Samye Ling

Tara on Tour

The Drupchen - which is a long prayer festival - finished today with a Guru Rinpoche empowerment. It's been a very good and inevitably rather intense few days: the energy during such an event is very powerful and it's rather like entering a completely different reality.

The teacher who has led this week's Drupchen has been flown over from Tibet: he is a highly respected Rinpoche, and certainly has an awesome presence. Everyday for a week, monks, nuns and laypeople have been chanting and reciting Guru Rinpoche prayers from 8 am until 5 pm.

Guru Rinpoche is regarded as the most important figures within Tibetan Buddhism: this is because he established Buddhism in Tibet and had to transform many obstacles and negativities in order to do so. This particular capacity to transform obstacles is why he is so important today. He predicted that this would be a "degenerative" time when there would be increasing darkness in the form of negativity, planetary instability and many forms of physical and mental sickness. Doing Guru Rinpoche practice brings a lot of very strong positive energy to the world and to the "mind" of our planetary consciousness.

On Tuesday, we received a very special blessing. Akong Rinpoche handed all of us in the temple a small relic of Guru Rinpoche. The story behind this was rather incredible. During the time of Guru Rinpoche's teaching many hundreds of years ago, many treasure texts (terma) were hidden, to be revealed at later times when they would be of great relevance by tertons (treasure revealers). Guru Rinpoche foresaw the need for genuine relics and hid instructions for multipyling existing relics. This involved mixing them with elixirs and pressing them into special moulds. 4 moulds were made, of different sizes, and the substances used to make the original ones also came from a variety of terma. Guru Rinpoche's hair, special pills, fragments of the Guru's brocade for example.

It was widely believed that these moulds had been lost during the Cultural Revolution, but this year - in a seemingly effortless way - one of them was handed to Akong Rinpoche. This gave Rinpoche strong motivation to organise a Guru Rinpoche Drupchen at Samye Ling and to bring great teachers over for this purpose. In particular one Tibetan seer had had a vision of Guru Rinpoche whilst on retreat, and had been told that this was now the time to place many consecrated images in various countries. These would help to restore the balance of beings and of their environment, helping to combat diseases of the body and mind. The person who was to carry out this work had a name that began with "A". Eventually Akong Rinpoche was made aware of this, and he has undertaken to do this work.

So the relics we were given are indeed very precious and we all hold a responsibility to remember the wish and activity of Guru Rinpoche - and to encourage the spread of such positive energy in any way we can. Particularly through the building and consecrating of Guru Rinpoche images.

I was personally very struck by this, in the light of this journey to place images of Tara in different countries - where her particular activity and blessing will be of benefit. The many obstacles I have been aware of over the last week have surfaced and dissolved in the light of all these blessings.

In particular, I was concerned that the ongoing bleeding coming from my uterus was an indication that travelling was not the thing to be doing at the moment. I had an interview with Rinpoche and he assured me that what I am doing is important and must be continued. That I need not worry about my "health". He blessed the remaining Tara statues I have, and the cards I am selling, and I left feeling as if Tara's "instruction" to do this work was very genuine indeed. Despite the faith, I do have doubts because I feel rather alone doing this work and when obstacles arise, they really make me question what I'm doing. This week's Drupchen and Rinpoche's blessing and encouragement have removed those doubts - and given me more strength and courage for the journey ahead.

He also told me that the total amount needed for the 21 Tara Temples in South Africa was £20 million !!!!!!!!!! No problem! It's all a question of being in the right place at the right time, and basically being a channel that directs the funds from the sources that are already out there to the building of the shrines in Africa. All I have to do is the Tara practice - in prayer and in the activity of this journey.

So - for all of you that read this, I pray that the blessing reaches you too and removes any obstacles to your own health, wealth, happiness and "mundane and spiritual" accomplishment. And that this continues to radiate out to all beings everywhere. Om ah hung bendza guru pema siddhi hung.