Speaking to a Bhutanese audience Rinpoche stated: "your sexual orientation has nothing to do with understanding or not understanding the truth. You could be gay, you could be lesbian, you could be straight, we never know which one will get enlightened first."

He concluded his speech: "Time is changing, and we should be really tolerant, I mean tolerant is even I mean… You should not be tolerating this, actually. You should be respecting it. Tolerance is not a good thing. If you are tolerating this, it means that you think it’s something wrong that you will tolerate. But you have to go beyond that. You have to actually respect this one." Watch his statements here.