Summer Festival 2024 ~ Day 3

NKT-IKBU International

Summer Festival 2024

Festival Diaries

Settling into Festival life

Day 3 of the Festival dawns and by now everyone is beginning to settle into Festival life: enjoying a change of pace, letting go of ordinary life, falling in to a delightful rhythm of meditation, attending teachings, volunteering, meal times and evening puja.

Day 3 ~ It's a Different Approach to life

Each day we meet and interact with wonderful people from around the world dedicated to following the Kadampa spiritual path. It is clear to see why Venerable Geshe-la feels the Festivals are so important for our International Kadampa Buddhist Union. They bring us together, aligning us physically as we live and work together and giving us a shared spiritual experience.

Getting into the driver's seat of your life! ~ Gen-la Dekyong

Today there was a lovely structure to the teachings. In the morning we received the transmission of the original teachings given by Venerable Geshe-la in Portugal and in the afternoon Gen-la Dekyong gave commentary and encouragement based on that teaching. Today we are looking at three main questions posed by Geshe-la and the conclusions and meditation objects they lead us to.

Why we need to practice Buddha’s teachings.
Why we need to be concerned for our future lives.
Why we need permanent liberation from suffering.

These three questions are addressed with profound logical reasoning. This teaching later appeared in the introduction of the book, The Mirror of Dharma with Additions.

Gen-la helps us to really look in the mirror of the teachings personally, and ask ourselves those questions deeply and practically. She asks us if we are finding happiness in Dharma - which is wisdom - or searching for happiness in wrong objects - which is ignorance.