The Gyalwang Drukpa

Well, I don't remember exactly how many years ago since Lama Namgyal and I met. But that's not important. Our relationship gets deeper genuinely, every year. I believe that human relationships, especially the positive ones, should grow and get deeper and more genuine as time goes by. This would be a great support for one's own life.

Even though we Buddhists love to say that samsara is suffering, life is short and everything is impermanent and so on so forth, we should nurture and keep positive and warm relationships with other human beings, with other living beings, trees, flowers, everything in this universe. Genuine spiritual life can be very lonely if you don't have support from friends and beings who are there constantly to keep you on track. Life can be very miserable, especially if you see what's happening in our world today, if you don't have moral support from people, beings and things around you. But this kind of support is a reciprocal relationship, sometimes you reach out first, sometimes when others reach out, you are supposed to reach back too. As I always say, we don't live in this world or in this universe, alone by ourselves, everything is relatively true and interdependent on each other. Even if you are the most powerful person on this earth, without others living with you, what are you going to do with your power?

Whenever people think about Lama Namgyal's devotion to his own gurus, they really feel that he is very special. In fact, this is the case for me too. Whenever I think about Lama Chokyi Sengey and Lama Namgyal, I feel that they are very special, in the way they keep their positive and loving connection with their gurus and help their gurus' activities to grow without second thoughts, without any doubt. I really wish I have students, or rather disciples, like them. While many people complain to me that it's so difficult to find a genuine guru to guide them, I can tell you from a guru's point of view, "It's so difficult to find genuine students who wish to be guided." People these days have a lot of doubts and many conditions when it comes to "gurus". I am not saying that they cannot have doubts, of course in this world, everyone has the right to have doubts, to have fun and to do whatever they want. What I mean is that people change their mind ever so quickly. Most people live their entire life shopping for gurus based on popularity, the number of followers, the number of centres, and they sometimes become collectors of gurus. Is this going to be beneficial? Some rate the gurus by how much the gurus follow them or agree with them. If gurus don't follow their wishes, then gurus are not genuine, they are not caring and they are not powerful to help. So you see, people like me will soon be out of job. Fortunately, there are still people like Lama Namgyal around to give us some work to do.

I am the sort of person who loves to talk to people and communicate with people. I have met so many people who criticise their own gurus and I usually feel quite funny hearing them complain about their ex-gurus to me. This is something that I have never heard from Lama Chokyi Sengey and Lama Namgyal. For instance, they were serving one of their late gurus, Bokar Rinpoche, with one pointed devotion throughout Rinpoche's entire life and even now, after Rinpoche's parinirvana, they are still doing their best to continue to serve their guru with their best skills that they can think of. In fact, due to their genuine devotion, they always have wonderful things to talk about their experiences with all of their gurus and about their retreats of three years and more. When one gets the true message of the teachings, one starts to have very easy approach to all the root gurus and lineages that he or she is related with. There is also one thing that a guru needs to be careful in terms of guiding the followers and he or she ought to be skillful to lead the fresh and innocent followers who have a lot of confidence and hope in the guru. As gurus, we should not always blame the followers for acting strangely, we should try our best to help them with skills so that they will correct their strange acts.