THE AUTHOR
Melbourne suburbs were home to family and studies prior to world travel and a twenty-year career as a Consulting Engineer. Hepburn Springs in country Victoria beckoned in 1988 with the purchase of an old guesthouse called Continental House, providing a wonderful opportunity to interact with the broader community and to showcase the multiplicity of values and creative possibilities apparent within the vegetarian and vegan way.
Fellow travelers whole-heartedly embraced the facility, and I quickly realised I had entered a diverse caring community with a focus on health, wellbeing, healing and sustainable living. The beautiful environs and natural environment supported my conscious healthy vegan lifestyle, and close encounters with Permaculture during a seven year period of hosting PDC’s, provided a useful education in the ways to sustainable living, expanding my appreciation of traditional practices and universal values.
The Vegan Guide to Melbourne was self-published annually from 1994 to 2000, as a record of vegan activity, and to meet the rising interest in all things vegan. My housemates and I hosted a Vegan Gathering in 1996, followed by a ‘National’ Vegan Festival in 1997, and eventually the 9thInternational Vegan Festival (IVF9), which spanned a two-week period during the 1998/99 holidays and attracted people from fourteen countries.
Certified studies in Shiatsu and Oriental Therapies, Nutrition and Yoga, and a sincere dedication to the principles and practices of Natural Hygiene and Nature Cure, were integrated into a wholistic lifestyle. Further renovation and development of the vegan sanctuary was supported by a name change to Hepburn Retreat Centre in 2008, resulting in a very busy schedule of workshops, yoga, meditation, vegan cooking classes, and health and healing retreats.
The vegaculture vision continued to expand with feedback from business activities complementing a vegan lifestyle that offered selective personal growth and responsibility, community building, environmental awareness, spiritual interaction, yoga, meditation, and much frivolity and enjoyment.
I relocated in 2014 to Kuranda, the village in the rainforest in FNQ, where I have developed a Raw Vegan Life Sanctuary known as Fairyland House, which functions to service guests who feel drawn to discover their own destiny in a peaceful tropical fruit garden paradise.
I continue to practice and watch with interest the unfolding and blossoming of vegaculture from the emergence of being.
From the Vegan Society (UK): “The word “veganism” denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals” (Ref.3).
Derivations and definitions can be quite tedious although essential for our common understanding, but if we consider just two aspects of our relationship to Veganism, that is the extrinsic and intrinsic effects of the practice of a vegan diet and or lifestyle, then we find that both are continually generating a Vegan Culture. Veganism is the sum of its two principal parts, the collective interactions and cultural outcomes attributable to its’ practice, and the individual development the vegans themselves gain from their adopted lifestyle.
Vegaculture can thus be used as a measure of the cultural effects of veganism in action. However, it is also necessary to document the fact that there are many instances in daily life, where actions are congruent with the philosophy of veganism, but not generated by vegans, due to a different lifestyle or dietary preference or circumstance, and this is discussed later.
Compassionate eaters, aspiring vegans, part and full-time vegans, can be practicing their compassionate intention with every mouthful. I contend the individual, social and cultural expressions of compassionate living, arising from veganism, can also be defined and understood as a Vegan Culture (Vegaculture) which is alive and well, a great return for a small investment; a simple dietary and lifestyle change, produces a quantum leap in self awareness and satisfaction, and a massive social and cultural contribution to people, animals and the earth.
Vegaculture provides an opportunity for kindness and compassion, for vegan awareness to extend and expand into the whole of creation, and be recognised in its fullest complement as an essence of harmony in a world of suffering. Vegaculture is basically a cultural expression of veganism, without any of the limitations or perceptions that might arise from the common association with an ‘ism’ term, a representative of the movement of vegan culture as a vanguard of opportunity in a world of abundance.
Path from Compassionate Living
Vegaculture is an expression of the movement to compassionate living, for the benefits of people, animals and the earth; it arises as a cultural outcome from the intentional avoidance of all forms of exploitation and cruelty, is fostered through the practice of compassion in the relief of suffering, and evidenced by the progression of cultural harmony leading toward world peace—Compassionate Living statement
Vegaculture is continually expanding its recognition, and its roots may be found in the many organisations that seek to identify or redefine compassionate pathways forward, and one of these descriptions springs from the aims of the Movement to Compassionate Living. The following website extract from the small grass roots organisation called the Movement for Compassionate Living, (MCL) describes the vision and aims of this organisation, which was started by Kathleen and Jack Jannaway in 1984. Compassion, a wish to escape suffering, is made tangible in this beautiful statement, which is most explicit in its intent; a precise, concise, heartfelt and extremely relevant statement for living together on Earth.
Kathleen Jannaway had been a member of the Vegan Society in the U.K. and it can be seen, from the description below, that her ‘valued perception’ for a peaceful and harmonious world future was not fully satisfied by the statement of the positive message of veganism alone; she expanded the fundamental premise of compassionate living into all realms of activity, using examples of social separation and need, to explain more fully the application of veganism in daily life. In so doing her vision is a most significant demonstration of vegaculture in action.
“Compassionate living is about making connections between the way we live and the way others suffer, between unnecessary industrial development and the destruction of the planet. It involves a commitment to work non-violently for change, promoting lifestyles that are possible for all the world’s people, sustainable within the resources of the planet, environmentally friendly and free of all exploitation of animals and of people.
The Movement for Compassionate Living exists to:
* Promote simple vegan living and self-reliance as a remedy against the exploitation of humans, animals and the Earth.
* Promote the use of trees and vegan-organic farming to meet the needs of society for food and natural resources.
* Promote a land-based society where as much of our food and resources as possible are produced locally.
Dietary veganism is an important first step, but if we are to work towards the liberation of both people and the animals of the Earth, refusing food and other products derived from animal exploitation alone is not enough. We must extend our compassion to all life:
* To humans who suffer increasingly worldwide from starvation, disease, warfare and exploitation.
* To wildlife that suffers as a result of the destruction of natural habitats.
* To the whole environment on which the health of all life depends.
Only fully compassionate living will nurture the growth in human awareness and commitment on which the future of the world depends” (Ref.4).
The Center for Compassion And Altruism Research And Education (CCARE), at Stanford University in America has been involved with research studies of compassion for over 10 years now. The centre has empirically validated techniques for the practice of compassion that are currently taught and applied in a variety of settings and institutions including schools, hospitals and prisons. The benefits to people of the practice of compassion, “is understood to be as important as physical exercise & healthful diet” (Ref.5).
As a species we have to embrace compassion to progress from the insanities of the past and modern eras. The success of any movement for compassionate living must be borne out eventually, with 7.6 billion people and growing, including 490 million vegetarians (Ref.6); fertility is evident, and although religious adherence may account for large numbers of people, the seeds for a humanist vegan moral baseline, both spiritual and secular have been sown here.
Path from Permaculture
Vegaculture is allied with permaculture, recognising a place for the expression of our inner human beingness in daily life, with the provision of food, clothing, shelter and co-operation on the path of holistic sustainable living—Vegan-Permaculture Statement
Vegaculture grows naturally out of Permaculture, whose teaching and training programs, and extensive project applications, provide an existing model and social framework for its practice and dispersion. The landscape of traditional culture, as expressed in an historical context of sustainable living, has been well documented in permaculture literature and continues in an invigorated format today, with numerous examples of appropriate application and design outcomes being integrated with modern living to assist in all manner of projects; while examples of vegaculture are a work in progress.
One of the many expressions of Permaculture comes from the Permaculture Institute (Ref.7): “Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems, which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way”.