Some of these pictures are of people from our own people in the Himalayas. Selfeshly speaking, I feel especially bad whenever I look at these pictures. I can even say I feel some sort of guilt when I see these, because if I had started some LIVE TO LOVE activities to help them ten or odd years back, we could have prevented them from such kind of tremendous suffering of blindness.
Where were we then? Of course we were there in this world with the True Blindness, that is what I guess we call IGNORANCE or NAIVENESS. We did not intentionally left these poor beings out, but we did not manage to put everything that we have learned into the practice of LOVE, through the sense of contemplating it or sense of opening up ourselves to the world (to humble ourselves). We are too arrogant that we have no room to contemplate on anything. That actually means "no development of compassion", and that leads to where "no love has been practised".
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We know a lot but sometimes knowledge or knowing can block all the sense of genuine understanding (such as the sense of inner contemplation). Knowing does not necessarily bring you the sense of LOVE until it becomes a sense of contemplation. Think it over and over until you get the experiential knowledge. One should not be fooled by the "knowledge" before this experiential understanding, and say "I am compassionate. I am great. I know everything." and etc...
The experiential knowledge that I am talking about is sometimes called the divine knowledge, because it is divine from the point of view of our worldly concept, something that we or many of us have not experienced, not yet!!
When we are able to put this knowledge truly down into the sense of loving activites on human level, that is what I would call "Live In This Human World To Love". I want to thank Dr. Carreras who went to Ladakh and found out so many ways to help our people there, and my student, Carrie Yuen from Hong Kong, for starting actively to get the much needed equipment for the eye treatment.
Talking about Live to Love, we will be having our charter very soon and I think everyone involved should be following it strictly, otherwise, all the activities will become a mess and a joke. For example, there are at least 3 different designs of the T-Shirts, besides the one that I have asked everyone to wear, 2 designed by these different groups which I think better not use for Live to Love, some don't even bother to wear the official T-Shirts. If we cannot even follow the discipline, then what's the point. Some don't even bother to report their activities to Live to Love website and are even fundraising without our knowledge. For example, we are all waiting for Drukpa Taiwan to report their activities on helping the typhoon victims on the Live to Love web, I am sure many of us would want to know what's happening now in Taiwan and how much more we are able to do for the beings.
It would be a great news to take away our blindness by being involved in all sorts of activities that are beneficial to the beings. I think the Live to Love website now needs a major revision so that it will become more organised under countries and 5 directions, I am having some difficulties figuring out what people are doing and which sections their activities belong. Some are just showing group photos, smiling in their own groups. This is not a show, we need to inspire ourselves and others through the activities of helping, so what's the point of putting group photos of our own people smiling, sometimes without T-Shirts, I don't understand, maybe there is a secret. The reason why we are promoting the T-Shirts is because when you are wearing the Live to Love T-Shirts, you are automatically reminded that you have to be gentle, nice and helpful, you are doing Live to Love and that you are conditioning yourself to benefit others. Most of us are not that strong spiritually, we need all these different external conditions to support us, otherwise we don't need all these supports if we are very strong.
Some groups were very active in the begining and then slowly they disappeared. Anyway, this is like your practice, you are so hot in the beginning, you almost feel that you can be enlightened within months because of your diligence in practice, but the interest gradually dies down and instead of dedicating on 1 day a month for Live to Love, you would do it once every quarter or once every half a year. Your practice becomes like this, your life becomes like this, lack of commitment and lack of diligence, so you will never achieve anything.
Since we are blind, our gurus have given us the medicine to cure our blindness, but if we don't take the medicine, we will remain blind. We have to take the medicine ourselves to cure our blindness, unless we don't mind being blind and we enjoy living in darkness, without any goal, without any direction.
Some people are talking highly about LIVE TO LOVE, but the way they are communicating by speaking or by sending emails are all about complaining about others and criticising others. As I said in my last message, the CODE OF CONDUCT is for you to check yourself, not for you to check others. The first thing, as I also said, practise "Kind Speech", that also means "kind email", "kind conversation". If you are naturally a very impatient person, think 3 times or 5 times of what you are going to say to others, before you say it, check if your message will be doing harm or will be helpful. If you are easily influenced by rumours and your emotions are easily provoked, then don't listen, just ignore whoever telling you negative things, even if he or she is your best friend, there is no need to follow what he or she says, unless it is something that encourages positive results or positive relations. You are your own boss. If someone is being nasty to you, you should be thankful that he or she is giving you a great chance to practise Patience and Love. Only Love and Kindness can dissolve all the negative emotions, and only Love and Experiential Understanding can cure our spiritual blindness. Anger is a form of weakness, jealousy is a form of weakness, pride is a form of weakness, all the five poisons are a form of weakness, when you are able to be your own boss, not to be controlled by these nasty emotions, even if the world falls on your head, you are going to be alright. This is a 24 hour homework for all of us.
Among all, I am very happy with the progress of Drukpa Hamburg's helping the street people and Drukpa Butterworth's continuous tree planting, I can see the results that are happening positively. I hope they are putting the progress in records, such as how many people are out of the street what are they doing now, and how many trees have been planted and where they have planted them, and how much money they have raised for this and that. We should not be doing one thing this time and then another thing next time, we will not be able to reach anywhere. Anyway, when the charter comes, you will know what I am talking about, everything legally and practically will fall into place, in the benefit of all beings.
