Today’s Vegetarian Elite will be presented in Spanish, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Nepali, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai.

Today, we are delighted to present to you Nicolás Pauls, Argentine musician, actor, and television host. Nicolas leads a prosperous vegan lifestyle together with his wife and his two children. He is an environmental advocate, a tireless defender of free and dignified lives for all animals, and is committed to diverse social and humanitarian causes.

Nicolás Pauls was born into a family of gifted artists. His mother is Marina Guerrero, an actress; his father was Axel Pauls, a prestigious movie producer and actor; and his paternal grandparents were ballet dancers. Nicolas’ brothers are Christian Pauls, a prized scriptwriter and movie producer; Allen Pauls, a writer and journalist; and Gaston Pauls, a renowned actor and movie and television producer, with whom Nicolas shares the closet kinship growing up together. Nicolas’ youngest sibling is his sister Ana, who is also an actress.

Nicolas was greatly inspired by his family since childhood.

I always knew I wanted to do something related to music and art. And I began to study music. Well I studied music as a small child – flute, percussion… And at the age of 13, I began to study the drums and then I started to study theater. I found in music, a place for creation, and of the most marvelous joy that there was at that time. That lesson from my parents to enjoy myself and to play – that today I apply to my profession, to music, to acting – was very important.

The act of doing something artistic for me and to live off this is a kind of privilege, a privilege that I have to be very conscious and very grateful for. I think that my parents, and my brother Gaston also because the two of us were walking hand in hand, as they say, discovering the music, creating art in this way – they were absolutely important to my career.

His passion for music began when he was very young, while playing with different kinds of instruments.

For me music is everything. It seems to me that art is the most complete of everything; because it is inexplicable. It’s so difficult to explain the sensation that music produces. That makes it unique. I read some words of Miguel Angel that talked about that. He said that of all the arts, music is the most infinite, because it is inexplicable. The word, one can express in literature. The light, one can express it in painting. The forms, one can express them in sculpture.

But musically created ideas are impossible to explain. Contemplation is something that reveals Creation, the universe. And music also is that for me. Everything is in music, let’s say. Life is in music, Creation is in music for me.

Throughout his career as a musician, Nicolás Pauls was a member of several groups, contributing his talents as a drummer.

Musically speaking, at 13 years old, I began to play the drums. And at 14, 15, we put together a music group with some friends, that was called “The Foreigner.” Later there was another band that I played with for almost 10 years, that was called “The Four Seasons.”

Later, another band with whom we recorded another record, that was called “The Terminal,” and we played for four or five years. Later there was “4º Space.” That was a marvelous, marvelous musical project, gorgeous. They were 10 years of beautiful music, of composition, of beautiful brotherhood, like that with the group members.

Think the vestiges of yesterday
everything has been reborn here
you’ll have to see and hear
Think that everything will grow
even if you choose to return here
you will have to see and hear
Dream all rivers return to the sea
you will have to go
Dream all rivers return to the sea
you will have to go and return

“Horizon,” his present band, made its debuted in October 2010 at the Ecological Festival that was held to raise environmental awareness in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On screens they projected many images of some of us artists who had participated in the festival, giving messages to take care of the environment and do something ecologically correct, so to speak. Like consuming less wáter and less light. And I, what I told the organizers, was that I wanted to make those videos, but I wanted to speak directly about the importance of meat consumption, of cattle, the importance of global warming. So my messages were directly related to that.

Air beneath the shade of the tree In so little as 1 year a vegan avoids cutting down 4,840 square meters of trees. To be vegetarian is to be ecological. You will find all the tips at sustentator.com/ecotips

Another campaign Nicolas has participated in that promotes the noble and healthy way of living, was the production and distribution of the video “Reasons to be Vegetarian” from Anima Naturalis of Argentina.

Reasons to be vegetarian Because you should not lie to your children about what they eat. Because a vegetarian diet counters heart disease. Because eating meat and sausages is related to obesity and digestive problems. Because no sentient being wants to see a family slaughtered. Because raising animals for food can continue to cause serious illnesses. Because nobody should earn a living by killing. Because only a miserable person hits a defenseless animal. Because no animal deserves to die for the pleasure of your palate. Because we don’t need to ingest extra cholesterol; our liver produces it naturally.

Because the production of 1 kilogram of meat, requires 30 times more water than for 1 kilogram of wheat. You shouldn’t eat meat and call yourself an environmentalist. Do you need more? Because to eat pork doesn’t favor your sexual activity. On the contrary, eating meat can cause impotence. Because all of us beings with a nervous system feel pain. Because it doesn’t matter how, it is cut it is still a cadaver. Because to say that probiotics fortify the organism’s defenses is not a scientific truth. It is a lie.

Because protein of animal origin is the main cause of decalcification of your bones. Because the nitrates that give meat its unnatural red color are carcinogens. Because the cattle industry generates more greenhouse gases than all the airplanes, trucks, boats, tractors, and cars in the world. Because commerce is not an excuse to kill. Because wings are not for this. Because everyone wants to be free.

Because eating fish does not make you a vegetarian. Because no matter how far you are from the slaughterhouse, you are an accomplice. Because the grains used to feed them, could feed them. Because you know that it is not fair. Perhaps it is time to become a vegetarian.

Why would you say that this lifestyle is important?

Well, in principle because out of respect for all living being, I think that there are other methods. After years, I began to understand that no, that our body is not developed for that, to feed itself from meat. And from this change in eating, the change is much greater; it isn’t simply a change to stop eating this to eat that.

The change is a change of consciousness. To me it is inconceivable the idea to think of satisfaction when I know that alongside it there is pain. The idea of using clothing that involves the suffering of an animal to me is inconceivable, because it is possible to use other clothing that doesn’t include animals suffering. But with respect to eating, there’s no need [to eat meat]. And I say, to change that, also changes the view of many other things.

Conscious of and sensitive to those who suffer, both humans and animals alike, Nicolás Pauls is devoted to a number of social and humanitarian causes, collaborating with organizations like “Solidarity Network,” “Solidarity Consciousness,” and “House of Street Culture.”

Now we’re with the House of Street Culture, which is a foundation that my brother Gaston set up a few years ago, that is dedicated to giving classes of art to children from different backgrounds. They’re given classes in theater, in photography, literature, in painting. And it was requested of the children at one time , in some of the literature workshops, that they write the lyrics of lullabies. These children come from violent homes... situations of much violence.

Children who lived on the street and went to live in homes, and with some very difficult family histories, some of them, very painful. So it was requested of the children that they write these lyrics, and the House of Street Culture called me to executive-produce the record, inviting artists to put those lyrics to music. And the record is set to come out any day now.

And it is a beautiful record, beautiful, where many were involved, 17 artists participated: Argentines, Uruguayans, Brazilians, Irish, who put music to these writings and recorded them as the songs that these children, well, that they would have liked to have sung to them, or those that they are going to sing to their children. So that here a partnership was formed between artists, musicians, very dedicated, and children, poets from 6 to 20 years old, with results of an almost inexplicable beauty.

From an early age, Nicolás Pauls has stood out for his sensitivity.

I think I was always very conscious of others’ pains, so to speak. I say others but in reality it became also a sensation of my own. What brought me to feel that pain in me. And I imagine that here something must have been uprooted, must have been started in my life that led me to today to live the way that I do.

But I don’t know how old I was; eight years old maybe. I remember that we were in a type of countryside, with my brother Gaston and a friend. I didn’t have the feeling of having had a good time, of doing well in those situations. But I did it to do something as part of a group. I remember that someone caught a fish, and upon removing the hook from the fish, he injured the eye. And I have the memory of crying inconsolably about that fish. I suppose that here there must be, I can think of that as the beginning of something that many years later returned in this way in my vegetarianism and in my fight, my struggle for the rights of others, also.

Nicolas recounts how he came to adopt the compassionate vegan way of living.

It must have started as an embryo, long before birth, but the day that I made a radical change in my life, in my eating habits and in my life, was in December of 1992. I was in Brazil, sitting on the street with a friend who lives in Brazil. And in a conversation I understood how unnecessary it is to kill animals to feed oneself. This friend of mine [had been] vegetarian almost his whole life. And I understood that suffering had no sense, to generate suffering like that to feed oneself in this way… very radical the change. Since that change, everything changed.

We invite you to join us again next Saturday, June 11 for part 2 of this presentation on Nicolás Pauls. We will talk about the rise of his star status as an acclaimed actor, and learn how his life has changed while changing the lives of others. We will also hear how his work with vegetarianism and the environment led him to meet Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Thank you for your company today for this episode of Vegetarian Elite. And now, soulful viewers, please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Between Master and Disciples. Wishing you a blessed serene weekend in the care and comfort of loved ones.