General Spiritual Director
Work Day with Resident Teachers preparing for International Summer Festival
Jul 21, 2026
JUL 25 - AUG 9, 2025
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International Summer Festival 2025 diaries
The Festival Retreat is a powerful and peaceful experience, providing an opportunity to concentrate in silence and in the company of thousands of people. Everyone is sincerely trying to generate these virtuous intentions and maintain them in their mind.
Day 6 ~ GAINING EXPERIENCE OF DHARMA
Gen Sangden guides us briefly in each session in essential contemplations that help us to find very clear objects of meditation that correspond to each verse of advice.
At the conclusion of each session we are reminded that whenever we are not meditating we should practice according to what our Spiritual Guide says.
This is another piece of Atisha's advice. It means that we try to put our understanding into practice through contemplation and meditation and then let these insights and resolutions permeate our life and activities between meditations.
Here at the Festival we have a great opportunity to train in the meditation breaks. This is one of the main practices of a Kadampa: integrating all our Lamrim instructions that we have received from our Spiritual Guide into our daily life.
Finding the object of meditation
we try to put our understanding into practice through contemplation and meditation
As Gen Sangden says, if we notice in our daily life there is still anger, ignorance and attachment as strong as ever then we can think, 'I need to meditate, I need to develop the inner protection of spiritual experience'. Gradually we will discover that this is the supreme method to solve our human problems.
Whatever appears in the meditation
break is a spiritual teaching
Through the practice of renunciation we can solve our daily problems of attachment; through the practice of bodhichitta we can solve our daily problems of anger and hatred; and through the practice of understanding emptiness we can solve our daily problems of ignorance.
Then we can use whatever appears in the meditation break as a spiritual teaching that encourages us to develop these precious minds, which protect us from mental pain. In this way all our activities become meaningful and lead to great results.
