Creating a Compassionate and Vegetarian Global Village

 

Love Life, Be Vegetarian

By Korean News Group

Recently, the Korean Centers established an “Alternative Living Promotion Team” for more efficiently and actively focusing on the long-term objectives in carrying out the Alternative Living project. The team enables the sharing of all appropriate resources and information to assist with disseminating the Alternative Living message throughout Korea. It also helps develop various ideas for sharing the message and provides support to all centers.

The new team also opened an Internet board so that brothers and sisters can share information and opinions. The board additionally provides an activities schedule of each center so that everyone can know what each center is doing in advance and prepare for participation.

Thanks to the Alternative Living activities, our society is changing drastically. Even the mass media has changed extensively. Before, we wished the media would simply mention vegetarianism but even a request for short coverage was difficult to get approved. Nowadays, without our request, TV programs, newspapers, and magazines bring up vegetarianism and animal protection time and again. For instance, TV journalists come to Seoul Center’s SM Vegetarian Buffet frequently -- almost every day– for vegetarian stories. A report on the Buffet’s vegetarian cats was shown on a TV program, and a popular monthly magazine “Hankyoreh 21” very recently featured the topic of vegetarianism as a cover story.

 

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On April 9, Golden Year 3 (2006) Seoul and Youngdong initiates joined together at the Yeoi-do Cherry Blossom Festival and promoted vegetarianism. Using colorful non-woven fabrics, dozens of initiates made very cute vegetable-shaped accessories such as strawberries, grapes, corn, etc., for hats or wearing on clothes. They made a total of about 100 accessories and also made picket signs with vegetarian slogans. Seoul Center’s main and second meditation halls were filled with devoted initiates working extra hard until 3AM after which they had a retreat until noon, and then about 90 sisters and brothers went to the festival and promoted the Alternative Living message.

 

 

A TV journalist taking video for a program about vegetarian children.

Everyone wore T-shirts in bright colors, saying “Love Life, Be Vegetarian.” They also wore cute vegetable accessories, and held pickets. As a group, they marched around the festival site, attracting great attention, and also distributing flyers.

At the head of the group, they had a loud speaker playing an especially composed musical piece. The song, containing the Alternative Living message, was written by a brother, and sung by a professional singer. After the song, an upbeat and meaningful narration followed that was also recorded by a professional singer, who is also a sister. The narration provided a more detailed message about why people should be vegetarian. The song and narration repeated automatically and were entertaining and informative to hear.

As there were so many people at the festival, the pickets did a very good job of making people aware of what we were saying. Overall, the atmosphere generated by the initiates was very cute and cheerful, in accordance with the festival, and so the people liked it. The response was great. TV journalists also filmed video-footage of the activities, and policemen thanked us for our efforts. Mothers even asked their kids to look at us and encouraged them to eat more vegetables and beans.