A Festival state of mind

In a recent article I was saying we could feel happy about the 3+ thousand people-strong International Kadampa Buddhist Festival.

Alternatively … we could feel grumpy about it. Point being, how we feel about it is largely up to us.

During this last Festival a friend shared an insight, somewhat excitedly ‘cos he really got it:

Everything is a state of mind. Including the Festival!

And having attended a million Festivals, all of which, to be honest, have felt different not least depending upon my million moods, I know exactly what he means.

Venerable Geshe-la’s view of these New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) Festivals is as follows:

“Welcome everybody to the NKT International Festival. The NKT International Festivals are the special method to maintain the International Kadampa Buddhist Union from generation to generation. We should know this Union is very important; with this Union we can fulfill our own and others’ wishes easily. So please keep my message in your heart. With much love and prayers, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso”

Geshe-la has a deep and inspirational understanding of the significance of these Festivals that’ll probably take the rest of us (me) a lifetime to fully appreciate, even though on the whole I tend to like Festivals a lot. In the middle of the spectrum are people who have never heard of these Festivals and perhaps never will. And at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, are people who can’t stand the very idea of these Festivals and would never dream of attending one.

I find myself more bored by negativity – focusing on faults while ignoring good qualities – in myself, especially, and in others. There’s a lot of it about these days and it sure is contagious. But all our judgments and criticisms come from a belief in a real world, and there isn’t one.

There is nothing like a Festival for seeing this. For one thing, we’re doing a lot of contemplation on Buddha’s teachings on the illusory nature of all phenomena. And for another, everyone experienced a different Festival this year and indeed does every year. If someone like my Dad asks me later what the Festival was like, I cannot say, “It was like this or it was like that” because it wasn’t, not really. Of course, I did say “It was like this or like that” because we have to say something; but saying something doesn’t make it so, it is simply a sharing of our own projections and opinions.

We can all perhaps agree on a few things, such as that there were four sessions a day, or the names of the teachers, or that it rained a lot in the first week. But some people hated the rain while others (especially Gen Tabkay from the Phoenix 110-degree heat dome) were loving every cool minute: “These are human temperatures!” Plus it was the rain that the Lake District is so good at – the rain that makes it stunningly beautiful when the sun finally does come out, as it did in week 2. Some people found the food delicious, while others were “Meh” about it – though I think I can safely say that all meals were very lovingly prepared. Some people adored their cozy little wet tents while others were feeling nothing special about their luxurious dry indoor accommodation. Some people were thrilled by the huge number of amazing worldwide practitioners descending on the Mother Center, while others wished they could be less squished together on the overlapping white plastic chairs. (Or a bit of both.) Enjoying their Festival job was clearly a state of mind for those grinning car park attendants knee deep in mud.

I asked someone how they were enjoying themselves at their first Festival for years: “I am happy 50 percent of the time, that is when I am not missing my ex-wife who was with me last time I was here, or when I am not feeling self-conscious around all these people.” But he had a very happy realization during one session: “I can learn to relate to the clear light of bliss at my heart and be less sucked in!”

I bumped into an immensely dear friend GS wandering slowly, one could say aimlessly (though one would be wrong), around the café area; and asked what he was all beaming about: “These people are all lovely! They are so delightful! I love looking at everyone” – walking proof that the meditation on affectionate love was working as advertised. Another friend was effusing on social media how much she loved everything and everyone so much that she wanted the Festival to go on forever – but I can testify that she is basically one pure-hearted love bug at the best of times.

Some people deeply enjoyed some teachings or meditations, while others deeply enjoyed others: not even Buddha’s teachings or Buddhist teachers are inherently existent.

Thanks to the Dharma teachings and the Sangha and Buddha’s blessings, immersive 3-D refuge, I have observed over the years that people generally do have a relatively awesome experience, and leave feeling better than when they arrived and with some enduring benefits. There again, I haven’t interviewed everyone. In any event, the Festival being a state of mind takes all the pressure off, if you think about it. We don’t have to make any external Festival work. We don’t have to compare ourself to all these people having the best time of their lives while we’re feeling merely lukewarm. We just have to train our mind. Including “leaving your problems at home”, as Venerable Geshe-la would often say, and insisting on finding ways to enjoy ourselves. Which actually boils down to practicing the teachings and “relying upon a happy mind alone”, such as cherishing others and wisdom.

As Buddha Maitreya says:

Because living beings minds are impure, their worlds are impure. When living beings purify their minds, they will inhabit Pure Lands.

In the first week we were welcomed into the Pure Land of Lamrim, which really is a very happy place to hang out; and in the second week we were welcomed into the blissful Pure Land of Keajra, which is right here above us, providing we are feeling it in our hearts.

To really feel the enjoyment, the refuge, we have to be feeling all of it in our hearts as opposed to dryly working stuff out in our heads. As Kadam Morten pointed out in his retreat, our peaceful mind is connected to all the Buddhas – and this can be our starting point. I am going to go ahead and quote him:

“We just need to be skillful and patient and find our way back into that mind of refuge and this is why adverse conditions are very helpful for us because they’re constant reminders. You can go for refuge, find your way back there, like someone who does martial arts. I’ve never done martial arts, so I don’t know what I’m talking about. But in my fantasies, someone who’s done those martial arts, they develop like a center, don’t they? And whenever they’re a little bit off balance, they learn to find their way back to that center, and then from there they can go in every direction, whatever they need to do. And the same is true for us spiritually. Whenever you find your mind is a bit unpeaceful, a bit unbalanced, it’s time to find your way back to your center and go for refuge; and now, from here, you can do whatever you want. Your mind is blessed. You’re full of Dharma. There are all sorts of inspiring examples: you can generate cherishing love, you can meditate on emptiness, you can generate renunciation. Once you’re in refuge, everything is open.”

Festival conversations

I take my hat off to anyone who can keep up with who is now where or doing what or with whom. I can barely keep up with my own narrative, let alone everyone else’s. In 40 years of Festivals, I find that everything has changed beyond recognition; and not just once, but over and over and over again. There is an incalculable number of moving parts, all of which are changing every moment. On a side note, I think it is quite interesting and perhaps unusual to see so many hundreds or even thousands of people ageing along with us, year after year. For, other than our family and a few old friends, most of our relationships tend to be more fleeting. For me, this provides a visible reminder of what Geshe-la means by “Ten years goes fast,” and that it is time to get on with it.

This next bit is just me, by the way, and to be honest I love a bit of gossip and office politics as much as the next person; but overall I think it might be an improvement if, next to their names that I’m always forgetting, Festival-goers had a cheat sheet pinned to them with their basic bio information so that we can dispense with the “Where are you these days?” type questions and go straight for the juicy conversations. When Atisha bumped into anyone he would famously ask not “How are you?”, but “Do you have a good heart?” In the Tantras we are asked the question: “Who are you and what do you seek?” And the answer is supposed to be: “I am a fortunate one (ie, a Bodhisattva) seeking great bliss.” (Which we could follow with: “What do you think about that teaching? The world situation?” etc.)

Only joking. Sort of.

What about the New Kadampa Tradition?

So, back to whether or not we appreciate Festivals, or for that matter the New Kadampa Tradition as a whole – the interesting question is “Why?”, and the deepest reply, I reckon, is figuring out which projections or mistaken appearances we are buying into, because we’re all buying into something unless we have realized emptiness. I think we need some renunciation accepting that whatever is appearing to me, these are MY karmic appearances and I need to take responsibility for them. We need to be solving our inner problems, not continually complaining about our outer ones – otherwise it’s just aversion. We can remember there is no Festival or NKT that we normally see, which means it can be anything that we want it to be. Doesn’t mean we don’t try to improve things, of course, we have to – indeed this year there has been a ton of amazing modern renovation done on the Priory buildings and gorgeous rambling grounds, check out that cool Conservatory Cafe! However, it’s a question of perspective and emphasis. Also, just to add to that, everything being the nature of our mind doesn’t let us off the hook. With compassion we need to be more aware of how Festivals, etc, might be appearing to others, not assume everyone sees things the same way we do, and be working to improve others’ experiences.

I tend to relate to the New Kadampa Tradition as the vehicle for Buddhadharma in general, and the Ganden oral lineage of compassion and wisdom, bliss and emptiness, in particular, to travel through our world. We are inevitably going to have individual and varying samsaric appearances of it; but I find it best, when I can do it, to give everyone the benefit of the doubt because they are responding to what karmically they can see and “all of us are just trying to do our best”, as one beleaguered friend poignantly put it after receiving yet more flak about something or other. Nobody is inherently mean. At Festivals and back at home we can practice looking past our own and others’ delusions and see a lot of beautiful people with good hearts. There is a lot of smiling and laughing at Festivals and, as my mother told me as a kid: “Everyone is beautiful when they smile. (I dreamed of her last night. She said “We have to leave each other soon”, and I replied that I was never going to leave her. I pray so.)

The New Kadampa Tradition ~ International Kadampa Buddhist Union is not a box so I think all of us can stretch it from the inside, bringing this incredible lineage into our hugely varied spheres. At Festivals you meet cool Kadampas from all over the world, and I wonder how powerful it could be if they don’t hide their light under a bushel. Kadampa Buddhism can legitimately help with so many “real world” issues, including climate change – one of the most interesting conversations this Summer was with a friend in Denmark who has some incredibly to-the-point ideas about that. Kadam Dharma can help in schools and colleges (the future), in prisons, with animals, in the corporate world, with mental health, with addiction – the list goes on. In our own communities we can take what we’ve learned and go out to others, not waiting or expecting them always to come to us, as Venerable Geshe-la once put it to me. The struggle is real as they say — things are not fine and dandy – but if we accept the truth of suffering and work on abandoning the origins of suffering, each of us can let Dharma work its magic through us over a period of months, years, and decades. After all, as a friend said to me only this morning:

We must end suffering because it is illusory.

I called it a vehicle – and the New Kadampa Tradition is a vehicle that cannot be separated from bliss and emptiness itself. It feels to me like the emanation body of Venerable Geshe-la, the blue of the sky, mere name. Someone was saying how surprised they were to see several hundred people at the Annual General Meeting for Admin Directors. There is a lot to rejoice in there because it shows that these teachings are reaching more and more communities who can benefit from them. At Festivals it is not hard to envisage bliss and emptiness pervading every part of our world in accordance with people’s wishes and capacities, and with no discrimination. Just as it says in that very lovely prayer to our Founder, Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka, that Gen-la Dekyong said expresses the very meaning of this tradition:

You who take on the great responsibility of caring in every way for the doctrine and migrators,
Giving to everyone equally, without discrimination, the precious opportunity to accomplish one’s own purpose and the purpose of others;
O Guru Sumati Buddha Heruak,
Please remain at my heart forever,
So that all directions will be pervaded by your matchless excellent deeds.

As I think does this verse:

Through the wheel of sharp weapons of the exalted wisdom of bliss and emptiness,
Circling throughout the space of the minds of sentient beings until the end of the aeon,
Cutting away the demon of self-grasping, the root of samsara,
May definitive Heruka be victorious. ~ The New Essence of Vajrayana 

There is nothing and no one standing between any of us and the enlightened mind of our Spiritual Guide, and no hierarchy or gate keepers other than the ones we might be projecting. And depending on our karma, it seems that we are inspired by different teachers at different times, which is great, really. We can all learn to feel faith in our own equally valid ways, find our personal channel into that connection. We need to find a way to tune ourselves in every day because no one can do that for us.

Final thoughts

There is no cookie cutter way to attend a Festival – people soon figure out to attend Festivals according to their own wishes or capacities, from one to four sessions a day, or whatever. “I forget how extraordinary these festivals are” said one monk; and they are pretty unusual. They show the significance of the Kadampa Buddhist union – for example, what happens when thousands of people attempt to take some time off self-cherishing and cherish others instead. One person put it:

“Basically the question is … what would the world be like if everyone put Buddha’s teachings into practice. The Festival was set up to make it so people can step into a world where this is happening and see what it would be like. This is very different from saying over and over again that Buddhism works. To show it in action and see with your own eyes. It makes it an experiential demonstration of Buddhism. This is why I encourage anyone who hasn’t been yet to come to a Festival.”

And there’s a lot of blessings and encouragement flying around, in no small part due to the presence of many deeply experienced old timers. One person put it like this:

“Festivals are mainly about the power of Sangha, which is an aspect of refuge which is probably least understood. I’m grateful for all my spiritual friends and I’m beginning to realize how much they have helped my practice over the years.”

Ok, sorry for this being a bit long. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. (And thank you for giving me this opportunity to share some of my summer pictures, I’d never look at them again otherwise 😂)

(Next Festival is actually coming up fast, in Malaga, Spain, in October … ) Festivals can also be attended online.