Buddha Mind 2015 Veggie Festival

On Saturday, June 27th, 2015, our monastery, Buddha Mind Monastery, in Oklahoma City held a “Veggie Festival.” The Veggie Festival was an event dedicated to teaching attendees the benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet, and how to eat more compassionately.We had educational videos, live cooking demos, a free vegan lunch, and some of our members who gave talks on various related topics. I was asked to prepare a speech for the Veggie Festival guests to be given during lunchtime. The subject: my experience as a vegetarian.

I knew that Carla Hinton, a religion editor for NewsOK.com (The Oklahoman), and her camera man would be attending the festival, but I did not know that a quote of mine would appear in her article on July 11. Pretty neat. The first time I saw Ms. Hinton’s article, Veggie tales: Oklahoma City-area Buddhists host festival to share mind, body, spiritual benefits of vegetarianism, was two days ago as a printed display in our monastery. When reading it, I saw a few familiar names, mine included.

Now, I don’t just think this is neat for obvious reasons, that my name was printed in a local paper – that actually excites me personally the least. What I think is super neat is that 2 years ago I wrote out various life goals. I wrote out a “30 before 30” goals list, and a “10 year” goals list, and a few others lists…I’m a lists girl. Anyway, 3 years ago my aunt, a well noted psychologist in California, Dr. Lois Nightingale, mailed me a daily calendar. In that calendar on one of the days, was a quote of hers printed. I thought that was so cool. So, I added it to my list of goals, “have a quote of mine printed.” This week, I got a dopamine bump by getting to cross a goal off my list. Thank you, Carla!

“Janelle Talimdjioski, one of the monastery’s receptionists, talked about her journey toward vegetarianism. ‘It is not necessary to eat something that was living and breathing,’ she said. ‘Civilization means recognizing that just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should do it.'”

In Buddhism we believe that feeling prideful is a pitfall; I must admit, I do feel a small sense of pride for accomplishing this silly little goal, but today I am blog boasting and hope that no matter how big or small a goal is on your list (and I hope you have your goals written down!), that you are victorious in crossing each of them off, one-by-one.

“Have a quote of mine printed.”

Please enjoy this link to article photos from NewsOK’s piece on Buddha Mind Monastery’s 2015 Veggie Festival.