Athang Rukha, Wangdue, 23 December 2022.
Tshe Wang is a Buddhist religious ceremony whereby a lama confers a life empowerment blessing to disciples and devotees. Literally translated as “life confidence”, Tshe Wang ensures the recipient to be healthy and confident to lead a life towards self realization and of service to all sentient beings.

I had requested His Holiness Gangteng Trulku Rimpoche to confer a Tshe Wang to each and every person in the Rukha, on the last day, so that no one gets back to being what they were before I arrived in the valley in 2007. Meaning in abject poverty.

Rimpoche smiled, perhaps amused by another wierd request from me. 😂😂😂

Over the last few years I have also been reminding the people of Rukha that it is difficult to prosper but it is very easy perish, and destroy one’s hard work of many years and decades in an instant.

Furthermore, the village of Rukha has a history of vanishing. Between 1931 and 1933, a terrible epidemic wiped out the original inhabitants. The village remained desolated till all the land were granted to the Oleps by His Majesty the Fourth King in 1982. Until then the Oleps were forest dwellers practicing hunting and shifting cultivation – a practice that is locally known as tseri.

The presence and the blessings of a high lama is believed to deter any such terrible epidemic to occur again.

His Holiness not only agreed to bless them individually but even offered more. “Let me add Ta Cha Chung Sum Wang, since these people are farmers and have to disturb the earth and the environment,” Rimpoche said.

Ta Chha Chung Sum, which stand for Tandrin (Hayagriva in Sanskrit), Chhana Dorje (Vajrapani), and Jachung (Garuda). Their powers are believed to help the humans to ward off all negative forces from the nature and the supernatural. If this was the case then I thought the Ta Cha Chung Sum would also be useful to the Dessung boys and girls who have just started to work on a fishery project at the mouth of Harachu Valley. We invited them too for the blessing.

Having blessed the land with the sacred dances (chham) and having paid gratitide and 108,000 Offerings to the Divine (tshobum), the final day was a day of mass blessings by His Holiness Gangtey Rimpoche, and by the young Thuksey Yangsey – which is historic first in the valley, and which I am afraid may be difficult to make it happen again.

When I offered the Kusung Mendrel to thank the two Rimpoches for their blessings, His Holiness pulled out something from a bag and placed it on my head.

“This is most sacred phurba (ritual dagger) I have.” Rimpoche added.

As I received the blessing, I wished that the people of Rukha valley remain prosperous and never return to the state of poverty and destitutes, and that each and every person gathered here achieve realisation and work towards the benefits of all sentient beings.

And that our country remain the land of the peaceful dragon.

😌😌😌