In her teaching, Gen-la Dekyong referred to those of us on site as a ‘mini-festival’. And it is wonderful to see people again enjoying breakfast in the dining marquee, sitting by the pond taking in the morning sun, or going about their chores.

The Festival was introduced by Gen Kelsang Rigpa, Reident Teacher at KMC Los Angeles, the meditations were led by Gen Chokyi, Resident Teacher at KMC Bloomington and the retreat by Kadam Morten Clausen, National Spiritual Direcor of Eastern US. and Resident Teacher at KMC New York City.

During Gen-la Dekyong’s teachings we received a transmission of Venerable Geshe Kelsang’s teaching on the Heart Sutra given at the Festival in Portugal in 2013. It is ‘a practical commentary to the Heart Sutra and The New Heart of Wisdom’ and an ‘oral instruction directly from the Spiritual Guide’ through which we receive the transmission and lineage blessings of these extraordinary texts so that ‘you will have great confidence to start to practice yourself and teach the Heart Sutra and The New Heart of Wisdom to others’.

Receiving this oral instruction, delivered with all of Gen-la’s loving force, was truly a source of great rejoicing.

The teaching contained far too much to summarize here, but at its heart was a section on what Geshe-la called our ‘contradiction’: During our meditation on, for example, the emptiness of the body we develop a special understanding and feeling, but then after the meditation, during the meditation break, we forget everything. With this approach, it’s no wonder if we feel we aren’t making progress. Geshe-la said, it’s not that meditation on emptiness has no power, it’s that our meditation on emptiness isn’t qualified.

We were given strong encouragement on how to meditate on emptiness skillfully and then to continue our training during the meditation break so as to avoid this ‘contradiction’.

In truth, within this oral instruction, it felt like we were given a lifetime’s worth of practice. It was a wonderful reminder of Venerable Geshe-la’s exquisite skill as a Teacher and of Gen-la’s skill at transmitting Geshe-la’s teachings to us.