I received a piece of good news last night about the ADC-Live to Love fundraising drive for the victims in Burma and China. I wanted to put on the web immediately, but after reading the various reports from Druk Foundation in Hong Kong, I was relieved and relaxed that I fell asleep, which is very rare for me. I guess it was a sense of happiness for me to see my friends and students, whether from the West or from the East, really coming together for the benefit of many beings, and this really made me feel that a great job and a wonderful wish have been fulfilled for me. So I slept for a few hours and broke my promise of sleeping only 3 hours a day.

Now, I really feel there is some hope for us to do something actively. I am not saying that we have not been doing anything. I think for us to be directly involved or affected in a major catastrophe like cyclone and earthquake is quite rare, because I guess we all are very blessed in a way not having to suffer in this kind of circumstances. But we shall share this fortune of ours through our prayers and financial help. Of course, we ourselves need a lot of help with so many falling buildings, restoration projects, feeding our own monks, nuns and our community of less fortunate people, releasing lives, planting trees, etc. The list is endless. But, I think if we can spare some time and a little effort to give support to those who need immediate attention and help, this in turn will also encourage us to continue to help ourselves. Our projects sometime do not yield immediate results, so sometimes many people feel lost after helping us for a while and they wander away. Even our people sometimes ask me whether our projects are truly beneficial for others or not. Yes, of course, all the Live to Love projects are beneficial, but we sometimes don't see their results so immediately, much less quickly than helping something like the victims of cyclone we see in Burma and the victims of earthquakes we see happening in Sichuan. The result of helping the victims can be felt almost immediately because the impact of the suffering is so sudden and so great. I hope you all understand why I am hurrying everyone to do some help quickly for these victims. We ourselves will also lose interest if we don't act quickly. I am also proud to tell you that my poor nuns in Kathmandu also raised funds and did extensive prayers for the victims, even though they have no money whatsoever. They are like my own daughters, so I am so happy and moved by their spontaneous reaction to the appeal made by Khamtrul Rinpoche Jigme Pema Nyinjadh.

I want to especially thank Kin Li and Alice Tsang for coordinating the fundraising at Druk Foundation in Hong Kong and I have just received an email from Alice who voluntarily offers to go to meet with Rigden Rinpoche in Sichuan so that they can organise some relief help among themselves. ADC has put the latest report on the ADC web, and I think Druk Foundation will continue to give us updates. Do send them your encouragement. They have a lot of hard work to do and they need all the moral support they can get from you.

I know we cannot do very big job because we are not experienced. But there are many humanitarian organisations that we can learn from. First we work with them, and then gradually we will have our own relief team, supported by the beauty of the spiritual lineage that we are practising in. This is my hope and wish. I see on the Live to Love website that many of our groups are releasing lives on third Sunday. This is a good and easy start. We need to slowly include "releasing" human beings, which can be a lot of more complicated. I hope I am not giving everyone a hard time by saying all this. Anyway, I am encouraged by all your efforts to say all the good and positive things today.

As I have promised the last time, I am happy to share with a few photos of my recent trip to Ladakh. As internet connection here in Kathmandu is not stable, I am not able to share all the photos with you.

I forgot to mention something about Ladakh which is also very encouraging as part of the Live to Love campaign. With the help of Tessa Heron and her group, my nuns at Druk Pemei Den (or Druk Lotus Seat) have come down to the Naro Phodrang (Palace of Naropa, just next to the Druk White Lots School) in Shey from their retreat place to work day and nights for planting trees and taking care of them as if they are taking care of their hundreds of new-born babies. This time, I could see hundreds of different types of trees are growing very nicely on the barren land. This place for thousands of years has never been used for any civilisations. It is like a moon land or a desert, without water, just sand and dust. In just about 6 months, what we can see now is amazing even for me. My heartfelt thanks go to the nuns who are working so hard to plant the trees and also to the Ladakh Hill Development Council in Leh who has helped to get water pump for irrigation, without their help, we would have no means to get the water to Shey.

I have high hope and I am enthusiastic to accomplished many tree planting projects in places like Ladakh and Nepal where there is acute shortage of trees and this will eventually and definitely cause many problems in our world, such as landslides, deterioration in air quality, shortage and drying up of water sources, and many others. Oh, speaking about this subject, at my request, my nuns on Druk Amitabha Mountain also planted dozens of trees here and everything seems to be coming up quite nicely. We definitely want to continue with this effort. Even though tree planting is a long-term process to help many beings, I think it's worth it. We shouldn't be waiting for disasters to happen to help and to change our lifestyle, we should be doing preventive things to reduce the sufferings of beings.

I want again to mention that I was very happy to see the progress of tree planting done by Drukpa Butterworth members. They even have a progress report, which is very professional and very clear. Please give them your encouragement so that they will continue to plant more trees to improve the lives of many beings.