happiness recipe number one (too corny?? maybe not)

When we look at things coolly and calmly, we can see what happens. The 50 billion domesticated farm animals who are alive today are all on death row. They have no quality of life. They have no purpose for living. They have no contact with the natural world. And we impose this on them, each one of us, to a greater or lesser degree, by what we buy and consume. Shopping for animal foods is therefore an act of violence. Now if we profess to "believe in non-violence", we have to put our money where our mouth is . . . and it isn’t only a moral statement we have to make because once stated we have to keep it up. We can’t sustain this behaviour just because it is ‘right’ behaviour, there must be some other force present to keep us on track. Perhaps it is not so much about what we should do, but about what we should want to do. The intelligent altruist isn’t a do-gooder but an explorer of their own hidden personal depths. We need to practice altruism to understand it and to let it filter into our own lives so that we feel comfortable with it. And so that we can be effective and not be depleted by what we do. We have to practise on one another - develop an interest in one another. Wanting to be useful is the same as wanting to be happy: our own happiness is linked to wanting others to be happy too.