JAINISM AND MISS LIBERTY FILM
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| Mahavira, naked ascetic, founder of Jainism |
The Compassion Consortium (
compassionconsortium.org) service on Sunday, March 17, 2024, features spiritual guest Saurabh Dalal (DC and NYC areas), an engineering consultant and physicist.
He is passionate about promoting a vegan lifestyle of
Ahimsa (non-violence, non-harming), which provides compelling solutions to many global problems. He is a member of
the Jain tradition, an Indian religion with
ahimsa at its center.
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| Not the Buddha but his contemporary |
Saurabh is a lifelong vegetarian and has been an ethical vegan since 1991. He volunteers for numerous groups as a board member or advisor for like-minded organizations, has been active in the Jain community internationally, and has practiced ethical investing for decades.
He explores ways of integrating sound science into related areas of his activism. Jainism is one of the three most ancient
Dharmic religions of India, along with Buddhism (protestant
Shramanism) and Hinduism (Vedic Brahmanism) with roots that extend back to at least the mid-first century B.C.E.
Today, Jainism remains an integral part of Indian culture. It teaches that the path to enlightenment is through nonviolence and harm reduction to living beings (including plants and animals) as much as possible.
Jains believe plants, animals, and even some inanimate things (like fire, air, and water) have souls (or the divine spark), just as humans do.
The principle of nonviolence includes doing no harm to humans, plants, animals, or nature. For that reason, all Jains are strict vegetarians — so strict, in fact, that eating root vegetables and some fruits is not allowed because removing the root would kill the plant.
However, Jains can eat vegetables that grow above the ground, because they can be picked while leaving the rest of the plant intact in complete dedication to nonviolence.
Miss Liberty
The Compassion in Action segment on March 17 features a presentation of the feature film
Miss Liberty.
Victoria Moran and Rev. William on March 17th introduce their feature film Miss Liberty:
SYNOPSIS: Bob Sanders, a computer tech, is owed money by the owner of a slaughterhouse in their small Midwestern town. When a used up dairy cow manages to escape the packing plant and take refuge in his backyard, he keeps her as collateral, resulting in human drama, legal intrigue, a hint of romance, and you-didn't-see-this-one-coming ending.
That, in a capsule, is Miss Liberty, the family feature film currently in development and co-written by Rev. William Melton and Victoria Moran. It gets the message of farm animal rights, workers' rights, and veganism out to a larger audience who would never voluntarily watch a "vegan movie" but would love a darn good movie about a cow with a vegan as its female lead.
That lead is Patricia Levinson, aka "Cow Patty," the animal rights attorney who comes from NYC to attempt to save a cow named "Miss Liberty."
n a change of pace for Compassion Consortium Sunday services, the screenwriters will temporarily move from their regular 3rd Sunday assignments and be interviewed by Elaine Hutchison as Compassion in Action guests.
Victoria Moran, a vegan for 40 years and an animal advocate and vegetarian for over 50, is the author of 13 books, with a 14th, Age Like a Yogi, coming in early 2025.
She was also lead producer for Thomas Jackson's 2019 documentary, A Prayer for Compassion, about food choices and spirituality.
In the CiA segment, Rev. William and Victoria discuss with Elaine why the time has come for Miss Liberty and how viewers can be part of it.
The Compassion Consortium is Miss Liberty's nonprofit partner, so all donations to the project are both tax-deductible and matched dollar for dollar, bringing it that much closer to "a theater near you."
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