Creating a Compassionate and Vegetarian Global Village

 

 

We reached the final stop of our journey, Amman, the capital of Jordan, on April 10. About 97% of the local people are Muslims. However, our tour guide was a Christian, which was very rare. After reading the leaflet, he was deeply touched and expressed great gratitude to us for coming to his country to share such good news. In addition to arranging and negotiating everything for us, he also joined in distributing the leaflets and was as totally devoted to the activity as we were. Our work went very smoothly and the ratio of people accepting the leaflets was also very high. When putting up the posters, someone suggested that we should affix the poster on the big boards where banks placed advertisements in the bus stations, because, he said, good health is more important than money! The boss of a touring coach company allowed us to put up the posters on his buses. They became very eye-catching “mobile-ads.”

In Amman there were two fellow practitioners who had just been initiated for three months. Both of them were graduate students at the University of Jordan and were eager to help with translation and art design for Master’s work. Their participation greatly improved our efficiency and they also rendered much help in arranging transport, food, and negotiating with the police. Every evening they went home after joining us for group meditation. The hotel we stayed in happened to be in joint operation with a college specializing in tourism and hotel management. Their principal received us in person and supported our vegetarian ideal with much vigor. The college is very famous in the Middle East; with many chefs and hotel managers in neighboring countries graduating from there we hoped that our visit could bring the concept of vegetarianism into their life and future careers. The manager of the hotel was a vegetarian and that evening he graciously prepared a delicious vegetarian buffet dinner for us.

Our distribution on the streets of Amman was very successful, as we handed out almost 25,000 copies in one day!

On April 12, accompanied by the Jordanian brothers, we went to the office of the local press and negotiated placing announcements in the local paper. Not wanting to waste this last chance, we put on the T-shirts printed with the Alternative Living message and went with our tour guide to the most famous sacred place in Jordan, Mt. Nebo, hoping to share God’s message with our utmost effort. Through the process of distributing the leaflets, we know for sure that Master’s love will continue to flow to each corner of the world.