Live to Love

A warm day in the cold weather. London, February 2010

Live to Love — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:24:50 +0000

Today was a special Live to Love Sunday. We had three new members joining us – one was a lovely five year-old boy. He helped us through the whole day and brought joy to the group. His mother is one of the new members and kindly filmed the whole event. We met at 11am in North London to collect all the clothes that had been donated during the last month. We then drove to East London where the cooking took place; once again we made a beautiful stew with fresh vegetables and beans as well as baked potatoes. We also prepared individual bags for the homeless to take away, filled with bagels, cheese, biscuits, fruit and fruit juices. We then set off to meet the homeless to give them all the offerings. London is very cold at present and they were very happy to have hot food, tea, coffee and warm items of clothing, including sleeping bags and to share a warm and friendly moment with us. The atmosphere was very harmonious and joyous throughout the day.

With love,
L2L UK team

Feb Singapore Blood bank visit and Live to Love Walk

Live to Love — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:44:42 +0000

On Feb 20, a small group of us visited a Blood Bank to donate blood. For some of us it was the first or second time we were donating blood in our life. During the new year, it is meaningful to donate give the gift of life for the benefit of those in need. I think this will not be the last time we will be visiting the blood bank. Hopefully, on our next visit, we can gather a bigger group.

On Feb 21 Sun, we went for two hour walk at the Forest reserve again. The objective of the walk is to learn to appreciate nature and the environment. We are grateful to have a large forest reserve in the centre of Singapore, which is essentially a tiny island. It is a luxury for a city state to have this large patch of forest.

Tree Planting at Drukpa Dharmashri Butterworth, Malaysia, on 21st Feb 2010 (Sunday)

Live to Love — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:21:02 +0000

Due to Malaysian people are still celebrating the Chinese New Year , all the schools and higher institutions are still off for long stretch of holiday. For this month tree planting activities are carried out around our Drukpa Dharmashri Butterworth Centre . Twelves people are present today in tree planting activities and we are very lucky to have H.E. Lhamchog Rinpoche’s presence today. This is the second time we planted trees around the centre after the inception of Live To Love Activities more than two years ago.

In fact , today is a pleasant day with bright sun and we commenced tree planting at 8.30am and completed the activities at 10.00am. We planted a total of 5 Khaya trees and trimmed some of the branches of the big old trees that we planted previously as well as cleaning the drainage system here. We had tough job in digging hole thru the tar surface and compact soils.

At last but not the least , I would like to wish all the worlds’ Drukpa Members a very Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Losar (Tibetan).

Thanks and Best Regards.

CF.Tan / Michael Tan – 23/02/2010

Drukpa Dharmashri Butterworth,Malaysia

DRUKPA SAN SEBASTIAN (SPAIN) – LIVE TO LOVE 17 DE ENERO 2010

Live to Love — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:02:35 +0000

El pasado domingo volvimos a “nuestro río”, el Bidasoa, a terminar de limpiar una de sus orillas; En esta ocasión nos reunimos un grupo más numeroso que el habitual, así que el trabajo fue más productivo y conseguimos recoger entre todos una importante cantidad de residuos, bidones metálicos, cristales y sobre todo plásticos de toda clase abandonados en lugares inverosímiles, enterrados entre la maleza o colgando de las ramas de los árboles. Como viene ocurriendo en estas jornadas, el tiempo se puso de nuestra parte y nos permitió hacer un descanso al aire libre hasta que, entre risas, cargamos con las bolsas de basura y las depositamos en los contenedores.

Fue una hermosa manera de aprovechar el día, en la naturaleza, haciendo una labor útil y disfrutando.

Live to Love Tahiti 6 February 2010 : Solidarity with the victims of the Hurricane TUBUAI

Live to Love — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:48:33 +0000

Last week, 2 archipelagos of the French Polynesia have been touched by a hurricane named OLI. This hurricane has gone very near from the islands of Bora Bora and of Tahiti ( Society islands), making materials damages relatively not too big. People have staid home (when construction was safe) or joined shelters. It is about 4000 persons who found refuges. About 300 houses have been destroyed on this archipelago, either by the wind or by water from the sea (waves of 6m high at least) or from the rivers.

Then OLI went more south and his path was straight on the Austral archipelago, a group of islands very far and isolated. The eye of the hurricane was very close to RAIVAVE and during the night of the 4 to 5 February, the eye was on TUBUAI. The wind was very strong, with gusts up to 260km/h and with a heavy swell of around 8m.
Due to the respect of security injunctions, the 2000 persons living on this island joined the shelters (churches, school, and gymnasium). One man was dead, drowned by a wave. Very few people were little injured. The material damages are important : no more drinking water, no electricity neither phone, the harbor and many parts of the road are destroyed, and around up to 200 houses are also destroyed or out of use according to the latest estimate.

Then OLI weakened and muted into a tropical tempest.

On Saturday, the official administrative organism (FDA) dealing with the archipelagos organized a collect for the inhabitants of TUBUAI. We brought them our contribution – clothes, food, products for the babies’ cares, cooking utensils. We made them the proposal to help the team and they accepted warmly. On Sunday from 8am, we joined the team to receive the goods donated, go through and pack them. Then all the goods have been loaded on a French military coastguard boat which was leaving Papeete at noon.
This boat should arrive at TUBUAI within 30hours.

Live to Love

Internet source for some photos

Live to Love Jan 2010 – Singapore heritage preservation on 22 Jan

Live to Love — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:41:52 +0000

For the first month of 2010, we have chosen the activity of heritage preservation and environment protection. We chose to help Poh Ern Shih temple with the pre-Chinese New Year spring cleaning. In Sep 09, it was at this temple that H.E. Khamtrul Rinpoche conducted his first teaching in Singapore that was open to public. It was also then that His Holiness gave instructions for the formation of Drukpa Singapore.

Poh Ern Shih was built out of compassion, right after the Second World War. It is located near to Kent Ridge hill, the site where the second Malay regiment made their last sacrificial stand against the Japanese soldiers during WW II . In the fierce battle, the entire regiment as well as many Malay and Chinese villagers were killed. This temple was built to by Lee Choon Seng, the first Chairman of OCBC Bank, to create positive energy for the benefit of all, including those that had suffered greatly in the war. It is thus a symbol of compassion and love and a reminder of the horrors of war.

Today, the temple has been rebuilt by the current President Mr Lee Boon Siong, the grandson of the founder. In addition to its significance as a precious reminder of peace, the temple has many old age and environmentally-friendly features (solar panels, airy architecture to avoid use of air conditioners, and natural light features) to encourage us to love our environment. On the temple grounds there remains a concrete piece of history – a gun base on which the British cannons were secured.

Because of the size of the temple, we only help to clean a part of the temple in the afternoon. We hope that through our effort we have played a small part in heritage preservation for future Singaporeans. We have attached two photos, a group photo of the volunteers and a photo of the temple taken by Khamtrul Rinpoche’s attendant in Sep 09.

Live to Love – Plouray Jan 17th

Live to Love — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:33:51 +0000

We were a small group of people motivated for this activity, some persons having come from very far away in order to participate in it and I really want to thank them for that. The day began with the dogs of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals which were very much longing to stretch their legs.

This time, it was necessary to leave separately as some dogs were not sociable. All the dogs were very excited to go out for a walk and that required us to go several times out with two and even three dogs for some of us. That took us almost two hours. Even if it is not always easy as the dogs pull out a lot, it is a real happiness to see them happy waging their tail.
Once again, we were really blessed with the weather as the day was very sunny and it was even possible to picnic on the beach.
During more than two hours, we inspected several beaches of neighbourhood to clean them of their waste. As the day was very beautiful, there were many persons to walk there and our activity was very much noticed. Some even stopped to ask us for more information about it and even to participate in it another time.
May we always be more people to participate in these altruistic activities which make us more confident and appreciate life more.

Live to Love!!!

News from France

Live to Love — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:15:59 +0000

Cada tercer domingo del mes, liberamos en el mar cangrejos, almejas, y anguilas. Esta vez, fuimos a limpiar la playa. Le explicamos a nuestra hija la importancia de amar y cuidar nuestra madre tierra, ya que ella nos provee de todo lo que necesitamos para vivir y ademas al limpiar la playa ayudamos a que los animales que viven en el mar no se coman el plastico que les puede causar enfermedades y hasta la muerte. Despues, con Su Santidad en nuestro corazon, limpiamos llenos de alegria.
Hervé Rigdzin y Cecilia Rinchen Wangmo

Hamburg 17 January 2010

Live to Love — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:23:18 +0000

We have practiced together and shared our joy of coming together.

Today it was very cold as we joined together and we met only a few of the homeless in the familiar places. Under the bridge where Mario is living, we only came across Willi in his tent, so we left our donations in the empty tents and we also did this in the other places.

Today was a special day filled with much simplicity, warmth and love.The pleasure of giving was absolutely in the foreground for everyone of us. This poem by Rainer-Maria Rilke gets most closely to the heart of the energy of the L2L Sunday.

Give thy beauty freely
without calculating or speaking.
Be silent. It will proclaim thy being for thee
and, in its thousand-fold sense,
at last find every soul.

In this spirit, very kind regards from the Hamburg Live to Love Team.

Jigme Ratna in action

Martina in talks with a Philippine woman and her little sweet daughter.
The host parents were very sad because the visa has expired and both of them have to leave, although they have a safe place here and are much loved.

Youth Research…

He has severe lymphodema. We have given him homeopathic remedies and encouraged him to see a doctor. Martina gave him a book which he was very happy about.

Latest from London

Live to Love — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:08:04 +0000

The London Group of Live to Love met on January 17th 2010 in the centre of the city, near Victoria train station to provide food, hot drinks, food packs and clothes to homeless in the area.

It was already dark when we arrived at 5.30pm, after having prepared the food. The evening was dry and clear, and even though the worst of the cold weather had past it was still really quite cold.

It wasn’t hard to feel compassion for the homeless huddled in the shop doorways facing potentially another night outside in freezing temperatures – despite the fact that many charity groups open extra temporary hostels during the bad weather.

We set up our table, offering teas and coffees, vegetable stew, and jacket potatoes with cheese. Initially there seemed to be very few people around, but after a few minutes, more and more people started appearing, including quite a few young people. Everybody was interested in getting a hot drink and most people were also happy to have some hot food. However, it seemed that the real interest was in the clothes we had to offer – there were some thick jumpers and body warmers etc. Quite a few people asked if we had sleeping bags or blankets – which unfortunately we didn’t have. Several people who came to us that evening also seemed to enjoy just having somebody to talk to and share their story with. It was touching how polite and grateful everybody was to us. I think from our side we felt grateful to have the chance to offer a little bit of help and goodwill.

Next time we aim to collect more sleeping bags and blankets to distribute, as well as offering hot food and drinks.