The Gyalwang Drukpa

I don't know why I am so interested in tree planting. I think I am a nature lover. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about my trip to Ladakh recently, I was so thrilled to see the number of trees being planted in the surrounding of Naropa Palace in Shey, which is just next to the Druk Padma Karpo Insitutue or Druk White Lotus School. Today, I received a great news that thousands of trees have already been planted up until now, in the same area. For those of you who have been to Shey in Ladakh, you'd know how barren the land is. Let me show you a photo of Naropa Palace and its surrounding that I copied from Ladakh website.

You can imagine how happy I am to receive news of tree planting. Trees are very important for all sorts of living beings on this earth. It wouldn't be possible without Tessa's help and without the help of the irrigation engineer and the Ladakh Hill Development Council. I am truly hoping that they can send me some photos of Shey as soon as possible for me to have a look and to share with you here. It's a pity that I have to cancel my forthcoming trip to Ladakh as I have to complete a set of teachings to my nuns and the Rinpoches here on Druk Amitabha Mountain. Otherwise, I would really love to see the thousands of baby trees in Shey.

I also want to congratulate Corinne and her husband in Tahiti who helped to plant some precious trees on the island and Drukpa Butterworth to continue planting more trees in the school. These are wonderful virtuous deeds that will benefit many beings for a long time, provided that the trees are well taken care of and that people don't start to cut down trees after 10 or 20 years. We human beings are very strange, we always destroy our own virtues all the time. This is why I said yesterday that we need to keep our spiritual practice going, without any break, because our propensities to destroy our merits are very strong. With consistent spiritual practice as a support, we reduce the likelihood of our negative propensities to mature and ripen. For example, many people always talk about good and bad luck, positive and negative karma, kind and evil people, etc. What I want to say here is that everything depends on your mind. Your mind creates the actions and then repeated actions become a habit, all the habits take the form of personality and then at the end your personality decides your destination. That's the way karma is developed, whether it is good or bad karma, good or bad life, it's your choice.

As I said many times in my gossips, nothing is impossible, everything is in your own hands. If you have a mind to benefit others genuinely, everything that you do becomes a beneficial deed, whether you had expected that or not.

I am hoping that many places in Ladakh will have lots of trees like the photos below, so that many beings will benefit and many lives will be saved: