I first learned about Leo Tolstoys commitment to animal rights and read his essay The First Step on the International Vegetarian Unions website: ivu.org/history/tolstoy/index.html Today is a special day. It is Leo Tolstoys 186th birthday. I am inspired almost every day by Leo Tolstoys activism and writings. I try to read his works, or works by Tolstoyans every day. The Kingdom of God Is Within You is my Bible and many of its ideas of living in the present on the basis of love, nonviolence and truth and seeking self-perfection in the personal and social realms, influenced many people to change their lives and focus on what is most important in life: not fame, not money, not property, not appetites, but helping others, including animals, acts of kindness and living in the present, on this basis. Tolstoy was suicidal in the late 1870s, even though he was among the worlds most renowned realist authors, had a wonderful family and was successful, wealthy, famous and had progressive ideas. But his ideas and proclamations did not match his actions. Only when he began to _act_ and live his ideals of love, equality, simplicity, meekness, kindness, nonviolence, sharing, and so forth, in the last 30 years of his life, was he happy. Gandhi, upon reading The Kingdom of God Is Within You in the early 1890s, decided to launch a nonviolent/satyagraha campaign in South Africa, changing the world of social change activism around the world ever since. A fictional version in the form of short stories of this book can be found in the following collection: Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales amazon/Light-Twenty-Three-Tales-Nikolayevich-Tolstoy/dp/1570754608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410305047&sr=8-1&keywords=a+walk+in+the+light -Anita
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:18:54 +0000
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