The Animal Interfaith Alliance is supporting The Compassion Project, a feature length documentary film that strives to inspire and encourage those already on a religious or spiritual path, to expand their circle of compassion to embrace all life, regardless of species, and make choices in alignment with this value.
To support The Compassion Project and for further details, please visit their website at
http://thecompassionprojectfilm.com/
The Compassion Project
Compassion: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
Dictionary.reference.com
The Compassion Project is a feature length documentary film that strives to inspire and encourage those already on a religious or spiritual path, to expand their circle of compassion to embrace all life, regardless of species, and make choices in alignment with this value.
After all, compassion is a primary tenet of every major faith, but while believers are admonished to extend it lavishly and selflessly to their fellow humans, the rest of God’s creation qualifies for compassion only to a limited degree. It’s a rare congregation that hears a sermon about how the choices they make contribute to the suffering of the innocent, and how good people of almost every belief tradition inadvertently, but routinely, pay others to torture and murder the sentient beings that the most of us, whether spiritual or secular, eat and wear.
Through a series of interviews with several respected vegan authors, artists and activists from various religions and spiritual traditions, we’ll illustrate how one can make loving, compassionate choices that honor all creation, including oneself, the planet and every other earthling. We’ll also explain how a compassionate vegan lifestyle is in alignment with whatever spiritual or religious tradition one has inherited or chosen.
After the first series of interviews, we’ll edit together several short videos, each geared towards a particular spiritual path. These videos will be designed to enlighten the viewer on several surprising facts:
1. Animal agriculture and other animal use and abuse fall squarely under the rubric of “sin,” the word Pope Francis uses to describe “the way we treat animals in our society.”
2. Raising animals for food creates suffering for not only the 150 billion animals it kills each year, but also for the millions of starving people who could be fed with the grain used to fatten up beings bred for slaughter.
3. The environmental impact of animal farming at today’s level wreaks devastation on God’s creation.
4. Consuming animal products has a deleterious effect on the human body, which Christians, yogis and others see as the temple of the spirit.
5. The negative energy that derives from this wholesale violence injects into our personal and collective karma consequences ranging from ill health, to perhaps, the human-to-human violence, we see in the headlines every day.
Once the short documentaries are completed we’ll begin a second series of interviews, these with spiritual and religious leaders and lay people who are not vegan. First, they’ll be ask about their spiritual path and how it influences their lives, particularly the compassion they feel for others, including animals and the planet. Once the first half of the interview is completed, we’ll invite each person to watch the short documentary custom-created for them. Then we’ll speak with these interviewees again to see how having this new information could affect the choices they make in the future.
Each non-vegan interviewed will be given a Compassionate Living Starter Kit, which includes vegan resources, recipes and information about the cruelty of animal agriculture and its detrimental environmental impact. They’ll also be invited to take The 30-Day Compassionate Living Challenge, which entails eating a healthy vegan diet, meditating, gentle exercise and several other activities designed to awaken greater depths of love and compassion. We’ll follow up throughout the month with those who accept the challenge.
Animal Interfaith Alliance 