Vietnamese devotees again have been working so hard for my visit. I want to take the opportunity to let them know that I really appreciate their hard work and effort and also, I am very proud that Kyabje Khamtrul Rinpoche Jigme Pema Nyinjadh has been very kindly and actively leading the followers of our Drukpa school in Vietnam, despite being very busy preparing for the 2nd ADC. It's not a joking matter. With the support of our beloved Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and also all my colleagues, friends and students, everything has been going on very nicely. This is a great gift not only for me or for the lineage, but also for all beings. I feel that as long as we are able to spread the message of love, wisdom and all the positive vibrations, any kind of activities is great!
As you can see in this photo, the statue of Kunkhyen Pema Karpo sponsored by one of my good friends Mr Loh in Asia has just been installed. Due to the hard work of Zangmola and others, all the construction work has been going on very smoothly and successfully without any obstacle, I have the strong confident that everything will be completed by the 2nd ADC. I am really looking forward to meeting all of you again at this very rare occasion where 800 nuns will gather and also spiritual gathering of our masters and their followers will happen. I think it would be important that all the centres of Drukpa should send their heads and representatives to attend the meeting on 6th and then on 7th, meeting of all the representatives of all my Trusts should come together, besides the Live to Love Annual meeting. I am sure our respected Financial Controller of our Treasury department must have sent out notice of this meeting. All the people concerned should be prepared for these few meetings, which we are going to do at least once a year. If you are representing center or center head, no matter what, this is a very important gathering, because you have the responsibility of carrying the lineage in your respective country, therefore every head should be coming together this time and every time. It's not a joking responsibility, I hope people are not taking this lightly, when I say this. Whoever is having this responsibility should know to take this appointment seriously and try not to make any problem or not to cooperate.
Yesterday, I was in Ha Long Bay with about 1,000 people cruzing in 6 huge boats. Tay Thien Bhikshunis and nuns have served me and all the 90 guests and entourage in my boat very nice and delicious lunch. On the request of Kyabje Khamtrul Rinpoche, we released 1 million fish. While he dedicated this for my longevity, I also dedicated for his longevitiy, so it served 2 purposes, 2 in 1! I was told that the small islands in Ha Long Bay were actually manifestations of a dragon family, who formed a great wall against invadors. I think all of us were taking refuge under these celestial dragons in the forms of islands and it's karmically also connected to our Dragon lineage, isn't this quite amazing? This day also coincided with the 1000th anniversary of Hanoi, when the Emperor saw a Golden Dragon ascended from Red River to the sky.
The day before yesterday when I was giving teaching and transmitting the blessing of the Buddha of Great Compassion at Ha Tien Pagoda, it was raining quite a bit. People got a little wet and I guess some were little worried about the weather. In fact I was observing this as really a blessing for all of us who were there. This rain was a great blessing for the country, whether you believe it or not. Everyone seemed to be well-prepared, all of them had umbrellas, I was the only one who didn't have any umbrella and never wanted one. Why should I hide myself from the rain of blessing? Anyway, it was not a rain, just drizzling. It was though a great view to see tens of thousands of people using umbrellas. Right after the drizzling stopped, the weather became very soothing for the rest of the day, which was also a very good omen.
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The Bhikshunis at Tay Thien Pagoda made wonderful preparations, that showed their confidence and devotion in the lineage and the teachings. Even though we had to walk a couple of hours to reach the Pagoda, it was an amazing experience to see many female practitioners, strong and self dependent in spirituality and also in taking care of themselves. I am really very proud of them. There are some photos here from Drukpa Vietnam that I am sharing with you here.
I was also very amazed that the nuns at Tay Thien put up a show on Tsangpa Gyare with dances, music and beautiful story. I was told that Kyabje Khamtrul Rinpoche gave a lot of advice how to go about doing this. I hope one day our nuns at Druk Gawa Khilwa will also be able to do something similar. We are anyway copy cats, why not be copy cats of good things so that we will encourage each other in the world to do good and beneficial things. So Drukpa Vietnam Sangha can copy Drukpa India Sangha, and vice versa. We should be copycats of good things! Actually, I don't always understand English terminologies very well. Why copy cat and not copy dog or copy duck? Is cat always copying others? This is very interesting topic that will take me a long time to write about. I think I should leave it next time, when the subject of copy cat and copy mouse comes up again!
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Thanks to Zangmo and others who have been working so hard, now we can see from the following photos how the monument with statues has been slowly by slowly being installed. Druk Amitabha Mountain was a project started 18 years ago and it started because of my mother and my own wish to have an Amitabha Statue. Now the big one is going to Nangchen, we also made a smaller one to be put here and on top of this, we have a very big Kunkhyen Pema Karpo statue just below Buddha Amitabha. Whoever paying homage to this or making a wish there will definitely have their wishes granted, whether you believe it or not, whether you wish to do it or not, this blessing is fortunately there very mysteriously. As you know, Kunkhyen Pema Karpo was the 4th Gyalwang Drukpa. He was very admired by everybody because of his knowledge, wisdom and compassion. He had such a big heart and his successful activities helped to build a solid foundation for the prospering of the Drukpa Lineage later on. I think whoever paying homage to him with genuine devotion will definitely have a very successful and fruitful result of everything they wish to do, due to his energy and strength which still can be felt now. I am very happy that due to the generosity of my mother who sponsored the Amitabha statue, my godfather who sponsored the very strong foundation for the monument and Mr Loh who sponsored the Pema Karpo Statue, everyone of us can enjoy the immeasurable blessings as well. I want to highlight especially Felix's effort and contribution for building the foundation. Foundation is in fact the most important part of any structure, without foundation, everything cannot last. Even though foundation is hidden and cannot be seen and admired very much, the merit of building this foundation is so great that it cannot be imagined. So I am very happy that on the day of inauguration these 3 people will join us together at the 2nd ADC to share their joy and happiness with all of us.
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Some people say that blessing is a very superstitious thing. I think, anything that is being abused by some clever people with some strange motivation is superstitious and dangerous. Blessing has to come together with understanding. We live in samsara with a lot of subtle and gross difficulties, no matter whether you are materialistically okay or not, this is not something that anyone can avoid. So we all need blessing, which is encouragement and inspiration. We can say that any sort of encouragement and inspiration is a kind of blessing. Even though we cannot see blessing, it is definitely there, we can feel it whenever everything goes smoothly and everything is happening according to our wishes, not the negative things though. So any positive actions you do, will be returned with positive results. Generous people are building these objects of refuge or objects of inspiration so that others will admire and be inspired. This is a great blessing for the donors and the ones who are enjoying the sight of the objects, which is what we call the blessing or liberation by sight. I am not encouraging superstition, on the contrary, I am trying to inspire you with the understanding or explanation. Every objects even ornaments are representations of an aspect of enlightenment. So we have to understand and appreciate. For those of you who are keen to receiving this sort of understanding and blessing, there is no choice but to meet at 2nd ADC. Though this sounds like an advertisement, it's not, it's really mysteriously true. Anyway, I have to go now. My next appointment is going to start shortly. I will try to find time to share with you again. That's all for now.
