Day 7 ~ A Festival of Faith, Gratitude and Kindness
It’s the final day of the Festival, which finishes with two calm and focused retreat sessions enabling us to consolidate all we have received at this rich feast of Dharma.
Read MoreBooking for in-person attendance at the 2022 International Spring Festival website is now open.
The emphasis for Spring Festival 2022 is on in-person attendance, but it will be possible to participate online if you are not able to attend in-person. See what online participation means.
Spring Festival booking opens March 31. Time to book your special Spring Holiday.
As the Opening of the Temple and the beginning of the 2022 Spring Festival approach, preparations are underway at the site to host thousands of people. The Festival will have a distinctive Mediterranean feel. Here we see the team trying out a vegetable paella, one of the dishes offered at the chiringuitos distributed throughout the site, which will also provide tortilla, tapas, salads etc.
With the International Fall Festival 2021 now completed this is a great time to look back over the Diaries.
With the last two sessions of retreat this morning, the 2021 International Fall Festival draws to a close. Now is the time to take all these wonderful teachings and meditations into our daily life. As Gen-la said, to go back to our centers and continue our study and practice, but most of all, continue sharing this precious Dharma with our local community by helping with the work of our center.
Yesterday, we received the concluding teaching of the Festival in which Gen-la Dekyong gave an explanation of the fifth basis of the path to liberation, ultimate truth emptiness. In the afternoon, the Festival moved into a different mode as we sat with Gen Rabten to take the precious teachings to heart in the first retreat sessions.
Yesterday Gen-la gave another two extraordinary teachings. In the first she taught how to gain deep familiarity with the practice over many sessions, each time staying longer with the experience of our mind mixed with the bliss and emptiness at the heart of Guru Tara, our destination. And in the second – how to understand the emptiness of the self.
Today is Je Tsongkhapa Day, a special day in the Kadampa Buddhist calendar when we remember the great kindness of Je Tsongkhapa and celebrate the union of Je Tsongkhapa and our Spiritual Guide. And we reflect deeply on our great good fortune at having met such a precious Teacher and received the blessings of this unsurpassed tradition.
Yesterday, thousands of people around the world received a profound and blissful empowerment of Buddha Green Tara from Gen-la Dekyong. Gen-la began with an introduction to Tara, who is an emanation for the wind element of all the Buddhas . . .
