The Gyalwang Drukpa

In a way, I admire Korean Buddhist masters who recently came out with great courage to protect Buddhist traditions and teachings in Korea. I think we all should be living harmoniously as one big family, regardless of whatever religions or whatever Buddhist sects. Unfortunately sometimes to protect one's own spiritual tradition and lineage, it's the job of spiritual masters to bring this up and make this known to the public, because most people are generally quite naive and easily being misled by whatever they read and whatever they hear, without having a clear understanding of the full situation.

Everywhere I went in South Korea this time, I was very surprised to see that almost each of the temples has a very nice and huge assembly hall, a very well managed guesthouse, a very nice coffee shop, a souvenir shop, a beautiful Zen garden for relaxing and also a huge pond with many big and colourful fish. I never had the chance to visit the temples in South Korea very precisely. This is in fact my first time to truly visit and stay in the temples. Even though I travel a lot to many places to share my little knowledge, I normally don't stay in a temple or a monastery. Now I came to know that almost all the Korean Buddhist temples have the similar arrangement with fish pond, very huge and old trees and all these things. This kind of beautiful environment will help meditation because external environment is very important for meditation, and since Korean Buddhist tradition emphasizes a lot in Zen meditation, this explains why the temples here have such a great atmosphere to support meditation. I was not aware that a temple can have all these facilities, therefore I was very proud to be able to transform Druk Amitabha Mountain into a meditation garden with all the above facilities like a Korean Buddhist temple, which those of you who are coming for the First ADC will get to see. Of course, Druk Amitabha Mountain is not as beautiful as any one of these Korean Buddhist temples, but it will definitely be gradually improved.

Back in Tibet, there is no tradition of having ponds, meditation garden, coffee shop and souvenir shop in a monastery. None of this was in our dreams. We think that having these facilities will make us unnecessarily busy, and since we have to practise, meditate and do pooja, all these different things, we don't have time to have all these different facilities for our relaxation. But I can't help not to have these in Druk Amitabha Mountain. Before I came here, I thought I had a very unique way of designing a monastic institution with fish pond, meditation garden, Japanese landscape, western coffee shop with very nice desserts and souvenir shop and also now a medical clinic. Now I realise that I am actually the biggest copy cat. I must have copied this idea from somewhere, who knows? But still egoistically speaking, I am saying to myself, "Who is the copy cat?"

I want to thank Reverend Seolo whom I met again after 24 years. I was especially happy that she could speak such fluent Tibetan and translate for me very nicely. Since she is from our Pel Drukpa Lineage which is the lineage of true meditation and the lineage of genuine yogis, meeting her again is one of the highlights of my trip this time. Her devotees, such as the local ex-mayor and his family, who are so kind and friendly, also came for lunch with us. She also invited a very prominent professor of the local Buddhist university, who is also a very important Buddhist monk, to join us for lunch.

This time, I really feel that I had visited South Korea to reconnect with my fellow brothers and sisters in another Buddhist tradition. It is full of enjoyable memories, laughter, inspirations and hopes for the continuing development and progress of our common spiritual lineage passed down from Lord Buddha. We all need to be encouraging each other, supporting each other genuinely without selfish ego to influence or convert others. Tonight, I am writing with great joy filling my entire heart about this very auspicious trip that will definitely grow to be a beneficial relationship for both of our Buddhist traditions, so that we will be able to enrich and morally support each other with knowledge, experience and skills.