I recently came to know that Sonam, the elder daughter of Dr Dolkar, with the help of Dechen and Yangchen, has been carrying out Live to Love activities by saving the street dogs abandoned by uncompassionate families. Sonam is giving free meals almost every Sunday, that is a very good deed. I was even tempted to go and participate, but as I knew it was going to be psychologically painful for me to see so many dogs suffering and I don't have the means and skills to help all the dogs at the same time, it would be very disheartening for me to go and not able to do anything. So I didn't go but I hope one day I will be able to do something for these poor beings. In fact I am really happy to know that there are some Live to Love activities in Delhi.
Actually, some of the street dogs were actually home dogs but their families got tired of them, then they got kicked out. My advice is that if you want to keep pets, please think first of all whether you are able to give them love, attention and respect, if not, I think it's better that you don't keep any pet, otherwise you may end up giving them up and they may end up on the streets. It is very rude. Human beings do a lot of things which are very rude and very cruel, yet we don't realise it. Sometimes in the web, you can see people putting their pets in washing machines and throwing them around, putting them in the refrigerators, taking pleasure out of other beings' sufferings is no different from demonic activities. The saddest part is that so many people enjoy watching this kind of horrible shows.
As you know that Khamtrul Rinpoche is presently teaching in Taiwan. So I was closely following the news there and was very shocked to read in the news about this very big Typhoon Morakat that has triggered many mudslides everywhere in South Taiwan, killing many people and burying many people alive. Morakat was also in Philippines and now in China, where 1.5million people were evacuated. India too was recently suffering from huge monsoon floods leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless. CNN said that more than 2.9million people in India have been suffering from floods since June. Of course, besides human beings, many other beings also suffer tremendously.
Since Khamtrul Rinpoche is in Taiwan right now, I hope he is able to take some time off to lead in Live to Love activities. Firstly, we should offer what the victims need, whether material or moral support. Secondly, we should see whether we are able to continue to give moral or material support especially in the case of children. This is a very good chance for us to put our formal practice into action, rather than sitting there and feeling pity for beings and yet not doing anything. This kind of pessimistic approach will not help us in our spiritual development and will not reduce others' suffering. I am sure our newly set up Druk Foundation Taiwan will be able to do something soon. Life is very precious, don't wait, we should try to help.
This is also a very good reminder for all of us again to “Say No to Plastic Bags”. It's very convenient to have plastic bags, non-biodegradable cups, spoons and forks. But this sort of things is creating so much rubbish that gradually kill our home. As I said, we only have one home, and we share the same air, we share the same source of water and now, we also share the viruses. We human beings are very unkind, especially those people who don’t care about using plastics and about polluting water and air, we take everything in this world for granted. Because of our selfishness and our carelessness, beings are suffering elsewhere tremendously. Sometimes you can see and feel, sometimes you can’t.
 |
 |
These days, everyone is making such a big fuss about Swine Flu, this H1N1 virus. Everyday in the papers you see the highlights about 6 people dying here and 5 people dying there, and that all the countries are worrying and they should do something. But it is never highlighted how many innocent people, animals and other beings are slaughtered, killed, tortured and abused. We don’t even think about it, this is very funny, whenever I think of it. In India 6 people died in Swan Flu, out of 1billion peple, but we are killing how many animals in 1 hour, how many innocent boys, girls and children are abused, giving them such a difficult time by not giving attention not to pollute air and water, not to use plastics all these things. They just make big fuss. I wouldn’t say this is nonsense. Personally I feel very funny, I feel this is a great teaching of samsara.
This means you have to be very cautious about everything. We have to live mindfully. What my message is that we better to say no to plastic bags or "Say No" to generally anything that will produce non-biodegrable wastes. We should also say no to "plastic" mentality, I like to say that those people who are not sincere and not genuine, they are exactly like plastic. So not only we have to be practising environmental preservation externally, we have to be practising environmental preservation innerly and secretly. Isn't this a great teaching? I am sure none of us want to be always living in constant threats of Typhoons, Earthquakes, Cyclones, SARs, H1N1, or many H2N2, all these natural disasters and epidemics caused unnaturally by us the plastic people. Let's be mindful and careful of all of our deeds by body, speech and mind, so that we don't give a chance to our negative results to go after us. We obviously do not want to live in a world of fear and live all the time worrying about survivals in disasters.
