The Gyalwang Drukpa

It was such an enjoyable moment for me and a few of my monks, nuns and friends here the other night, watching the program of "Talking the Walk". We rushed back from town so that we could watch the "Talking the Walk" program, webcasted directly from Kuala Lumpur. I want to thank everyone for making this possible, it really brought a lot of laughters to many people, at least for me, it was so enjoyable. I especially want to thank Losel and his wife for arranging for the live webcast and also for making 2 wonderful short videos with such a good music. I could not believe this was possible. I am now really looking forward to Wendy's production of the Pad Yatra documentary, which I think will also be a highlight for all of us.

One of the things that I felt very encouraged and amazed about when watching the "Talking the Walk" show was that until this program, I did not know that some of my friends and students have that many talents. If we have a kind of acting award, I think I would like to give the best actor award to Jigme Phende and the best supporting actor award to Jigme Migyur. Of course, I was also enjoying TP Lim's performance, he was naturally a great moderator and he was truly the main key of the success of the show. Many people in Kuala Lumpur requested me to stop the heavy rain which happened right before the show as they were very worried that traffic jam as a result of the rain would discourage people from going for the show. But what I was thinking was that because it was going to be such a good show, therefore even if there might be some obstacles like heavy rain, traffic jam, etc, those people who really took the trouble to attend would appreciate the show more. In fact, I was laughing like nobody's business because of enjoying the show, I really hope that we are able to invite TP to come and help us make one more show as Talking the Walk at the 2nd ADC, but this time we should have our friends from Autralia, Hong Kong, Europe, America and other places joining us in this program. I don't know if this is possible, but I am always confident that these beloved friends and students of mine will somehow fulfill my wish, at least I know our 2nd ADC chairperson will try to do that. I have not met TP personally yet, but I am really looking forward to meeting him. It would also be very nice if we can have a European version and an American version of this sort of programs. Although it seemed to be a comedy, there were many drops of wisdom about life and positive attitude coming from Khamtrul Rinpoche and also from the experience of the participants.

After watching "Talking the Walk" on the webcast, I also received some news which sounds like "Walking the Talk", I guess you all know the difference. The first one, I presumed means describing your own experience, and the second one means putting what you preach into practice. Dr Carreras has been going around in Ladakh, checking the eyesight of many villagers there.

Our pair of eyes are one of the most important organs in the body. What can you do without eyes? You cannot do anything. As you all know, Live to Love has to be practised all the time, not only once in a while, but also all the time, without wasting even one minute, because life is so precious and yet it is unfortunately so short. Without eyes, it can be very difficult to practise and to benefit others. You can just imagine how important eyes are to you. If you contemplate from time to time, you will know and undersatnd the importance of eyes and the importance of not losing eyes.

Actually this is one of the ways to develop compassion. I always say to my people that compassion needs to be developed. For example, after knowing the importance of eyes and their functions and importance of not losing eyes, that particular understanding should give you some kind of encouragement to work for those blind people, and give you some ideas to appreciate and look after your own eyes. You need to be fair to your eyes, so that you will never be blind. Similarly, because of this understanding, you will be taking care of others' eyes. When you start to take care of others, that is what you call LOVE, or activities of LOVE. Live to Love also comes in this form.

So therefore I requested Dr Carreras, one of my friends, who is a eye doctor to go to Ladakh and Nepal. He did such a good job in Nepal and Ladakh, as you can see here. Even though he and his wife did not have enough time to cover the whole of Ladakh, they managed to visit a few villages, not only studying many cases but also benefiting many people over there, by giving eyedrops, treatments and advices. As he managed to study the different situations and cases quite a fair bit, now he understood something, and he discussed with me. So we now have better ideas of how to help these people.

Especially after seeing the photos he showed me, I really want to dedicate my life to save those people who are going to be blind any days. Therefore it is very important to have this kind of special understanding and notion so that we can work to benefit other people. The reason why I am starting from Ladakh, is because most of the people in Ladakh are connected with me and my lineage, for this reason I thought it would definitely be easier to work with them technically, but not because they are my people. In fact I would love to provide medical help in all Himalayas where not much care has been given.

One funny thing is that we will not realise how important eyes are, until we get totaly blind. Most of us don't care about our eyes, we care about our skin, hair, about our feet, we care about some other parts of our body, but somehow we forget about our eyes. Eyes are something we should not neglect or left out. I hope it's not because my eyes are not so good or because I am being more cautious about the health conditions of my own eyes, I hope not. To tell you truth, my eyes are doing quite good so far, I have no complaints. As many people are suffering from blindness, and in most cases, if they were given appropriate and timely treatment, they would not necessarily become blind. After getting blind, it became too late to give any help, by this time nobody could do anything. So I am concerned about this. If there is anyone out there who cares about this, either Talking the Walk or Walking the Talk or Live to Love, we should try to help to save or reduce blindness in any part of the world.

Actually, I have written 2 pages about eyes and the importance of eyes and the whole document got lost in email. Now I am typing again a shorter one. My eyes are getting quite dry because of this writing, there are no tears left. Technology can be very helpful and can be very difficult. I wrote almost 2 pages of things and chose 4 photos to share with you, after I pressed something, everything went missing and disappeared. Again I have to type. Ah! My goodness!

Overall I am really very happy that so many beneficial activities are going on, to bring laughter and happiness, and to bring hope and joy to others. So whether it is "Talking the Walk" or "Walking the Talk", whatever we are doing, we should be having the benefits of others in mind.