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