SLIPPERY ROCK — Live now and live now well.

That message was clear Thursday in a lecture given by Vietnam War veteran turned Buddhist monk Claude Anshin Thomas, who shared the story of his life and its transformation. The man who once hated himself embraced his past and decided to live in the present to change his life and the world.

"I barely know where to start," Thomas said at Slippery Rock University. "To be here is quite something."

Thomas, who graduated from SRU in 1974, was just 20 years old when he got back from fighting in the Vietnam War. Battling post traumatic stress disorder, he had regular run-ins with the campus police. Today, the award-winning author spreads a message of peace.

Born in Meadville and raised in Waterford, Erie County, Thomas enlisted in the Army two months before graduating from high school at age 17. Coming from a military family and neighborhood, his father signed the legal documents allowing him to fight in Vietnam, where he was a helicopter crew chief and door gunman from 1966-67.

There, he said he killed men with his own hands, guns and knives, watched his friends die and was seriously injured. Thomas received more than 27 medals and a Purple Heart for his service.

This lecture was his first trip back to SRU in 30 years, but when he first arrived there years ago for school, he said he had no idea what he wanted to do.

"I just wanted those years of my life to be gone," he said of Vietnam. "I wanted the consequences of combat service to go away. The problem was, I didn't have a life to get on with. My life was shaped and formed by combat."

In college, Thomas said he carried a handgun everywhere he went, and that life did not make sense. After college, he battled with drug addiction and alcoholism, and also was homeless for two years living in Pittsburgh's Strip District.

After two SRU professors convinced him to come back to school, his life began to turn around.

"These people engaged with me as a human being," Thomas said.

Thomas talked about the problem of conditioning in a society where redemptive violence is encouraged. He said the cycle of violence and insensitivity in American culture continues because people are stuck in a "victim/perpetrator" mentality.

"If we want the world to be different, we have to live differently," Thomas said.

He urged the audience to look at the way each was conditioned to "wake up" and change their own lives.

"If I deny the nature of my conditioning, I will act it out unconsciously," he said. "The truth will help us to become all that we want and aspire to be."

As a boy from a military family, Thomas said he was conditioned to become a soldier, but he said he eventually learned how to look at war in an honest way and to take a step beyond intellect. Thomas said he believes that governments are to blame for war across the world.

"The nonsoldier is more responsible for war than the soldier," he said.

In 1983, Thomas went into rehabilitation for drugs and alcohol and has been drug free and sober ever since. Shortly after that time, he attended a retreat for Vietnam War veterans by a Buddhist monk. There, he found his calling.

"I have the opportunity to be a part of the solution, not the problem," he said. "Karma can be changed if we are willing to live differently."

Thomas is able to travel the world and make a living solely through donations from people he meets along the way. As a part of his vows, Thomas does not accept money for any lectures or other services he provides. When he travels, he only stays with people who offer him a roof over his head. Donation boxes were outside of the auditorium during the lecture.

Thomas, also an author, signed his book, "At Hell's Gate; A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace," after the lecture. He does not take a profit from book sales.

Bob Madjaric of Portersville, who attended the lecture with his wife, Beremice, said he learned an important lesson.

"What I found interesting is that your past, you can never get rid of," Madjaric said. "The demons are still there. You just have to learn how to cope with them."

SRU student Elizabeth Tatomirovich of Mercer also was inspired by Thomas.

"I think it was awesome to see someone so humble," she said. "He made it clear that no matter your background, you can change your life."