These photoes are related to Kagyu Nalanda Environment Campaign did at Bylakuppe His Holiness Dalai Lama Palace on 10th Dec2011 Nobel peace prize day .
These photoes are related to Kagyu Nalanda Environment Campaign did at Bylakuppe His Holiness Dalai Lama Palace on 10th Dec2011 Nobel peace prize day .
KHORYUG is pleased to announce that we will take up clean up and environmental education responsibilities during the 32nd Kalachakra initiation at Bodh Gaya from December 31 to January 12, 2012 as per the instructions of His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa. His Holiness the Karmapa said, “carrying out activities to benefit the earth and to inspire people to take care of the environment during such an auspicious puja will have incomparable merit now and in the future.” He encouraged KHORYUG coordinators to use this opportunity to become environmental leaders and teachers for the Himalayan and Tibetan people.
KHORYUG members will clean up the Kalachakra main ground and surrounding area, the Mahabodhi Stupa, and the road between the Mahabodhi Gate and Nyingma Gompa. Member groups include over 100 monks from Gyuto Monastery, 21 nuns from Tilokpur Nunnery, 65 students from SUJA, and representatives from all KHORYUG monasteries and nunneries.
Attaching waste baskets for use in Kalachakra main ground
Activities will include clean up of areas and roads, sprinkling of water on roads, environmental education programs at selected campsites and residences, and the dissemination of environmental information.
The 32nd Kalachakra will be initiated by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. Considered one of the most important pujas in Tibetan Buddhism, organizers expect a huge turnout for the Kalachakra puja this year from across the world, including Tibet, Mongolia, China, Nepal, Bhutan and other Himalayan regions. This Kalachakra event was conceived by former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, the late Dorjee Khandu. The details on 32nd Kalachakra initiation can be found at www.kalachakra2012.org.
Volunteers are welcome – please contact us by email or approach our information desk outside of Kalachakra gate.
His Holiness the Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje,delivered the inaugural address at the Global Buddhist Congregation’s section on “Environment and the Natural World.” Opening the daylong session, the Gyalwang Karmapa addressed a packed hall of hundreds of delegates gathered from 32 countries around the world. He spoke on the underlying causes that have brought us to what he describes as a ‘critical juncture’ in the degradation of our natural environment. Among those causes, His Holiness focused on a virtual “religion of consumerism” and a persistent egocentrism that has led to an unhealthy relationship between human beings and their environment. Applying Buddhist principles of interdependence, compassion, and no-self, the Gyalwang Karmapa outlined a Buddhist response to the environmental challenge facing the world today.
His Holiness spoke strongly against the consumer culture that has overtaken our global society. He acknowledged that world religions are in agreement that material prosperity does not translate into real happiness and wellbeing. Yet he went on to say that religious leaders have a responsibility to do more to open their followers’ eyes to the failure of consumerism to bring lasting happiness.
We appear to be in a dangerous state of denial about the consequences of our actions on the environment, the Gyalwang Karmapa stated. “The essential problem,” he said, “lies in the way we conceive of ourselves in relation to others, including the environment. We feel we are separate individuals, but in fact nothing exists independently.”
“Former generations may conceivably be excused for the harmful consequences of their actions,” His Holiness the Karmapa said. “But our generation cannot, as we have access to an abundance of information on the environmental impact of our current lifestyle.” He continued, “Our task now is to turn information into an awareness that we feel in our hearts, and that can inspire us to live according to environmentally wise and compassionate principles.”
His Holiness called on the audience to interact with the natural world in such a way that they cultivate and extend a mandala of love and compassion, based on the model of the relationship between mother and child.
The 25th year anniversary edition of the distinguished scientific journal, Conservation Biology, carries an article by His Holiness the 17th Karmapa. Titled “Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness”, the article lays out His Holiness’ personal reasons for becoming an environmentalist, his masterful explanation of the overlap between Buddhist philosophy and environmental ideology, and his calls to action to protect the environment. His Holiness was personally requested by the editors of the journal to contribute to this 25th Year edition and asked to write a piece from his own perspective that would provide a spiritual basis for environmental action and a personal narrative that could inspire the scientific community.
Conservation Biology is the most influential and frequently cited journal in its field. The journal publishes groundbreaking papers and is instrumental in defining the key issues contributing to the science and practice of conserving Earth’s biological diversity. The 25th year anniversary edition of the journal will be out in December of 2011. The article is available online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01765.x/full. It can also be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here: Karmapa.ConservationBiology.
Gyalwang Karmapa addresses the Mind and Life Conference. October 20,2011- Dharamsala.
His Holiness Karmapa attended the 23rd Mind and Life conference from October 17-20 and gave a short address to the conference. He began by explaining the motivating factors in the development of his own concern and action for environmental protection.
He spoke of two things which had influenced him deeply. First, he attended an environmental conference which transformed his view of everyday things such as water and trees, parts of the natural landscape, which are often naively regarded as separate and outside ourselves. He realised how much they are intimately connected with our survival and well-being on earth.
Secondly, born and raised in a nomad family in an isolated region of Tibet, as a child his day-to-day life was very close to nature. Surrounded by snow mountains, wild open spaces, greenery, and an abundance of wild life, from an early age he gained a feeling of closeness with nature, and an affection and appreciation of the value of the environment. Indeed, he reflected, one of the problems in contemporary society might be that people in cities are so separated from nature and find it difficult to feel close or appreciate its beauty.
He then discussed the connections between environmental protection and Buddhism. The Buddhist philosophy which supports environmental protection needs to be translated into action. The ideal which underpins Mahayana Buddhism is the aspiration to help and benefit as many sentient beings as possible, and for anyone who believes in that ideal, environmental protection is immediately relevant because the environment is the basis for the survival and well-being of all the sentient beings for whose welfare we are working. By protecting the environment we are indirectly serving the needs and welfare of all these other sentient beings who depend upon the health of the environment in which they live.
Furthermore, he argued, protecting the environment provides Buddhist practitioners with one of the best opportunities to put that ideal of serving the needs of sentient beings into practice. So Buddhist practitioners should engage in environmental protection with great joy. He referred to the way in which this view is reflected in Buddhist texts such as Shantideva’s “The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” , which contains the aspiration to serve the needs of sentient beings as everyday resources such as water, trees, and even space. In reality we cannot become these things, he said, but we can protect them. Thus, by taking care of the environment, we are fulfilling the aspiration of bodhisattvas. However, it is not always easy to convince people. Gyalwang Karmapa mentioned his own experiences at two conferences on environmental protection which he had organised. During the first conference there was much discussion on biodiversity, and some monks protested against protecting tigers because tigers are killers who hunt deer and other animals. Those monks could not see the value of preserving tigers! At the second conference Gyalwang Karmapa decided to tackle this issue. First, he reminded the monks of the Jataka tale in which during a previous lifetime, the Buddha-to-be, sacrificed his life for the benefit of a tigress. Then he explained the science – the role predators play in the foodchain of maintaining balance in an ecosystem, and finally he suggested that, using the monks’ logic, human beings are much more dangerous than tigers. Tigers only kill what they need in order to eat and stay alive, but humans kill everything! So it’s human beings who should be eliminated not tigers!
His Holiness then moved on to argue the necessity for a fundamental change in the way human beings in the twenty-first century view the world, and suggested that the Buddhist views of non-inherent self, interdependence and emptiness had great relevance here. From the Buddhist perspective the root cause of the environmental degradation the world faces now is ignorance and self-centredness. Naively, we think of “I”, “me” and “mine” , conceiving it as autonomous and independent, but if we carefully consider all the things we need in order to live, such as clothing and food, even the oxygen we breathe, we realise that our very survival depends on factors outside ourselves. Hence, we can come to appreciate our fundamental interdependence. This understanding is crucial if we want people to change their perspective, he suggested. If, on the other hand, we are trapped in the prison of “I” and “mine” we fail to realise this interconnectedness, and cannot see the connection between the well-being of someone far away and our own well-being. We need to move out of that prison and relate to the world in the way His Holiness the Dalai Lama refers to as seeing “the bigger picture”. This fundamental change in the way we see the world is crucial.
Gyalwang Karmapa compared the twenty-first century viewpoint to someone looking at a beautiful tree. We admire all the parts that we can see – the branches and the foliage – but we don’t notice the roots which are diseased and rotten. In the same way, we admire all the advances in technology, but we don’t see the environmental degradation. From watching televison news, it seemed to him that many of the world leaders are obsessed with only two things – the economy and politics – and beyond that nobody seems to be paying attention to the fundamental questions of human survival and the well-being of the environment, which is the basis of our survival. Yet, if the basic conditions for our survival are lost, there will be no politics or economics!
In the short question and answer session which followed, His Holiness joked how once upon a time, when living in Tibet, he had been a voracious meat-eater. However, in India he became a vegetarian, having watched several documentaries which showed the suffering of animals being hunted or being slaughtered in industrialised meat production. He was very distressed by both their suffering and by the way in which the people involved showed complete disregard for the animals as sentient beings. It was his personal aspiration that throughout his future lives he would be able to maintain the vegetarian view. During the Kagyu Monlam, thinking that he should speak about the importance of vegetarianism, he suggested several options for people to reduce their meat consumption, and was amazed to see how many people opted to give up meat completely. He explained that his approach in talking about vegetarianism has never been to impose it but always to relate it to the cultural context of the people he is speaking to, so that it becomes of direct relevance to the aspirations of the individual or the community. In addition, he encourages people to find their own most compelling reason for the change.
With reference to environmental degradation on the Tibetan plateau, Gyalwang Karmapa suggested that this issue is of such world-wide importance that it should be separated from other political issues concerning Tibet and the Tibetans – issues such as human rights, the preservation of the culture, freedom of religion and the right of a people to survive. Tibet, the “Third Pole”, was not only the source of most of the major rivers in Asia but also affected climate patterns, so whatever happened environmentally in the Himalayan region had consequences for the lives of billions of people. For this reason, His Holiness stated, the importance of protecting the environment in Tibet needed to be emphasised much more, and scientists should be taking a leading role in this by making their research public.
You can watch the video by clicking here.
Here some photos of Khoryug Activity done last month from bokar Shedra, South India.
Photos of Nyede Rabtenling Monastery in Bhutan. The monastery has done clean up in nearby areas as part of Khoryug Activity.
Khoryug Activities by Namgyal High School
8th July 2011 in Nepal
Late Mr Wangdu Phutsok, the director of Namgyal High School requested Mr Padma Wangyal to take of care of environmental cause in the school in 2009. all of sudden passing away the of late Director caused much delay to carry activities in the school.
On the 8th of July just 2 days after HH Dalai Lamas Birthday. We organised a tree planting action in the Gokhnna Mountain Resort Area which is supported local authorites
and political congress party.
Mr Padma Wangyal, Khoryug Nursery in Boudha has provieded 108 Arura Trees (Amla in Napali), all the required facilities and Instruments. Namgyal High School has provided the manpower of 75 Students from eco club of the school.
Arura is a medicinal plant in tibetan medicine as well a symbol of the medicine buddha.
In India and Nepal this plant is popular as Amla in Ayuvenda Medicine. This Tree has very long root which go deep down under earth which is good against erosion and landslides.
Around 3 Olock local Nepal time all the students gather around the designated area at Gokhana Resort. A large sign Board has erected in the memory of late Namgyal High School, Director Mr Wangdu Phuntsok.
Invited Gaste of Honour were Wife of late Director Cheme Gonsar, her Son and daughter and the new director of the Namgyal High School. There was no local Media at the function but the Voice of America and tibetan Media have reported over our activities.
If you ask why we plant trees?
HH Gyalwang Karmapas has provided us 108 Points to protect our planet earth. We are trying to translate some of them into action.
if you ask how many more trees will be planted?
We have decided to go step by step which mean 2nd step is 500 trees, 3rd step is 1000 and 4th step is 2000 trees.
(HH Dalai Lama told Mr Padma Wangyal once personaly that if you plant 1000 to 2000 trees. You dont need to do long life prayer for your Lama. During 2007 Kagyu Monlam HH Gyalwang Karmapa told that if you plant 1000 to 2000 trees. You dont need to do Guru Yoga)
These statements are guiding lines and principle behind our activities. We also try to inspiere young people to do more for environmental protection and raise public interest for this cause.
Khoryug Day
5th June 2011 in Namo Budha
Khoryug Nursery has provided 200 Trees for this ocassion for HH Gyalwang Karmapas 26th Birthday.
