HH Gyalwang Drukpa Rinpoche
Overall, the purpose of both bicycling and the Pad Yatra (walking eco-trip) is
to serve humanitarian activities and provide good knowledge to human
beings—specifically, how to be a real, kind human being. To me, being a good
human being is not just about saying hi or asking how someone is; that is not
good enough. Being a good human being means taking care of the trees, the
water, and the elements. This is what is lacking in this age.
Approximately 80% of the people in this world are abusive to the trees, the
water, and the air, causing pollution. Hopefully, through our Yatra and our
tree-planting efforts, they will understand why we do this. I feel very excited
about the last few days because the people here are very positive, supportive,
and loving. They love nature, and they love us because we are doing work that
will hopefully help the world. They admire us because what we are doing is for
the future, and that future depends on how we act right now.
I feel very good about Norway and the Norwegian landscape. It is amazing, and
the reason this beautiful landscape is kept so fresh is because of the
Norwegian government and their organizations; otherwise, these things would
have been gone a long time ago.
Nowadays, through social media, people around the world know where I am and
what I am doing, and I hope they will take us as an example. The impact I hope
for is that they will take care of their environment, their parents, their
students, their children, and their lineage, and live very positively. I hope
they will take less part in a polluted way of living, such as using machines
that run on petrol and diesel.
Let’s hope that the whole world will eventually become like Norway. We all have
the right to do this, and our elements are suffering. If we learn from the way
we live, we can turn our air as clear and pure as Norwegian air. We are showing
people that it is possible to turn the world into a beautiful place for
generations to come. That is our goal. We are not forcing anyone, but we hope
they will take this as a positive example for their lives and the lives of
their children.
We have to live, but living needs to be turned into loving. That is the reason
for our "Live to Love" message. We shouldn't be living to hate; we
should be living to love each other—human beings, animals, trees, and elements.
We should be living in this world with a love to love.
However, this concept of "living to love" needs to be understood more
thoroughly. We must understand that we have to put our compassion into action.
When compassion is activated, that is love. The explanation or description of
love is the action of compassion.
Everybody talks about compassion, but compassion is often just a sympathetic
feeling. For example, if you are suffering from a headache, I might feel
touched or painful for you, but that is just compassion. When it becomes an
active act—like me going out to buy you medicine or getting a doctor because I
want you to get better—that is when compassion becomes activated, and I am
practicing love.
People sometimes think a sympathetic mind is love, but it is not; it is just
compassion. The bottom line is that we have to actually do something—get an
ambulance, get a doctor, get medicine—instead of just saying "what a
pity" and doing nothing. That is why we are doing the Pad Yatra, the
bicycle Yatra, and the eye camps; we are helping through humanitarian actions.
We all have a sense of compassion, but we seldom practice it. We should be
inspired to turn our compassion into love, which means moving to the level of
action. Love is an action. If you have an expectation from the group in this
Yatra, it is that you expect them to be more loving than just compassionate.
We are often mingled with compassion, but we don't always manage to put
ourselves into practice due to various conditions like having no money or no
time. Sometimes people feel pity but don't want to help because they don't
think it's a good thing, or they fear it will be inconvenient. There are a lot
of obstacles when it comes to love.
From a religious point of view, we have to pray that these conditions may not
be obstacles. Praying is one of the beautiful parts of doing this, but it must
go simultaneously with the action of love. Whatever action needs to be done
should be done. If the conditions are truly bad and you can't do anything, that
is where prayer comes in.
Whether you are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, the act of praying has a
very strong impact. We must pray that we all turn our compassion into loving
activities, but at the same time, we must perform the work. The Pad Yatra and
the bicycle Yatra are about joyful effort and setting an example, which will
inspire others, and then those people will inspire others, until hopefully, the
whole world changes into a loving world.
In a loving world, people love the tree and the tree loves you. People love the
water and the water loves you. Water has taken care of you since the beginning
of time, so now we have to appreciate it and send it our love and care instead
of cutting it down or burning it. That is very rude and should not be done. If
we start loving nature, it will definitely send back the oxygen and all the
life we need. It is going to be very beautiful. The air will also turn
peaceful, meaning there will be no windstorms to act as obstacles to human
peace. Flooding will not be there because the water has been taken care of by
human beings rather than being destroyed.
Right now, from the point of view of a Buddhist, I believe that all these
so-called "natural disasters" are not truly natural; they are
disasters caused by us. Eventually, these disasters will become slower and
kinder if we stop doing such nasty things to nature. Just like a human, nature
will get angry if you mistreat it repeatedly. I believe nature is like that.
This is my own explanation; it is not necessarily written somewhere else, but I
thought this way.
Everywhere there are earthquakes, landslides, and windstorms that carry away
houses and cars, and people suffer because they don't understand that they are
causing these things karmically. We have to be "good boys" so that
our children will not face the revenge of nature and will live very peacefully.
I have never said this before because I know people will not believe it, as it
sounds very much like a Buddhistic thing that people don't understand, so I am
not very fond of talking about it. But today, I just said it—I just said what I
usually think.
