taiwan and China. What a memorable 12-day experience in India! We have created a brief video that provides an overview of our whirlwind lecture tour to 10 cities of India, bringing the World Peace Diet vegan message to many thousands of people through direct lectures and workshops, as well as through mainstream media and social media.As far as we can tell, this is the first time anyone has ever undertaken a national lecture tour in India promoting veganism, which in many ways is still in a fledgling stage in India. We are deeply grateful to Shankar Narayan, founder of India’s only national vegan group, The Sattvic Vegan Society, for working tirelessly with local groups to organize and promote the tour, and for traveling with us every step of the way. We’re also grateful to WPD facilitator and Hippocrates health instructor Philip Nicozisis for his support and participation, as well as to countless people who contributed to making the many events successful beyond our dreams.

It was encouraging that the mainstream media was remarkably positive and supportive of our efforts, and besides numerous articles in regional newspapers, we also had two favorable write-ups in the Times of India (the New York Times of India).

We learned a lot about the vegan movement in India, and about the many devastating effects of the three “revolutions” that have been sweeping through India over the past 60 years: the “Green Revolution” that increased the use of mechanized, oil- and chemical-based agriculture; the following “White Revolution” that increased the production and consumption of dairy products, and the more recent “Red Revolution” that has increased the production and consumption of animal flesh.

We are glad to see many Indian people working to return India to her spiritual and cultural roots with the “Vegan Revolution,” and are committed to helping however we can. One activist predicted that veganism will spread more quickly in India than in any other country, and we can see that this may be so, as Indian people increasingly remember their roots and are re-inspired by the ancient Indian teaching of Ahimsa: Nonviolence as the foundation of inner and outer peace and harmony.

We grateful that so many seeds have been planted in India during our visit, with lots of new vegans and even the launching of a new state vegan society in Gujarat, and new efforts to translate and publish The World Peace Diet in Hindi and Gujarati, as well as in Tamil.

We are delighted now to be in Taiwan for a few more days, giving presentations on both The World Peace Diet and also on our new book, Your Inner Islands. On Sunday we are heading to mainland China for nearly 3 weeks of daily lectures promoting vegan living, and as we have said before, the tremendous recent advances in vegan and ecological awareness in Taiwan and mainland China are enormously encouraging. Many Buddhist groups are educating the public about the benefits of both organic and vegan foods, and the governments and media are also cooperating in ways we can still hardly imagine in the West.

Prior to our lecture tour in India, we conducted a 2-week European vegan lecture tour to Spain, Switzerland, and England, and we are deeply grateful to the many helpers, angels, and organizers that all these events went so well. Part of our mission is to help local grassroots vegan groups grow and flourish, and it has been heart-warming to be able to contribute to the vegan movement in the trenches, as it were, and participate in the launching of the first annual VeganFest in Geneva, for example, as well as the first Vegan Trade Show in London and the first vegan event in Segovia.

Finally, we are doing our best to update everyone on our World Peace Diet Facebook Group and Facebook Page. We are living in momentous times, and it’s heartening to see so many people working to make a positive difference in our world, starting with ourselves, our plates, and our relationships.

Don’t forget World Peace Diet Sundays. This reading of The World Peace Dietis open to all. If you would like to go deeper into the ideas in The World Peace Diet and also into the ideas in our books, Circles of Compassion and Your Inner Islands, join us in the World Peace Diet Facilitator Training Program.