General Spiritual Director
Editors’ Picks – June – July 2025
Jul 13, 2025
MAY 23 - 28, 2025
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International Spring Festival 2025 diaries
INTRODUCTION
It's great to be back at the first Festival of the year!
All day people have been arriving at Manjushri Centre on buses, in cars, by taxi and on foot. As more and more people flow in, the feeling of Festival swells. Finally after weeks of preparation in all the different voluntary areas that enable the Festival to function as a whole, it is in full swing and the first Festival of the year is underway.
Day 1 ~ It's great to be back
It is six months since our last international Festival in Brazil. Once again we are at our Mother Center in the Lake District, with its crown ornament - the first international Temple for World Peace - at its heart. It is the seat of our Spiritual Guide and even as people find where to camp, or look for their room, there is a sense of coming home.
Everyone is very happy to be here, to be together with Sangha, to have the opportunity to immerse in both Dharma and community life and to be enriched spiritually.
Teachings begin
After the busyness of the day and a delicious evening meal comes the peacefulness of listening to Dharma at the first teaching with Gen-la Jampa. He takes us on a beautiful journey through Geshe-la's teachings on the benefits of affectionate love, given in 2009 when Geshe-la gave the Maitreya empowerment. He guides us gently away from objects of attachment towards cultivating pure love. We learn that if we really want to be happy we need to develop and maintain a warm heart and a feeling of being close to all living beings without exception.
He reminds us that Geshe-la guaranteed us that if everyone sincerely practiced affectionate love all problems between people would be solved and never arise again. Giving us a special practice and a clear object of meditation for the following day, the session is concluded and everyone spills out of the Temple in a happy jumble of sincere practitioners from around the world, all here for one purpose: to improve themselves and benefit others.
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