Earlier this month, Waterkeeper Alliance’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Sharon Khan, and I traveled to remote Ladakh, India in the northern reaches of this beautiful and expansive country. Our trip coincided with the festival of Naropa, a Buddhist celebration that occurs once every 12 years in the year of the Monkey. For this event, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa – leader of the Drukpa Buddhist lineage – unveils the six sacred bone ornaments of Naropa – a transformative, historic Buddhist figure. Hundreds of thousands of Buddhists pilgrimage from Bhutan, Nepal, India, and other parts of the world for this special event, and others would witness it via live stream. As leader of the Drukpa lineage, His Holiness would be leading the event with teachings and meditation. With an event of this size, his message would resonate far and wide.
When we first met His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa in 2013, we knew right away that he was different from most leaders. We understood that like other religious leaders, His Holiness taught the principles of Buddhism to his followers; however, His Holiness stood out because of his steadfast belief that taking action to make the world better is the most important thing one can do in pursuing one’s path. In particular, His Holiness emphasizes action in pursuit of natural resource protection and gender equality and he has done so at great personal risk.
For more than 20 years, His Holiness has risked his reputation, position, welfare and even his life to empower women and enact social change in one of the most markedly patriarchal regions in the world – the Himalayas. In pursuit of this goal, His Holiness activates the Drukpa nuns in endeavors to educate Himalayan communities about pollution, clean water, and clean air; this includes cycling to the Naropa event with nuns for 4,000 km from Kathmandou to Ladakh through earthquakes, conflict zones, and other travails while distributing a message of clean water and natural resource protection. After the festival, the nuns and others continue with a 10-day “say no to plastic bags” eco-journey.
His Holiness’ spiritual heirs, like His Eminence Gyalwa Dokhampa, share his zest for taking action and emphasize the need for individuals to take action. Their calls for action were on full display at Naropa, as much of the festival schedule employed content revolving around finding some action that you can do to help foster a healthy planet. We were happy to have time to meet with both His Holiness and His Eminence to further discuss our partnership with the shared vision of protecting the Himalayas in order to ensure clean and abundant water for nearly half of the world’s population. Although Buddhists generally do not fish, we had an auspicious moment when we learned that Naropa’s teacher, Tilopa, was a fisherman, just like the founders of the Waterkeeper movement.
We all are thrilled to continue to create a network of trained, community-based Waterkeepers throughout the region. These Waterkeepers – nuns, monks, youth leaders and other advocates – will engage in outreach, education, and advocacy to deal with climate change and water pollution. For this trip, we were able to bring Padma Tashi, our Himalayan Glacier Waterkeeper and the nascent network of Waterkeepers around Ladakh additional monitoring equipment to help them determine the quality of the community’s drinking water and to develop baseline data from which to measure their success going forward.
We are incredibly grateful to His Holiness, His Eminence, the Live to Love Foundation, and all of our Himalayan friends for this partnership to protect Himalayan waters. Their ability to inspire so many to act for our planet gives hope to a brighter future for humanity. We hope more will pay heed to their call to practice mindful living, take action, and disconnect from screens and buttons more to connect with and advocate for our natural surroundings.