Embarking on the Joyful Journey of a Plant-Based Diet

A Poem
A silent morning mist rolls in,
Blankets the ground in softness.
All about the early dawn shines,
Burning away the fog.
Grey geese arrive on winter wings,
Honking and waddling, nipping at the grass.
Soon they will fly away…
P O E M
Tladatsi, Karma Yeshe Sumdrup
(pronouns he/they), a mixed
ethnicity Indigenous and Euro
American, took formal refuge in
the Drukpa Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is
a veteran prisoner of forty-two
years. He is in training to become
a certified recovery mentor for
alcohol and drug addiction focused on trauma recovery.

WA K E U P
Many of us have heard Thầy’s teachings about what we consume and how we can look
deeply to see whether the planet or other beings have suffered in the production of a certain product. We might already feel a call for us to change the way we eat so that we can
contribute to a more peaceful society and world. But day to day, we may find it hard to
put these intentions into practice or stick to them consistently; we find ourselves stuck in
our old habits. In this article, we share some challenges we encountered while adapting
a plant-based diet. We believe we all share similar experiences on our journey to a more
loving and sustainable life, regardless of the specific actions we choose.
Right at the beginning, we want to share our stories about how we first decided to change
our habits:
Valentin
When I was fifteen, I was travelling back from a summer holiday with dear friends. On the
highway in front of us, I saw a truck that seemed to be losing some of the goods it carried,
although I couldn’t quite identify what was flying around behind it. It was only at a gas station, where the truck and our car both stopped, that I could see behind the truck’s bars: it
transported chickens. In distress, the poor animals had pecked feathers from one another.
They looked tattered and continued to attack each other. Confronted with their pain, compassion brought me to tears. It was in that moment that I committed to removing animal
products from my diet.
Embarking on the Joyful Journey
of a Plant-Based Diet
Luise and Valentin offer
stories of witnessing animal
suffering that spurred them
to practice with more selfcompassion, joy, clarity, and
non-judgment.

WA K E U P
Luise
One day, during a semester abroad in Korea, I walked through a fish market. I had never
seen anything like this place before. Living fish in plastic buckets of water were poked
with a stick every now and then to demonstrate their aliveness and freshness to potential
customers. Crabs with bodies larger than my two fists, and legs as long as my forearms,
were crammed into aquariums. In front of me, one crab was taken out of the aquarium by
the man selling them. The man started hitting the crab in his hand with a metal tool, again
and again and again. The crab twitched and finally went limp. It was dead, “ready to eat.”
I started crying. Embarrassed, I tried to hide my tears from the people around me. Never
before had I seen an animal brutally killed like this. Never before was I directly confronted
with the suffering of the animals we eat. At that moment, seeing this suffering for the first
time, I decided I could not eat animal products any more.
Those moments and other similar ones we witnessed over the years, although painful, have been a source of willpower, clarity, and decisiveness to continue with compassion. Our compassion transforms pain into dedicated action.
When we think of a plant-based diet, we may believe that we are sacrificing or restricting
ourselves. But are we sure? These perceptions can turn into real obstacles on our journey

WA K E U P
of living more compassionately. If we don’t look deeply into these perceptions, we might
even give up trying to change our eating habits because it feels overwhelming and paralyzing. Not doing something does not have to feel like a painful restriction; instead, it can
be a daily celebration of love. For most of us, not hitting strangers in the face does not feel
like a restriction of our freedom. It is a natural act of kindness to greet each other with a
smile instead, and it feels good. Adopting a plant-based diet can feel the same.
We have experienced that a change of perspective is crucial in order to focus on what
we are truly doing. Our invitation is to mindfully and consciously enjoy a sense of embodied compassion; we honor our integrity and commitment each time we choose to act
more compassionately by eating a plant-based diet. By bringing our attention to these
positive and nourishing aspects of our choices, our practice becomes a vehicle of our
growth. There is deep fulfilment from living in line with our sense of justice.
This is a concrete practice that can gradually change the way we perceive our actions.
Over time, it becomes a habit to enjoy our conscious and compassionate choices. All the
while, we are able to explore and savor a colorful variety of tasty, fresh, and nourishing
foods every day of our life.