After that episode of making an aspiration before the photograph of His Holiness Sakya Gongma Trichen Rinpoche (HHSGTR), life moved on. I completely forgot about the Tibetan guru with the rather unusual hairstyle.

I continued my studies and, like every able-bodied male Singaporean, I was then conscripted to serve National Service in the Singapore Armed Forces after my A-level examination.

For the next two and a half years, army life became my reality.

Until then, I had spent almost eighteen years as a student, sheltered from much of life’s adversity by my parents. Suddenly, I found myself sleeping in a bunk with complete strangers, being shouted at by people I had never met, enduring profanity hurled directly at my face, and receiving punishments for things I sometimes didn’t even understand.

It was quite a shock.

Fortunately, outside of military training, there was also quite a lot of waiting and free time. I used much of that time reading Buddhist books and listening to Dharma talks recorded on cassette tapes. I began reciting various Buddhist mantras, especially the Great Compassion Mantra in the Sanskrit version I had learned, as well as the Mahācakra Vajri mantra.

Looking back, I think those practices made army life considerably more bearable. The training itself was tough, but I had something inward to turn to whenever I needed a refuge. Whenever I had a break, I would often find myself quietly reciting a mantra.

And then there were the strange little incidents that happened during those years.

During basic military training, we spent a few months training on a military island. Whenever a thunderstorm appeared, training had to be suspended for safety reasons. I found myself praying for rain very frequently. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but it seems like my prayers were frequently answered. That alone would have been quite a blessing for a bunch of exhausted recruits.

But then, as if the weather wasn’t enough, a wild elephant somehow appeared on the military island!

Naturally, military training was suspended while the authorities dealt with the elephant.

For us recruits, this meant that one particularly tough military manoeuvre we were supposed to endure simply never happened.

Was it coincidence? Of course it could have been.

But I remember thinking, Perhaps Avalokitesvara is looking after us.

I had been chanting the Great Compassion Mantra fervently, sometimes whenever I had even a few spare minutes. So part of me couldn’t help wondering whether these unexpected interruptions were little answers to my prayers.

Perhaps it was nothing more than coincidence.

But when you’re young and going through a difficult time, you sometimes find encouragement in the smallest things.

My Buddhist practice also began attracting the curiosity of some of my army friends.

The Great Compassion Mantra is a rather long dhāraṇī, and I was trying desperately to memorise the Sanskrit syllables. I wrote the Romanised Sanskrit version on a piece of paper so that I could study it wherever I went.

But I also did something a little more elaborate on the reverse side.

I had written the Sanskrit syllables one by one, starting from the centre of the paper and moving clockwise. Slowly, syllable by syllable, the characters formed the shape of a Dharma wheel.

When it was finished, it looked rather mysterious and impressive.

Naturally, my army friends became curious about the strange piece of paper I was always carrying around—and even more curious about what I was constantly chanting under my breath whenever we had a break.

The truth was considerably less mysterious.

I was simply trying very hard to memorise a very long mantra.

Eventually, some of my friends became interested and started chanting together with me. I was delighted. Buddhism had become something we could practise together, even in the middle of army life.

So I made two more copies of the mantra wheel and gave them to my army friends.

That was when Mr. Sim gave me a lesson I never forgot.

He told me that I was not spiritually qualified to give such an object to someone else. It was not simply a piece of paper with Sanskrit written on it. It carried sacred significance, and I had no authority to bestow something like that upon another person.

I was rather sheepish.

I had thought I was simply sharing something meaningful with my friends.

So I had to go back to my army buddies and awkwardly explain that my guru did not want me giving the mantra papers away, and ask them to return them to me.

They were kind enough to do so.

I suspect, however, that at least one of them may have been hiding a smirk.

It was a small but important lesson. My enthusiasm was genuine, but I was still very much a beginner, learning that Buddhist practice was not simply about collecting mantras and passing them around. There were traditions, transmissions and responsibilities that I did not yet understand.

At that point, I had still not encountered the Sakya tradition. I was more deeply inspired by the life of Milarepa and was becoming increasingly interested in Tibetan Buddhism.

Then, through a stroke of chance—or perhaps something more than chance—my first Vajrayana empowerment turned out to be for Vajrapani.

The story is rather hilarious.

One evening during a night off from army camp, my buddy and I went to receive what we thought was the empowerment for Vajrasattva.

We were completely new to Tibetan Buddhism. Somehow, we had noticed the word Vajra in both Vajrapani and Vajrasattva and managed to confuse the two.

At the time, we had heard that Vajrasattva practice was an important preliminary practice, and we were particularly keen to receive it.

So when the empowerment began, we closed our eyes and started visualising what we thought was Vajrasattva.

Then the Karma Kagyu Rinpoche began describing the deity. He was blue in colour.

There were fangs.

There was fire.

This did not quite match the peaceful, white figure I had been expecting.

I remember thinking:

Wait a minute. Something isn’t right.

It slowly dawned on us that we had somehow walked into the wrong empowerment.

But by then, I thought:

Well, might as well just do it.

And so my first empowerment in Tibetan Buddhism was not the peaceful Vajrasattva, but the wrathful Vajrapani.

I was around twenty years old.

And strangely enough, this accidental encounter with Vajrapani became part of my path.

I continued reciting the Vajrapani mantra alongside the various mantras I had already learned from the Chinese Mahayana tradition. The practice continued even after I moved house and relocated to Pasir Ris, in eastern Singapore.

My new neighbour happened to be a Buddhist too. One day, she invited a Karma Kagyu Rinpoche to bless her home. Since our apartment was on the same floor, we tagged along. After blessing her house, Rinpoche came over to bless ours as well.

This was the first time a monk had ever come to our family home, and we had no idea what we were supposed to do. In the Chinese Buddhist custom I was familiar with, it was customary to make a small monetary offering to a monk after a religious service.

Unfortunately, my family was not particularly well-off, and my mother was extremely flustered.

Of course, making a monetary offering was not a requirement. But social custom and expectation weighed heavily on her mind.

That day, I had invited some of my army friends—the same friends who had practised chanting with me in camp—to join us for the house blessing. While I was having a wonderful time with my friends, enjoying the presence of Rinpoche and the novelty of having a Tibetan lama in our home, my mother was quietly at her wits’ end.

She didn’t even have ten dollars in her purse.

While we were talking with Rinpoche, she slipped away into her room and began digging through her piggy bank, desperately trying to find ten dollars to make an offering.

Eventually, she managed to come up with the money.

And then something rather remarkable happened.

That very same week, my parents won the lottery.

The prize wasn’t enormous, but it came at a time when our family was going through a financially difficult period. The money helped tide us over and gave us some much-needed breathing room.

Looking back, that little episode left a deep impression on me.

Was it merely coincidence?

Perhaps.

But as a young Buddhist, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something more to it. My mother had been so anxious about making an offering, and somehow, within the same week, help arrived when our family needed it.

I don’t claim that every fortunate event is a miracle, nor that every thunderstorm is an answer to a mantra. And certainly, I am not suggesting that gambling is a solution to financial difficulties!

But these little incidents gave me hope.

They made me feel that perhaps the world was not quite as empty of unseen kindness as it sometimes appeared. Perhaps the devas really are there. Perhaps, when we sincerely practise and call upon the Triple Gem, there are beings we cannot see who are also quietly looking out for us.

I was still young and had much to learn.

But these experiences gave me something precious: the feeling that I was not entirely alone on the path.

To be continued…

May all be well and happy.