If you haven’t read Cheri Huber’s “One Less Act of Violence,” you owe it to yourselves to do so. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

Our real point is not our cruelty toward creatures but what our cruelty and insensitivity to other beings does to our own hearts.

If we judge ourselves, if we reject ourselves for who we are and what we do, we are simply committing an act of violence against ourselves. If we would simply look, and consider the ways in which we are violent, then we could stop. Our own acts of violence are ones we have the power to control and end. There are no shoulds in this. I do what I do for me, not for them. The idea is not to change behavior because it is wrong. My work is simply to pay attention. To do something different because I “should” is to miss the point. To be present is the point. When I am present with my eyes and heart open, what do I want to do?

— Cheri Huber, “One Less Act of Violence”

Cheri is a Zen teacher and practitioner, and as such she talks about vegetarianism from a mostly Zen context which subsumes issues of Animal Rights, environmentalism, health, and all others. These are perfectly fine ways of coming to and sticking with veganism, but Cheri’s way resonates most with me.

Veganism for me is not just about avoiding animal products. It’s about choosing to look, to look honestly, and then do something about what we see, even if it’s just something small. When we see clearly, what to do becomes blindingly obvious.