A few days after Mother's Day, on 14th May, the holy month of Saga Dawa started. I hope those of you who are following the Lunar calendar and who are spiritual practitioners have not forgotten this. This is a very sacred month that commemorates Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death. As usual, our practitioners on Druk Amitabha Mountain has been extra busy with very formal practice and many other activities to benefit the sentient beings. I am very proud to be able to stay here to give them moral support through teachings and all sorts of other interactions, as we all need to be always interacting with others positively, so that we are able to support and benefit each other, not only with human beings, but also with animals, plants, wind, air, water, sun, moon, rain, etc.
All the elements in the nature and all the living beings are actually our friends and our supporters if we really know how to interact with them positively and with understanding and appreciation. This is also the same with our self nature. Because of a lack of interaction, we lose touch with our self nature, so we are lost and get ourselves into all sorts of troubles, most of these troubles are results of a lack of interaction with our nature and a lack of understanding and appreciation of our nature. We are asking for trouble! Like those who love gardening, taking care of the flowers and the plants, making the garden beautiful, we have to garden our inner self nature, so that our own inner garden will radiate the creative beauty to benefit others.
Talking about gardening, we were actually very busy with the landscaping work around the statue area of Druk Amitabha Mountain. I was trying to upload the photos sent by our ama Zangmola and also the few in my iPhone, it was really a hard job because of the 18 hours load shedding. As much as possible, we don't want to use generators which are consuming a lot of diesel and also not friendly to the environment. We are already working on the next stage of the solar installation, I really hope that in the near future Druk Amitabha Mountain will be a completely environmental friendly place so that we all can live and practice here without harming our natural environment. Therefore the end result is that we were all having a lot of problems in terms of convenience such as communicating with the world outside of Druk Amitabha Mountain. Even when we are sending emails, we have to be praying that the mails will go quickly before the electricity goes off. That's why I like to joke with myself that there is hardly any need to join in the program called Earth Hour (which we were invited to participate) in places like Nepal and many parts of remote India, because most of the time we have no choice. Not only we have to "switch off" electricity for 1 hour, we have no electricity for 16 to 18 hours in a day. So we should say Earth HourS, with a big "S"!
I really think that gardening is a great thing to do, not only because I love the trees and plants, but also because I think through the process and activity of gardening, we actually will learn to appreciate the beauty of the nature of the earth. Not that I am an expert on gardening but I feel very much fulfilled by doing so. In the beginning, I thought it would be very tough for all of us, especially my small nuns who have been happily volunteeing to help me. I know they are enjoying doing this too because they love me and my lineage for the sake of all the beings, therefore even though we were suffering from harsh weather and heat, we all had a smiling face. I got a very bad cold, so did they.
From the ecological aspect, everything is coming from this mountain, I want to reuse and recycle, to contribute to the nature, whatever comes from here, we don't want to throw away and we want to reuse. Within 3 days, we completed entire garden around the statue area. I am happy allso that we hardly killled any bugs while we were gardening, this is usually something that I do not like about gardening. If we garden carelessly and selfishly only for the sake of beautifying our own garden, it will take a lot of lives of others. Even though superficially we are creating or doing something for this world, those poor things and tiny beings are experiencing big catastrophes, it would be like an earthquake or a tsunami for them. In fact, the most active ones were our kungfu nuns who are so great in terms of mind and body that they are ready to do anything physically as well as mentally. Therefore the gardening went so easily that we could finish within 3 days. Since I believe that our life is designed for creativity and why not do some creativity work?
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I think many of you must be knowing by now that there will be a Pad Yatra or walking pilgrimage in October and December, the end of this year. "Pad" means "foot" and "Yatra" means "journey". I love this terminology very much, because it really has a very deep and profound meaning, in the sense of grounding ourselves. The one in October will be starting from Kathmandu and ending in Bodhgaya and this is dedicated for the beings who passed away in the recent Yushu earthquake and also for all the beings who passed away in natural disasters which are happening so often right now. The one in December will be starting from Darjeeling to Sikkim and then back to Darjeeling.
Sikkim actually was known as "Serkim", "Ser" means "yellow" and "kim" means "house", because the inhabitants of Sikkim, monastics or lay people, all are Buddhist practittioners, therefore they are also known as "yellow householders". Sikkim is a golden land fully blessed by Guru Padmasambhava. Whoever practices Vajrayana has to be making a connection with Sikkim, if possible. Therefore, after giving a lot of thoughts about this, I have changed the destination from Sri Lanka to Sikkim. We will be crossing a few passes again, I think, but the duration will be shorter, around 18 days. I will again ask Drukpa Publications to work out the registration and the details. So those of you who are interested, you can go and bug them.
