Asian Festival and Welsh Dharma Celebration 2024
Dec 22, 2024
The Gateway to the Highest Yoga Tantra is open to all, at the NKT-IKBU INTERNATIONAL FALL FESTIVAL 2024 to be held at the Third Kadampa World Peace Temple.
The conclusion of the 2024 Summer Festival offers us an opportunity to reflect on this truly inspiring event.
Over the past year, many improvements appeared to enhance the online availability of Kadam Dharma. Now reaching more people than ever with daily news, podcasts, a YouTube channel, and blogs, people can stay connected and inspired by the teachings and the Kadampa way of life.
It was a wonderful International Kadampa Festival this summer, where we enjoyed a union of deep wisdom, kind hearts, and inner enjoyment. Revisit the Festival with videos that capture the many aspects of this special event.
The three International Festivals are precious opportunities to receive teachings and empowerments from the Gen-las, and this experience is greatly enhanced if we can spend some time after the Festival in retreat improving our understanding of the teachings and taking their meaning to heart. Kadampa centers worldwide organize post-festival retreats after each of the three International Festivals. See the retreats following the 2024 Fall Festival.
The Temple is once again full for a final morning of heartfelt prayers, requests and dedications as we engage in an extremely auspicious practice of Offering to the Spiritual Guide. It is a beautiful and fitting conclusion to what has been an extraordinary Festival.
It’s the last full day of the Festival and we conclude with three more sessions of retreat, keeping our minds in such a blessed and peaceful state and looking forward to the play of The Life of Buddha.The Temple is packed and it’s an incredible atmosphere, as the lights go down and we are all together watching this special, holy play on a giant screen.
The peace of the Festival is indescribable. It feels so powerful to meditate as a great assembly of practitioners at the culmination of this Festival. Step by step, session by session, we have the experience of collectively holding our minds on pure objects. The Kadampa Temple becomes so quiet, even though we are a huge assembly of people. It is harmonious on a deep, subtle, heart level as we meditate together for long periods of time in silence.
We begin three days of retreat meditating according to Venerable Geshe-la’s advice in the beautiful, holy space of the Temple. Kadam Morten guides everyone step by step, letting the retreat go gradually deeper. He encourages us to be light and joyful and to practice on the basis of faith, in a relaxed way, with confidence.
The final day of teachings focused on many important things and completed the transmission of the sublime practice of the Uncommon Yoga of Inconceivability. Included within this beautiful, transcendent practice are so many practical teachings.