If you could sum the message of ahimsa and vegan living in a simple phrase, it would be: Respect for all life.

For 17 years, from 1995 until 2012, we lived full-time in our solar-paneled “rolling home,” with my spouse Madeleine and me travelling and presenting 100-150 lecture, workshop, and concert events yearly, primarily through college and university groups, progressive churches, conferences, and for yoga, meditation, vegetarian, environmental, peace, and social justice communities. In addition,we offer online training in the main ideas in my best-selling book, The World Peace Diet, for people interested in more fully understanding, living, and helping to spread the vegan message of health, sustainable living, and compassion. Our presentations are intended to bring inspiration, healing, and awakening, and often include uplifting original piano music, as well as evocative paintings by Madeleine, who is a visionary artist originally from Switzerland.

A healthy and enthusiastic vegan since 1980, and Dharma Master in the Zen Buddhist tradition, I see my mission as one of bringing the message of radical inclusion to our wounded and fragmented culture. Also a long-time vegan, Madeleine shares this passion, and this is why we travel and offer presentations, having done so in all 50 states and in over 50 countries. Along the way, I've been honored to meet countless inspiring people, and am a recipient of The Peace Abbey’s “Courage of Conscience Award,” as well as the "Empty Cages Prize," and the “Shining World Hero Award.” Many people know of our work through my #1 Amazon best-selling book, The World Peace Diet.

Born in Emerson Hospital in 1953 in Concord, Massachusetts, I learned to swim in Walden Pond, attended Thoreau School, Alcott School, and was from an early age blessed to be semi-consciously immersed in the spiritual aura of the Concord Transcendentalists.

I was the oldest child in our family. My father was a writer, newspaper publisher, pianist, and outdoor adventurer; my mother was an artist and writer. I grew up with a love of nature, animals, sports, books, and music and was a church organist in high school. Attending Colby College in Maine in the early 1970s, I discovered the poetry of Walt Whitman, and the spiritual teachings of Emerson and Thoreau, as well as Zen, Vedanta, Taoism, and mystical Christianity.

  Early years at the piano

Following my graduation from Colby, I was inspired to go on a spiritual pilgrimage. I left home in September 1975, with my brother Ed, heading west toward California in a dedicated search for cosmic consciousness.

Our many months of walking brought us west as far as Buffalo, and then we headed south, walking about 20 miles daily on small country roads; eventually arriving in Tennessee, practicing meditation and non-attachment as we went. After several months, we arrived at The Farm, the largest hippie commune in the world at that time, with about 900 people, and it was there that I became a vegetarian. We continued on, walking to Huntsville, Alabama, where we took up residence in a Korean Zen Center, and devoted 8-10 hours daily to Zen meditation.

Eventually, I moved to San Francisco where I lived in a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center for about two years. In Oakland I continued studying Zen with Zen master Donald Gilbert. I also became involved in peace, animal rights, and environmental activism.

In 1984, I completed my masters degree in Humanities at San Francisco State University, focusing on Zen arts, and was the first person ever at S.F.S.U. to use the language of music to fulfill the foreign language requirement for my master’s degree. I had a 4.0 GPA and received the Graduate Student Distinguished Achievement Award.

Shortly after this, I shaved my head and headed to Korea to live as a Zen monk in Songgwang Sa Zen temple, one of the largest and most respected Zen centers in Korea. At the temple I undertook a traditional 90-day silent intensive meditation retreat. Upon returning to the States, I began teaching college courses in philosophy, humanities, and religion and enrolled at U.C., Berkeley, where I studied in the Graduate School of Education and received my Ph.D. in 1988, focusing on educating intuition. I had a 4.0+ GPA at Berkeley, and my pioneering dissertation on educating intuition in adults was nominated for the Best Dissertation Award.

After several years of teaching college full-time, I decided to focus on music composition and performance. I spent the next fifteen years creating albums of original uplifting piano music and performing extensively throughout North America and Europe. I met my spouse, Madeleine, in Switzerland in 1990, and we have been traveling full-time since 1995, presenting lectures, concerts, and workshops.

In late 2005, after working on the writing of it for five years, I published The World Peace Diet, which was the first book to give the big picture of the consequences of eating animal-sourced foods. I now focus much of my time on spreading the message of ahimsa, nonviolence, through lectures and through training people to be World Peace Diet Facilitators, so they can more effectively and confidently spread the message of compassion for all life in communities throughout the world.

As a 40+ year vegan, I am delighted to be sharing life with my wife, Madeleine, a Swiss artist and long-time vegan, carrying out our mission to help veganize North America and the world. We don’t go to doctors or carry medical insurance, and haven’t taken a pill or had a TV in over 45 years. I haven’t missed a day of meditation (or a scheduled presentation) in 45 years, and most days we enjoy taking a swim and a nature walk somewhere in North America as we travel, or after working in our vegan food forest in our home in northern California.

Besides giving piano concerts throughout North America, I present seminars on developing spiritual intuition and on the importance of transitioning to a vegan diet. Madeleine is a gifted artist, and all of the concerts, lectures and seminars include her evocative paintings of animals. In addition, she plays the silver flute and accompanies my piano music, and is a talented chef, craftsperson, Waldorf school educator, and spiritual healer. Together, we also offer something that is unique on the planet: we take appointments and meet with individuals (and couples), tune into their energy, and create piano music and watercolor art that are inspired by the unique essence of the individual or couple. There are now thousands of people throughout the world who treasure the individualized CDs and paintings that we have created in musical and artistic meditation. We also work through photographs, and people can give these healing music and art sessions to others (and themselves) this way.

I am often recognized for bringing the spiritual dimension into veganism through The World Peace Diet, as well as through articles, lectures, radio, TV, and print interviews, trainings, and online seminars. The annual World Peace and Yoga Jubilee, noted for combining veganism and spirituality, was inspired by The World Peace Diet, and is held every October in Cincinnati. I offered an annual World Peace Diet facilitators training there, as well as an online teleseminar, for people interested in more fully understanding, living, and articulating the vegan message.

My perception of veganism is as a modern expression of ahimsa, the ancient core of all spiritual teachings, which is non-violence. Whatever we sow, we will inevitably reap, and the key to happiness lies in blessing others and being loving and kind to all beings. Violence in word, thought, and deed harms oneself more than it does others.

Will & Madeleine & their rolling home
(most of the solar panels are on the roof!)

I believe that we are all born into a culture that forces us to participate in rituals of violence (meals) from infancy. We are injected with a mentality of reductionism, exclusion, privilege, and might-makes-right: reducing others to mere instruments to be used for one’s own pleasure and gain. I teach that veganism is coming home into one’s true heart, and seeing beings as beings, and respecting them as equally sacred manifestations of divine life.

Our message is that veganism is a philosophy and practice of radical inclusion, and that going vegan is the most positive, uplifting, and transformative action any human being can make in our culture today. I see it as a profound and effective path of questioning the core violence of our culture. Veganism is a loving response that makes us part of the solution to the crises that beset us, rather than being part of the problem.

Questioning our culture’s food choices and switching to a plant-based diet for ethical reasons is the first step in a spiritual adventure that blesses the world. Choosing a vegan path can lead us to ever-higher states of spiritual awareness, leading to liberation and the fulfillment of our purpose on this Earth.

It seems clear that one of the greatest gifts we can give others is the gift of sharing the vegan message, and living it as deeply as we can. It is the message of the interconnectedness of all life, and the message that love is the ultimate power, that life is a blessing, and that our greatest joy comes from authentically contributing to the welfare of others.

May you who read these lines be happy, free, and at peace!