"This is a picture of us working on the garden for planting trees, flowers, and vegetables. I have been working on the gardens and fields for more than 24 months and I am very proud of myself to be able to do that.

It’s lovely to see all the resident Nuns working joyfully together. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation goes to my late father Kyabje Bairo Rinpoche and my mom for buying this huge land for us to work on, so that we can plant trees, vegetables, flowers, and more. When they bought all the land about 25 years ago, I was very ignorantly wondering why they were buying all this useless land. I knew that they were not going to sell it and make money. They weren’t doing it for future business. But now I realise that their motivation was to give us a great time to serve the environment and protect Mother Earth, and we could at least set a good example.

 

I consider this is a tiny contribution from us to humanity in this time of climate changes, and it is an opportunity to create beautiful things for us to live around for hundreds of years. It is indeed such a lovely experience to see things growing in the gardens and fields. It’s a challenge for us, since we are not really seasoned gardeners and farmers. Often we see the mistakes we have made as to what should be planted or not planted. I know we have made a lot of mistakes in landscaping because we’re not experienced enough. But despite all of the mistakes, nature has kind and beautiful phenomena where things will appear in a very friendly way to inspire every one of us, and give us lots of joy to see as they grow and give fruit, flowers, etc.

Overall, I want to request all of my friends and students to contribute your time to save the sick earth and all other elements that have been abused by us for hundreds of years. Please remember that we have to live on this earth with all the help of different elements. Money is not the only one!"

 

Sa Sainteté Gyalwang Drukpa