While we attribute the happenings of many natural disasters to the law of karma, actually nothing is excluded from karma, whether you are engaging in good or bad activities, either way will have results. We human beings are very strange, when we do good things, we expect immediate positive results, without thinking that we have accumulated many negative karma in many past aeons. But when we do bad things, especially for our own egoistic and temporary enjoyment such as destroying others, creating harm to our own environment and bring pains to those that we perceive as our enemies, we are always praying that we will not suffer from the negative outcome, and sometimes those people who are more daring can even think that they are beyond the law of karma.
Anyway, as you all know, I will be arriving in Darjeeling soon to enthrone Gyalwa Lorepa. Recognition, enthronement and all these things are also related to karma. These great masters keep returning to our world due to not only their great commitment to help all beings, but also their karmic connection with us. Because they are enlightened, therefore enthronement is very important as a way to celebrate the return of an enlightened being or you can say, the return of enlightenment that is connected with us due to our past karma. Enthronement represents the recognition of the enlightened qualities of a human being and it shows that enlightenment is a possibility. Half of the world's population today do not believe in reincarnation, and therefore they don't even believe or want to know about karma. Without understanding and believing in karma, the world will be in chaos because people would not believe that doing good will bring good results and doing bad will bring negative results. The morality will not be respected. Enthronement of an enlightened being is not only to show the world that he or she is back, but also to remind each of us the karma and to encourage us the possibility of our own enlightenment. Each enthronement is like the recognition of the possibility of attaining perfect humanhood.
The return of Lorepa is especially important to our Drukpa Lineage because he was one of the 2 chief disciples of Tsangpa Gyare, the First Gyalwang Drukpa, the other disciple being Gyalwa Gotsangpa. The Drukpa Lineage was one of the most popularly followed spiritual lineages in the 12th century Tibet and from Tsangpa Gyare and his disciples and their disciples, three further branches were developed - Upper, Middle and Lower, based on their location of dissemination. Gyalwa Lorepa was the chief of the Lower Drukpa and although he must have reincarnated between the first and the present one, but they were somehow not recognized or discovered, until this one.
There are many ways of looking for reincarnations of enlightened masters, some are through visionary indications, some are through prediction letters left behind by their previous incarnations before they passed away, some are through hints left to their closest disciples, and some are through oracles. The present Gyalwa Lorepa was discovered by a protector in Bhutan. A protector came into the body of a very respected oracle and told his uncle, Karma Rinpoche, who happened to be in Bhutan for a pilgrimage, that he had to be given to me. When he was a child, he was already telling his mother all the time that he had to go back to his house, which has a lot of rocks on it. In fact, that was the house of Gyalwa Lorepa in Bhutan, called Tharpa Ling, which has been there since more than 700 years ago. His mother even went to Bhutan to check whether this house existed and it was there.
Karma or karmic connection or propensity, whatever you call it, is definitely and clearly there without any doubt. Otherwise, how can a boy born in Boston, America, remember his house of that many hundred years ago? The conditions ripened and so he came back to us.
I want to give him a warm welcome from our Dragon family, and tell him, "Welcome Home!"
I hope the connection in Darjeeling is good enough for me to share some photos and news with you.
That's it for now.
