Looking for the Core

1889:

We tried it and liked it and then found it impossible to imagine why everyone wasn’t vegan. But here is an important factor in all this - it’s the interest that sparks things, that helps to identify with the ideal of harmlessness. Everything, including our food, is subjected to this testing and trialling, it to see if it applies. If it does, and we opt for the most harmless course, and then realise our decision becomes the better part of us, we want to share this with others. Like a stage-struck kid who learn a magic trick, we will want to hit the boards with our new discovery, show it off, and attempt to suspend other people’s disbelief in it.

At first this ‘vegan’ idea appears nothing. But it affects us so much that we have to check that we never try to big-note ourselves about it. We don’t need to boast about the treasure we’ve found. And if we do speak about it, there’s no need to sound smug, since we haven’t found anything that wasn’t there already. It’s just that we have seen something, an ‘interest’ space opens up inside us to let it in. And now we urge others to look for something of it, the ideal in it, the practice and the way of life it guides us into, and idea which before might have been discarded. The idea, even The Idea, a panacea even - we look, and we find one binding idea. But, if you’re not looking, then there’s nothing to be found.