We
are having a great time with my uncle around these days. My father
is enjoying himself so much and I am so happy to see them together
and to be with them. Every hour of every day is full of blessings,
it's really like "a shower of blessings". All of us here are having
a lot of great opportunities to receive very precious Wang or
Empowerment or Initiation from my uncle. I didn't get anyone to
make big fuss about my uncle's presence. As you all know, I always
feel that Dharma is too precious to be "sold" in the worldly ways.
Unless one has a perfectly pure motivation, I even think that
Dharma should not be marketed in a way like a commercial product
where a guru acts like salesman to sell the "product"
which is the Dharma in crowded or popular places because sometimes
Dharma becomes an unrespected commodity that is not valued in any
place, by anyone.
This time, as a result of my "unworldly" thinking, we
are participating in such a great gathering in a humble
place like Druk Amitabha Mountain, without many people knowing. On
top of that, I didn't even bother to make 1 page of
leaflet, and make 1 single telephone call to let people
know. Yet strangely, people are starting to pile up. We are now
worrying about the conditions of living, eating facility
and even parking. But of course, in another way, I am very
happy to have as many people as possible to come to join us,
because it will have great benefit.
The beauty of this gathering is that it's very simple, yet it's
full of blessings. And also whenever I hear thousands of times from
people saying, "I didn't know that such a big initiation is
happening there", egoistically speaking I am very proud, as
this is an indication that I have not been influenced by the
worldly dharmas.
Speaking about the worldy dharmas, the Buddha Dharma should
never be practised with the mentality of selling it for the sake of
one's own fame and wealth. Of course, to be successful in this
world, we need wealth, fame and health, we need many things!
But I think that all these things should be provided by other
means, rather than by selling the Buddha Dharma. Once you start to
sell the Buddha Dharma for the sake of your own
well-being, this is a practice of worldly dharmas, which
I think and if I may say, Buddha Shakyamuni would hate
it. The main purpose of Buddha Shakyamuni's teaching in Triyana is
to kill that sort of motivation and attitude. But most of
us nowadays in this world are nourishing that kind of attitude
whenever we do any kind of Buddha Dharma practice. When I look
at myself, I also feel very sad, I seem to be swimming in that mud
sometimes, even though I try my best to step out and dry myself
immediately with the towel of wisdom or awareness. But from time to
time, without awareness, I am often back into the muddy pool
of worldly dharmas, that I feel very sad about.
It doesn't matter how colourful your life is, how wealthy
or how famous you are, as long as you are in that muddy pool,
it's really a very difficult situation. Sometimes, especially these
days, when I look at this particular occasion that my
uncle is presiding over, I am really happy that myself together
with all the practitioners on Druk Amitabha Mountain are able to
survive without selling the Dharma. My uncle is such a great master
and he is giving such a great teaching with such a great
vibration, to such a wonderful group of devoted little
girls, our so called nuns at Druk Amitabha Mountain and also
many monks who have been practising under my strict direction
here. I would say that the entire assembly of guru and devotees are
relatively divine in the sense of carrying themselves with
correct motivation and behaving very nicely in the sense that
they naturally do not have that much of wordly harmic
attitude, in connection with this kind of divine
occasions. If Dharma is not practised for enlightenment but for
socializing or getting political affiliations, then what is the
point of calling it Dharma. I believe that we can always do other
activities for our own pleasure and leave Dharma alone as it
supposed to be. Let Dharma function as a medicine to cure the
suffering of samsara and don't let it function as a poison. If
Dharma is for sale for personal enjoyment, then lineage can be for
sale for that and your soul and spirit can be for sale for that
too.
I don't mean that one should never be wanting the fame, the food
or the wealth. What I am trying to say is that one should
never be enjoying the worldly attractions for one's own pleasure
by selling the Buddha Dharma. That's the only thing that
I am struggling to let everyone know. All of you should
also know what I am driving at. By saying this here, it helps me to
drive myself out of the muddy pool. By typing this, I am serving 2
big purposes, one is to help myself getting out of this mess and
two is to hopefully make many people understand what Buddha
Dharma actually means, in what way Buddha Dharma should be
practised, and what is the motivation of Buddha Shakyamuni when he
started to give teaching of Triyana.
These days, my uncle or our initiation master keeps on
pushing and encouraging us to pray for the well being of the world
and for the beings in the world. I don't think he knows about all
these disasters that are happening recently, because he has
no knowledge of internet, since he is from an old
generation and he doesn't handle this sort of new technology. But
because of his omniscience, he knows that prayers are very much
needed. Every morning, afternoon and night, he keeps on enocuraging
us to pray and dedicate our prayers. I am very amazed by his
omniscience. We modern people know about these things through
modern technology. Even though my uncle has not been informed,
yet he has been very much concerned. So through his
encouragement, we are doing practices of different sorts, to bring
peace in the world.
As I always say, no matter what sort of prayers we do and how we
pray, all these have to be supported by correct deeds. Otherwise,
prayers will never be answered! Instead, all the disasters which
are manmade will keep on happening everywhere, as you all can
understand by reading news. We are very clever to say that
these are natural disasters, but they are very much
to do with us. We human beings are the ones who are creating the
causes of disaters. So we really have to be educated, instead of
blaming on nature. Nature has the beauty of its own that does not
have that kind of negative attitude, we are the ones who are
creating this. We are so crooked to name this as natural disaster,
it's very sad. I always feel very funny when I think of how
crooked and how irresponsible we humans are.
To all the readers of this message, I want to request
everyone to practise the actions of LOVE and do all GOOD DEEDS with
GENUINELY GOOD MOTIVATION.
http://www.drukpa.org/index.php/News-in-2011/dharma-not-for-sale