General Spiritual Director
Gen-la Khyenrab visits Wales
Jun 27, 2025
MAY 23 - 28, 2025
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International Spring Festival 2025 diaries
In a world that can often feel difficult, it is easy for kindness to feel like an exception not the rule. Not at Festival! Everywhere you look there is kindness and it becomes the 'normal' to treat others gently, with kindness and care and to be on the receiving end of others' consideration and generosity.
Day 4 ~ kindness everywhere
We can see the great kindness of each person here sincerely trying to improve themselves through listening, contemplating and meditating on Dharma. In this way, for the duration of the Festival we create a cycle of kindness, breaking down the walls that isolate us from each other and keep us too often in a prison of self concern. This is very encouraging, so when we return to everyday life we will have more energy to keep this habit of kindness going.
You can see kindness in so many actions: holding a door open as others pass through, taking the time to connect with someone who wants to talk, giving lifts to others on the way to and from the Festival, sharing food, helping someone struggling with a wet tent, letting someone go before you.
There is hidden kindness: the silent Bodhisattvas working hard behind the scenes to run the Festival, everyone taking responsibility for different areas, quietly putting others' happiness and needs before their own - even missing sessions to do so. There is the overt kindness of the Teachers who have put years of dedication into their teachings. Then there's the kindness of the many volunteers offering children's activities - cherishing the kids and parents alike in all the breaktimes - and those working for Tharpa Publications and in the shop to bring us wonderful books, artwork and ritual items.
Appreciating kindness is a simple way to feel connected to others. It is a kind of admiring faith that brings out our own good qualities and makes it easy to want to join in. So let's all continue to be confident in being kind!
The kindness of dharma teachings
Where can you find lasting happiness?
The Festival teachings concluded with a wonderful explanation of how to enter into Buddhism through the practice of refuge, how to develop the most powerful motivation of bodhichitta so our practices become the path to enlightenment, and the power of Guru yoga, or relying on our Spiritual Guide, that makes everything work. Thank you Gen-la Jampa for a rich feast of teachings and for your loving example.
Then we had the first session of retreat with Gen-la Khyenrab. Having received so many teachings it felt wonderful to simply practice. We emphasized the promise to go for refuge in the Three Jewels and to become a Buddha for the benefit of all. Holding these beautiful promises in our mind, together in silence, we then engaged together in the practice of The Yoga of Buddha Maitreya. It felt serenely peaceful, concentrated, blessed and powerful.
Festival Podcast
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Gen-la Jampa teaches how to improve our mindfulness based on the advice of Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. This advice is transformative because it shows us how to make our mind happy whatever we are doing.
