End 2008, during our tour in New Zealand, Celestial Master Zhang personally descended in New Zealand, extending His invitation to us to visit Sichuan, asking me to bless the pitiful sentient beings there and free them from their collective karma. On 12 May 2008, Sichuan experienced a disastrous earth quake – Wen Chuan Earth Quake (8 richter scale).
Early 2009, the relationship between Beijing and H.H Dalai Lama has degraded further. When my enthronement ceremony at Horthan Monastery in Qinghai looked set to be delayed further, Danzen Daji Rinpoche from the Gelong Monastery in Shiqu, Sichuan, invited me to the opening ceremony of his newly restored monastery. So, again, 22 of us set off for the tour in a hurry. From 17 to 29 Jul 2009, we created a new chapter in our X-traordinary Tours by visiting the Tibetan Highland of Sichuan/Qinghai.
When we were planning the tour with our friend in Chengdu, Zen (our tour guide of our Chengdu Tour in 2006), a Dharma Sister of ours, who was an epidemic specialist from our neighboring country, sent us an email advising us to cancel our plan. Reason being, the world was facing a H1N1 pandemic. People worldwide was worried and felt lost. Kan asked me for my opinion. I told her, every X-traordinary Tour was full of challenges but they were all finally resolved through the blessings of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and the Dharma Protectors.
Zhou, a Dharma Sister from Shandong, China, decided to join us in the last minute. She had to take a different flight, Air China, as our flight, SilkAir, was already fully booked. She arrived in Chengdu 12 hours before we did.
When our flight was approaching Chengdu, I took my rosary out and started praying to Grand Master, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, invoking their blessing for Chengdu. At the time, Dharma Brother Hong from Australia who was on the same flight, ‘saw’ Jade Pond Golden Mother and Acho Rinpoche descended from space, blessing Sichuan by showering the rain of nectar, cleansing Sichuan. They were surrounded by many female deities who were showering flowers around them. Later, our flight pierced through the layers of rain clouds, finally landing safely at the Chengdu Airport.
When I just stepped out of the airport, I felt the cool and refreshing air outdoors after the rain, gently caressing my face. Zhou came to the airport to meet us. She told me that she just found out that Chengdu had already suffered from draught for several months, with a high temperature of 32ºC. It was hot and humid. However, just 2 hours ago, there was suddenly a heavy downpour which lowered the temperature to 22ºC. It happened just like other X-traordinary Tours - the weather would just change unexpectedly. This time, Zhou had her first hand experience in witnessing a sudden change of weather. She had earlier changed to a pair of shorts before coming to the airport in view of the hot weather.
So, the 22 of us ended up walking pass Mount Qing Chen, Dan Ba Stone Houses, Jia Ju Tibetan Villages, Natural Garden, Dao Fu Residential Houses, Unishya White Stupa, Mani Piles, Vast Grassland, Origin of Yellow River, Sacred Qing Hai Lake, Taer Monastery etc. The whole journey spanned over 2,000 km in distance. We also stayed at high altitude in the Highland City of Shi Qu, at 4,200m above sea level, and crossing over a 4,824m point above sea level at Mount Ba Ye Ge La. This time, high altitude syndromes such as panting, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, fever etc became one of the main themes of our tour.
The most unbelievable story happened on Dharma Sister Bing. She was the last to join due to some earlier work commitment issues. And our itinerary kept changing all the time. When our coach finally entered Xie Wu, a town in Qing Hai Province, we stopped by a small restaurant for lunch. Bing came forward and asked me if she lived here in her past life because every street and house in the town looked so familiar to her! Although she had never set foot in Qinghai, this place kept appearing in her dreams. Although the house had been renovated, it remained vivid in her memory. With my blessing, she found her great grandson from her past life, Sonam Lama, a Buddhist monk of the Sakya. The touching moments of a reunion crossing over two different lifetimes could only be truly felt and understood by the individuals involved. Bing knew that the reunion was being arranged by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, or she would not have such paranormal experience. “Although I had never set foot in Qinghai, Qinghai came to me in my dream every night… This was my most favorite song entitled Dreaming of Qinghai Every Night. The lyrics of this song kept ringing in my mind…..
The most interesting character of this tour was A Peng. He was my school mate in my secondary school. We reunited sometime back at our alumni. He came to know about our plan for the tour and he wanted to join us. In Tian Quan, there was a landslide blocking our road ahead. So, we decided to just stop somewhere nearby for our dinner, while waiting for the road to be cleared. We took pictures around the area and caught the images of the amazing round lights filling the sky on our cameras - the Mandala Lights. At first, A Peng did not manage to capture those lights with his expensive camera when others did. He was very curious about such a phenomenon. Later he told me, “Don’t be superstitious! Those are just reflections from the dusts in the sky.” I only smiled to him and continued to walk into the small restaurant nearby. Strangely, the “dusts” miraculously disappeared after I stepped into the restaurant. A Peng asked me to go out of the shop for photo taking again. This time, the “dusts” reappeared. So, the “dusts” seemed to be spiritual. The “dusts” seemed to be surrounding me during the whole photo taking session. After studying it for a long time, A Peng finally came to me and said, “A Leng, I’m sorry! I think those are not dusts but an unbelievable paranormal phenomenon.” At a later stage when we reached the Dzogchen Monastery, one of the six main monasteries of the Nyingma, A Peng captured more of such Mandala Lights with his camera. He finally firmly believed that those are not “dusts”. Another Dharma Brother Jin even captured the Mandala Lights in motion in Ganzhi Town, in broad daylight.
Jin also joined us for the first time. He was a disciple of Venerable Jing Kong. He read a few of our books on X-traordinary Tours but was doubtful about the stories. He had been to Tibet, Qinghai Lake, Taer Monastery, the Silk Road, the Vast Grassland in the past. But he found those places too commercialized and was losing his interest in travelling. However, this time, he found this tour truly memorable. He shared his feelings with many people after the tour, “This tour was truly unusual! Every thing that I saw, heard and felt during the tour will change the rest of my life!” Besides, he also saw the changes in A Peng, Zen and Ben - changes in their outlook of life and finding their long lost childhood innocence.
Ben was the assistant to Zen. He was not very close to us at the beginning of the tour but we became closer each day. Soon after, he even started sharing our books on the Paranormal Tours with almost everyone he met during the tour. Due to his good efforts, a female waitress at a restaurant where we had our lunch near Qinghai Lake came to me for blessing; and Shi, our tour guide at Taer Monastery, came to me for blessing by asking me to touch her head.
How unusual was it? How inconceivable was it? How did one change from a non-believer to a strong believer? How did one change spiritually and physically? It was the blessing of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and the Dharma Protectors. It had nothing to do with Acho! May I ask you, the x-traorinary readers, to join us, a group of True Buddha practitioners, for this X-traordinary Tour of Tibetan Highland in Sichuan!
Lotu Robe (Acho)
6 Aug 2009
More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/BuddhaEyeAlbum/China2009#
