Fall Festival 2019

Day 4

A profound transmission in an exquisite Temple

"Future lives are not a Buddhist belief. They are not imagination. Future lives are the truth."

Feature

"All our worries, our stress, our disappointments, our discouragements come from exaggerating the importance of this one short life."

With these words, today Gen-la Dekyong introduced an essential explanation and blessing transmission of the Introduction to The Mirror of Dharma with Additions.

Sharing sublime personal advice from Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche on how to take the meaning of precious Dharma to heart, she encouraged us to contemplate deeply three questions that Venerable Geshe-la asks:

Why do we need to practice Buddha's teachings?
Why do I need to be concerned for my future lives?
Why do we need permanent liberation from suffering?

My First Festival

Joshua

South Carolina, USA

“For me, practicing Kadampa Buddhism started off as a way to de-stress and take my mind off my studies, but it’s become more personal than that. At this festival I’ve been learning that we don’t need to say much to our friends and family about Dharma, we just need to be a good example. I also really hadn’t appreciated until the empowerment today how important faith in the Teachers and teachings is. You have to observe that faith works through your own experience, and then it can take you further.”

Gen-la concluded with a powerful explanation of how we can gain genuine inner experience of Kadam Dharma, rather than just intellectual understanding, by following the three essential steps Venerable Geshe-la reveals in The Mirror of Dharma:

Receive the blessings of the transmission of the book
Continually maintain strong faith in both the teaching and the Teachers
Sincerely practice the actual training, which is training in contemplation and training in meditation

There was such a joyful atmosphere during the teachings, with everyone sharing a sense of great good fortune to be listening to this sublime transmission from the very heart of the Venerable Spiritual Guide in such a magnificent Temple.

This Festival is so special!

5 Minutes of wisdom

Contemplating until it touches our heart

What people are saying

Dan Xu

London/South China

“I read Mirror of Dharma before I came so I could make the most of these teachings. So far, the most important thing I have taken from the teachings has been hearing about the difference between empty and emptiness. These teachings are so profound.”

Margarita

Spain

“These teachings are fantastic! The instructions are so clear. In my heart I felt very uplifted and happy during the transmission.”

Jason

England

It is through Geshe-la's kindness that we have the teachings, the temple, the Sangha - everything comes from his vision. The thing that stood out most for me was Gen-la Dekyong's teaching about rejoicing and how important it is to rejoice. It's easy to do, and we can do it anywhere!"