Rinpoche – Behind the Scenes 活佛背后的故事

Tsem Rinpoche taking a rest while bying fishes

Two days ago, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche visited a pet shop in Kuala Lumpur to buy some fishes for his aquariums, the shop sells a large variety of tropical fishes, but one particularly disturbing scenario is how they packaged the Betta fish (fighting fish), each fish was kept in a small plastic bag where the fish can barely turn around and is living in their own waste, and they were kept like that for weeks and months until somebody bought them, and and even after being bought, most likely they will still be kept in a tiny jam bottle, which is a common practice among “fish-lovers” here. Imagine the suffering of the fishes…
 
So Tsem Rinpoche instructed his students to buy all the fishes in the plastic bags (more than 50 of them) and release them in the lake. Rinpoche is always very sensitive to the sufferings of sentient beings, no matter how small and insignificant they are.
 
One very consistent compassionate act of Rinpoche can always be observed during pet shopping session like this: When choosing which fish to buy, the shopkeeper will recommend some over the others and said “Don’t buy this one, this one is not so beautiful, and also quite sick, buy the other one over there which is more beautiful and healthy”, and Rinpoche would point to the not-so-beautiful and sickly one and said “I want this one, this is exactly why I want it“.
 

两天前詹杜固仁波切去吉隆坡市里的一家观赏鱼店买鱼，鱼店里有很多种类的热带鱼，但有一个令人心里不舒服的现象就是鱼店把打架鱼（又称斗鱼）装进一小包一小包的塑料袋里挂着来卖，可怜的鱼儿连转个身都难，而且还不知已经在自己的排泄物里头呆上了多长的时间，甚至有可能几个月以上，它们的痛苦真的是难以想像。于是仁波切便吩咐他的弟子们把全部鱼儿都买下来（超过50条），然后带到湖里放生。仁波切一直都对众生的痛苦很敏感，哪怕它们是多么的渺小和微不足道。

有一种经常发生的情景足以让人见识到仁波切和凡人的差别：当仁波切去鱼店买鱼的时候，热心的店员总会向仁波切推荐道“别买这一只，又丑又病的，那边那一只更美丽更健康，就买它吧。”于是仁波切就会指着又丑又病的那一只，然后向店员说“我就要这一只，这就是我要它的原因。”