Jigme - as you all know, means "Fearless" in Tibetan. It's the quality of courage that you should develop when you live in this world. It doesn't mean that you have to be destroying something or someone fearlessly. I don't think that is "Jigme", I think that is more of a cowardice attitude, because you don't like something or someone, you don't want to see this thing or this person any more, you can't take the sight of it any more, so you want to destroy it, this means you are weak, you are not fearless or courageous.
I always feel that many of us lack the courage to look at ourselves in the mirror, yet we always look at others with a magnifying glass, sometimes we can even see the dust in their pores and complain that they are dirty. So this is how we make ourselves miserable, negative and weak. First of all, we should have the courage to look in the mirror and see ourselves clearly. Knowing your own shortfalls is also a fearless way of living, because only when you know your own shortfalls and you admit your own shortfalls that you are able to put your feet down and say, "Okay, now I have to improve. I have to change." Knowing your own capabilities and abilities are also very important, if you cannot handle or do not have the ability to handle the jobs you are asked to do, you should just happily and fearlessly surrender and return to your supervisor and let him get someone else to do a better job. Surrendering yourself, surrendering your own ego is a great fearless way of living.
Sometimes I find myself falling off track, due to my laziness, incompetence and unwillingness to admit my own flaws. I am even blaming others when something don't work out right. Blaming others and finding excuses for yourself are mannerism of cowards, I would say. So I am hoping that all of us will use our life, our experience in this short life and our encounters with others as a way to improve our primordial fearless nature and with this, we become a better person, at least a more understanding, less egoistic person.
Many people have asked me why I had to celebrate 2 birthdays. To tell you the truth, I don't agree with celebrating birthday, it is actually not in my dictionary to celebrate birthday, but I am very happy if my birthday can become a gathering that benefits others. This year, thanks to Young Drukpa Association in Ladakh and my nuns here at Druk Amitabha Mountain, I had 2 birthdays celebrated in a very grand way, which was something I did not expect at all. As you can see from some of photos below, the cakes were much bigger, especially the one offered by YDA Ladakh, I had never seen anything like that before, but it was good, because we were able to share that big cake with more than 45,000 people. Even though it was in the middle of winter, with temperature of -30 degree and very difficult to get fresh flowers, people were so dedicated that they even managed to get fresh flowers and trees to make whole environment very green and colourful. I was told that, all the flowers and plants were airflown from Jammu and Delhi and came that morning of my birthday to decorate the environment. I was very happy about that, not because so many people were there to celebrate birthday with me, but because of the warmth and sincerity that they were giving me happily and harmoniously. I felt like a happy father with 45,000 children. I was also very happy to be able to take my new son, Gyalwa Lorepa, and his family, with me to Ladakh. Of course, Chechok Rinpoche who has just been enthroned was also doing very well. I am only sometimes thinking why Chechok Rinpoche is much smaller in size than Gyalwa Lorepa, when both of them are almost same age. This is something I have not been able to understand.
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Then a couple of weeks later, I had another grand birthday organised by nuns, monks and devotees in Nepal at Druk Amitabha Mountain, and many of my friends and students from all the world joined together to celebrate my birthday. That was also a very happy occasion. The nuns spent several sleepless nights, decorating the temple and everywhere. Those who know how big the place is would understand that it's not easy to decorate and put everything nicely together, especially the birthday celebration happened right after Zangchod Bum. All this positive energy which is encouraging and beneficial is something that I would call "Jigme", don't you agree?
I am also very proud that with the help of Dr. Ruit and not so many sponsors, mainly Phende, we managed to offer the opportunity of "seeing" to 200 poor people. The day I went to open the bandages covering the eyes of one old Nepali woman, I really felt that I had become a genuine Bodhisattva with the ability to reduce suffering of others. She was so happy, jumping and dancing with joy. For so many years, she could not see anything, and now she was able to see her son, the beautiful flowers, the people around her, the entire world around her became so clear. She was speechless and could only stare at me with the happiness that also moved me to tears. I wish, from the depth of my heart, to be able to focus the energy of the Druk Pema Karpo Clinic on offering this kind of surgeries to the poor people. In our practice, we always offer light, light is also an energy of "Jigme" that dispells darkness and shows you the way. The eyes that we have are the light that do the same thing. I am praying very hard that this wish will be fulfilled, you can say that this is my birthday wish. I think the next Live to Love International team should do is to study the possibility of having such kind of hospital in Ladakh. I know many people there are having a lot of problems with seeing, many of them are children and it breaks my heart whenever I see these happening.
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Besides all these excitements, I was just informed of a very good news of happy returning of our beloved Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche. I want to thank Mei for sending this exciting news from China. I hope she will be sending me more photos of the entire story. The night before the fundraising dinner in Hong Kong for Nangchen Stupa project, which is one of the most important wishes of the previous Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche, I had a very strange but very clear dream of seeing Rinpoche dancing in flying posture in the sky. He was saying very joyfully, "I have already come back to see you. You don't have to worry any more. I am here to support your work, I am here to help our beloved Dragon Lineage and all the sentient beings. Do not worry at all." He was dancing in the sky. Because of my ignorance, I was not aware that I was dreaming. I was in fact very confused. I thought Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche had already left us, then why he was appearing in the sky. I told myself, "Wow! He must be showing me a miracle!" I remember telling him many things and mumbling many things to him, while he was very busy dancing, laughing and smiling in his own costumes that he was always wearing. He was looking very young and very energetic. For almost 3 to 4 hours, I was dreaming of him dancing in the sky. Then I woke up and realised that it was just a dream, it was already time for me to do morning practice. I thought that the dream was an indication that Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche would come to bless the fundraising dinner and the fundraising was going to be very successful, that was all I had in mind. First that came to my mind was that I was wondering where he was and felt I have to really take the responsibilty to take care of him, since the late Rinpoche was the greatest master of our lineage. I was thinking of that. The second thing I had in my mind was that I was praying that fundraising dinner for King Ashoka Stupa monument would be blessed and successful. These were the only 2 things that were very much in my mind.
Then half a day later, Kyabje Satrul Rinpoche who is the nephew of the late Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche came and I shared my dream with him, with much more details. I am not writing all the details here, becuase I don't want to bore you readers. So with much more details I shared with Satrul Rinpoche. Satrul Rinpoche said this must be an indication, he was very happy, but he didn't want to share with me many things, because he said there could be many obstacles for no reasons, so therefore we shouldn't be talking too much. I also agreed with that. Now, you can see that Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche had returned as Kyabje Satrul Rinpoche's youngest son who is less than 2 years' old. He left pages of prediction letter before he passed away and the letter was unsealed a couple of days ago and read in front of the public. Isn't this amazing? I was so moved and so happy that I was speechless.
As you all know by now, my beloved colleague who passed away very young at 53 years' old, Kyabje Sengdrak Rinpoche has also returned. He will be enthroned on 10th April and this is very good news for many people, especially his students. Here is a Youtube that shows my beloved new son, who is hardly 4 years old and yet so brilliant.
On top of this, in a few years, we should be looking forward to participating in Kyabje Adeu Rinpoche's enthronement and who knows, by that time, all of us can go to Nangchen, in Eastern part of Tibet, again to celebrate not only the enthronement, but also the inauguration of the big Buddha Amitabha statue and the Ashoka Stupa.
Whatever it is, I am truly proud to be a member of the Dragon family.
