Over 200 hundred people from the greater Los Angeles area gathered together for the annual Rancho Park Vegan Thanksgiving Potluck Picnic, a community-organized event complete with an opening circle, empathy booth, and angel walk. This year’s event theme was “ahimsa” which is a Sanskrit word translated as dynamic harmlessness or not harming another sentient being. Vegan poet Nance Broderzen wrote and performed the following poem during the Opening Circle, which also included a chant and guided meditation on “Vegantopia.”

Sparkling Ahimsa

We are finding the chalice
The cup, long buried
Under the bones of battlefields and slaughter
Long buried under the blood of animals
The cup, the chalice is rising.
We are seeing more and starting to feel more
Re-sensitizing
The chalice is rising and we are starting to fill it
With acts that do no harm, with ahimsa
The cup is filling with ahimsa
The cup is half full
We are looking, looking into the glass
Looking into the eyes of a bird on Thanksgiving Day
Of millions of birds, live birds
And connecting
Connecting the dots of millenniums of desensitization
We are re-sensitizing and filling the chalice with ahimsa
The cup is half full and filling
We are reaching, reaching for ahimsa
Opening hearts, awakening, filling the cup with re-sensitization
We are feasting, feasting on plant proteins and
Refilling the cup, the cup is half full and filling and we
Drink of the cup, feast on ahimsa
We are drunk on ahimsa
On doing no harm as we pass the cup
And scatter the seeds of its beauty
Scatter the seeds among our circles
Circles of earthlings
Circles of animals, live animals
Of flora and our Mother Earth
The chalice is rising
And we drink of the Love
Of the peace of the cup of ahimsa
The cup half full and filling more every day