The Gyalwang Drukpa

Friendship is very important, whether on a personal level or on the level of benefiting one's lineage or helping one's gurus. I feel very sad whenever I see people who are friends becoming disappointed with each other because of very small things when they are actually supposed to be joining together to help me and my lineage. I see this happening a lot these days in Asia. Therefore, I am a great admirer of those masters who have thousands of volunteers with booming activities, without having to deal with friends and students who don't get along with each other, mostly because of very childish reasons. Therefore these great masters, unlike me, have so much time to do great activities, so their activities and their lineage grow and flourish.

Some of them even told me that they wishes to step back, resign or just be a supporter, without getting involved. I wonder how they can help me without getting involved, they should share this secret with me so that I can do that with my activities. I wish I can say that too to my organisations, because when I tell some of my students that there are a lot of things they can improve on, especially the way they live their life, the way they treat others, instead of taking this kind of comments positively, they become disappointed and upset. I thought as a teacher, I have the duty and responsibility to correct and remind my students and friends their propensities, so that they will improve. If they don't want to listen, I have no choice but to stop telling them, because I don't want to create disharmony between myself and my friends and students, this is not good for the mind and not good for the health. I can also understand that it's always easier to hear your teachers and friends praising you all the time, even when you are on the wrong track, so I am always telling myself that those teachers who point out my faults and those among my friends who caution me about my missteps, they are the ones who genuinely care about me, so I value them more and I believe more in them. Those who are diplomatic and always agree with what you say may not be the genuine friends. I am sharing this because I know most of you only like to listen to the people who say nice things to you.

When we are helping our own gurus and our own lineage, even if we have huge differences in the ways that we approach one matter or one issue, we have to listen to each other, we have to learn to be good listener and we have to be kind to whoever giving us a different opinion, because this is also a practice of Paramita. For me too, many of my people and colleagues may not understand or agree with my way, I don't mind, I am very happy to listen to their views and respect their ways. We cannot be dogmatic if we wish to live happily in this world without stress. A happy mind is a mind that is open and full of space. If our mind is narrow, then there is no space to even accept ourselves, this is when the stress comes. As I said in the teaching in Taiwan about stress, we should not have a fixed concept about anything, we should be flexible and allow room for changes and to accommodate others. This is also related to development of patience, development of love and compassion. How can we practise Live to Love if we cannot even keep harmony within our own community, among our handful of friends and our family? If little things such as a mosquito bite or a meal that is considered by us as not delicious can upset and disappoint us, how can we find happiness?

I was told that some members do not agree with what the organisers are planning, then they don't come to join in the events and to my teaching. I don't know whose lost is this. I am not bothered. But I am surprised that these same people tell me how much they love me and how much they love the lineage, and yet they cannot put behind their personal differences to work for a common goal for me. This is something I don't understand. People get jealous, disagree with each other, struggle with all kinds of funny things for very childish reasons. This makes me wonder whether they had truly understood my teaching or simply came for the teaching to show their faces. Disharmony is the best way to kill everyone's energy, including my energy. I am unfortunately very sensitive about this sort of things. So I hope this is only my imagination and that whoever more senior in my organisations should be practising patience so that we will have increasing harmony and whoever helping me from the depth of their hearts should also be doing the same by keeping an open mind and open heart without having any discrimination and negative thoughts of others.

Therefore when I arrived in Vietnam, I thought I would face the same complaints, but so far so good. I am very happy that everything works out very nicely, therefore more than 20,000 devotees attended the public teaching and initiation yesterday, which was much more than last year in the same place. Harmony will make everything successful and peaceful.

Whether old friends, new friends, old students, new students, everyone should be living in harmony, for the sake of your own happiness, for the sake of the lineage and for my longevity, if you truly want this to happen. I have a lot of photos to show. Some are in my attendants' camera. I  think I would put a few of them here just to share with you whatever is there and the rest will be in the photo section later on.