The Gyalwang Drukpa

I haven't been talking much about my monks, even those young Rinpoches (they are male) have been complaining that I have been promoting and supporting the nuns and female practitioners more than the male, now the men in our community are feeling very sad and envious of the women. I didn't think that was the case because I had to bring up the nuns who had been suppressed for many generations, whereas the monks had always had all of our attention. So giving a bit more time to their female colleagues is necessary to bring about gender equality in our small community.

Anyway, it was lovely to see all the monks, quite a few hundred of them, in Darjeeling this time during Losar. I was especially very happy to see that they have improved in their manners. This time, I really felt a sense of brotherhood, or rather, a sense of them being my sons, which I think is very important for the future of our lineage and the development of the monastery. There seems to be a great hope for the lineage to grow and progress with the help of these young monks from Darjeeling, and of course from many other of our precious monasteries in the Drukpa Lineage, such as those in Ladakh, Kinnaur, Lahaul and other parts of Himalayas. Let's wait and see.

While I was writing this, my nuns from Kathmandu sent me news that one of our sheep gave birth to twin. They had even sent me 2 photos. I was not so excited. Just a while ago, we went through death of one of them and now two new ones came from a pregnant sheep. Isn't this a great teaching on wheel of life? The only thing I was glad about was that we managed to save all these sheep, otherwise we wouldn't have saved those poor babies in the mother's womb. By the way, someone was very concerned about the dog from Varanasi, whether I had punished him so badly that he almost died. I didn't do anything except to pray for him as well and also to put him away from the sheep.

Looking at the photos of the mother and the babies, I thought of the meaning of lineage, as it reminds me of the relationship of mother and children and the relationship among these different children when they grow up. Of course, all Buddhist lineages come generally from Buddha Shakyamuni himself and then within our Tibetan Buddhism, we have many other different branches, coming from great masters, such as in our case, Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Mila, Gampopa, Phagmo Drupa, Lingre, etc., and then to me and my colleagues who are the Drukpa Lineage holders.

When I was in New York, someone asked me this very funny question which I didn't think about it very seriously until recently. He asked, "Is Drukpa an independent lineage?" I replied, "All of us are independent from each other, we have our different ways of practising and we followed different historical masters. It could be the same when it started but everyone went different ways, like brothers coming from one mother and they grow up to have their individual families, they do different things to make their living and have different connections and sometimes, they live in different countries. Some are successful and unfortunately, some are not."