Things aren’t coming at you. They’re coming from you.

“This felt like a landmark Festival” said an old South African friend, just after the 24-hour Tara chanting in the temple for world peace. And not just in the temple – I for one did the night sessions (11pm, 3am, 7am) on my comfy sofa in the Airbnb, joining in via Buddhist TV like umpteen other people all over the world. Buddha Tara is a fully enlightened being, but she has this direct, accessible, and immediate quality, like a mother, and her blessings of fearlessness are palpable. Even from the perspective of just me, I can tell that these six magical sessions of Tara practice have had a worldwide impact; so multiply that by several thousand people and hopefully the world just became a wiser, kinder place.

A Buddhist perspective on world affairs

Buddha Shakyamuni wrote those praises we chant to the 21 Taras, saying things like:

Your victorious actions are limitless.

and

With the seven worlds beneath your feet, you are able to draw all beings to bliss.

It helps to remember that Tara is bigger than samsara, not the other way around.

To stay sane, I try at some point each day to rise above the endless to-do list to see the big picture – that everybody needs permanent liberation from suffering because temporary liberations from particular sufferings are, in the words of Geshe Kelsang, “Not good enough”. Which means that no matter what craziness is unfolding on any given day, apparently demanding all my attention, I try to keep our eye on the prize = enlightenment and the endless ability to help myself and others. In some ways the whole Festival was about this, for becoming an actual Kadampa means transforming every single thing we see and do into the path to enlightenment.

Tara chanting was the last chapter of two weeks of uplifting teachings, meditations, conversations, and enjoyments. If you get a chance to go to next year’s Summer Festival, please do. If I can cajole or bribe you to go, I will – just let me know. I can think of many reasons why these international Festivals have such an outsized happy influence on people’s lives; and why Venerable Geshe Kelsang said that they will support our Buddhist tradition in perpetuity. His full quote is here: A Festival state of mind.

That depends

Though of course that depends. Everyone’s Festival is different because you cannot find an objective Festival anywhere. I’ve been attending Festivals for well over 30 years (or is it 40, I’ve lost count), and each one feels very different to all the others. There is no overlap whatsoever between my first Festivals as a teenager and this one; and indeed even between last year’s Festival and this one.

I found myself thinking a lot about the emptiness of this Festival. What and where is it? One way to understand how things do not exist in and of themselves, but depend entirely on the minds creating them, is to go looking for them within their parts. (More about that here: There is nothing out there out there.) So, where would you start looking? Is the temple the festival? Are the people, individually or collectively? Is it the numerous cafes or food tents? (and if so are there lots of Festivals?) Is it the Dharma teachings? Is it the guided meditations? Is it the campers’ tents in the forest? Is it the shop? Is it the trees or the Bay or any other part of the environment? Is it the weather, such as Storm Floris and its 60 MPH gusts of wind?!

Where does it begin and end – does it spread to the parking lot full of cow pats? Or to the nearby town of Ulverston and its locals, where many of us are staying in Airbnbs and/or frequenting shops and fooderies? Does it stretch all over the world into the homes and hearts of numerous people tuning in on their screens? Etc.

The Festival is not any of these individual parts nor the collection of its parts. But it depends entirely upon its parts (whatever we’re conceiving those to be) – for take them away and it disappears. For example, when I am having a crepe and conversation in the circle tent, that is my Festival at that moment, while someone else is walking through the woods or watching Lenguine’s Magic Show in the kids’ area, and that is their Festival. Even when many or most of us are in the temple or watching the teachings on Buddhist TV, or bumping into each other and saying “Hey, how are you!”, ie, sharing some collective experience, we are still each having an individual experience as well.

The Festival is only ever mere name imputed by conceptual thought – “What a landmark festival!” – on its individual or collective parts. There is nothing behind that name or label – if we search with wisdom, it is impossible to find a Festival existing objectively, in and of itself. The Festival we are personally experiencing depends entirely on what parts we happen to be imputing it on and what state of mind we are using. If our mind is positive and we are projecting or imputing a great Festival, then that is what we are having. If our mind is grumpy and projecting faults everywhere, imputing a horrible Festival, then that is what we are having.

The surprising reason you’re as young as you feel

I had lunch at The Mill with some of my oldest friends …

(Talking of old, how old do you feel inside? The New Kadampa Tradition was a very young tradition when we started; in fact I recall that few people were over 35! One thing I find interesting about Festivals is that we can see hundreds if not thousands of people we know ageing year by year, decade by decade – and other than family members or a few old school friends, I don’t think this is the norm. Buddha was so right about that sickness, ageing, death (and rebirth) thing, and the vanishing brevity of this precious human life; there is no getting away from seeing that unfurl yearly at Festivals.

However, I also rarely if ever find anyone over 40 who says they feel the age of their increasingly decrepit body. They are more likely to say, “I feel 35”! It’s as if we cannot keep up with the swift passage of our flesh – which is why every decade seems to take us by surprise, “How the heck can I be 30/40/50/60/70 already?!” I think this is because our formless consciousness does not age. It is beginningless and endless, and it is new in every moment. We really are as young as we feel if we identify ourselves more with our minds than with this decomposing suit of meat.)

… Anyhow, two of these particular old but timeless friends were instrumental in the very earliest days of this Kadampa Buddhist tradition, bumping into Buddhism in Nepal, there later to greet Venerable Geshe Kelsang when he was invited over from India to teach, pre-dating Conishead Priory itself. As the director of Tharpa Publications and the NKT Secretary for many years, amongst other things, they have created so many causes and conditions for this tradition to develop and flourish, and I’ve also been lucky enough to work with them both on numerous projects. All of these individual contributions are a tiny fraction of the millions, perhaps billions, of causes and conditions that went into producing this year’s Festival. If any one of those causes or conditions was missing, the Festival would not be shaped the same, and in some cases might not be appearing at all – for example, if Venerable Geshe-la had not been invited to the West in the first place.

In the context of causes and conditions, therefore, the Festival is also completely unfindable – the Festival is none of these causes and conditions, individually or collectively, yet take them away and the Festival disappears. (More about that here: Beyond the clock.) 

Talking of cause and effect, or time, what time exactly did the Festival end? Again that depends on each individual. Did my Festival end when I got into the car to leave for the last time, when I waved goodbye to my Festival friends on the railway platform, when I got on this train, when I finish writing this article, or if and when the Festival blessings wear off?! It only ends when I say it ends!

A life-changing Festival that happened in our minds

I suppose what I am trying to say is that we all had totally different experiences because at any moment we were all imputing or naming “Festival” on totally different parts, which in turn arose from a beginningless number of different causes and conditions (including karma); and those conceptual imputations or mere appearances of mind also all depended entirely on our karma and ongoing states of mind. We cannot point to a single thing existing in and of itself, from its own side, independent of its parts, causes, names, or imputations by thought.

My niece stayed one weekend, and we discussed emptiness on the stoop of our Stanley Street cottage before driving on site for the Tara empowerment. Was that conversation, or even that stoop, more or less part of the Festival than the Festival site or even the Tara empowerment? Who decides?! For both of us, the conversation and stoop were imputedly parts of our Festival. For others, not so much. In any event, this is how she summed up our conversation:

Things are not coming at us. They are coming from us.

Understanding this, of course, changes everything. We realize that we are the ones producing this dream-like reality. Always have been and always will be. As Venerable Geshe-la says in How to Understand the Mind:

The defining characteristics of an object do not exist from the side of the object but are merely imputed by the mind that apprehends them. We can understand this by considering how different people view one object. For example, observing a particular person called John, one person may identify an enemy while another identifies a friend.

Therefore, we need to choose carefully how we impute – or conceptually discriminate – for that is how we are creating our reality. And there is no point blaming the supposedly bad things out there or getting attached to the supposedly good things out there.

This is true of anything and everything that ever appears. Including our self.

Where do YOU begin and end?

Talking of our self, it seems easier to understand the unfindability and emptiness of seemingly bigger, more amorphous, things that take up lots of space and time, like a Festival. Once we get the hang of looking for things with wisdom, it is not so hard to see how the temple is not the Festival, the cafes are not the festival, the volunteering is not the Festival, etc – these are all just parts, that are also imputed on countless parts themselves. The Festival we normally see disappears, and from its emptiness appears a mere Festival like a dream not existing from its own side. And this is great because it is wonderful and blissful to be able to enjoy the mere appearances of a Festival without having to grasp at a real solid Festival, whether it appears really solidly pleasant (giving rise to attachment) or really solidly unpleasant (giving rise to aversion).

But when we look at another human being, for example (especially if we mainly focus on their body), they seem more solid, more singular, more real, more objectively existent. I find it helpful to remember that they are in fact as big and amorphous as a Festival because they also depend on countless parts and causes. For example, you could see their head as like the temple, their arms as like the cafes, their feelings as like the tents, and so on, and then try and point to that objective person, existing from their own side, in and of themselves. More on this here: Meditating on the emptiness of the self.

Where do YOU begin and end? Is your mind, for example, just in your body or does it spread as vast as space? WHEN do you begin and end? Did your body begin with stardust or with your great great grandparents, say, or did it just arise anew in this moment? Who decides? See what I mean about big and amorphous?!

Everything is a murmuration – even you

Walking by Morecambe Bay with a couple of friends, one exclaimed: “Look at that murmuration!!!” “That what?”, I said, so she pointed at the starlings flying in formation, reflected in the water. Thing is, until that moment I had never used that word before, but “Ah, what a beautiful murmuration!” now seemed to be a lovely imputation, evoking something different to “Ah, what a beautiful flock of birds flying around in formation!” However, that’s all it was – mere name. There was no murmuration out there, findable, pointable. As above, where and when did that murmuration start and end, either in space or in time? Are those birds still murmurating over the Bay as we speak?

It struck me that everything is like a murmuration – the people strolling around the Festival, the people darting to and fro at Euston Station just now, the people always going places all over samsara and nirvana.

“I bet she’ll be using this in her next article”, said one of my friends to the other. So there you have it, I decided to do just that. (Even though I’ve just now remembered that I already wrote an article about mumurations, quite unwittingly, in 2018: Where is everything?) Thanks for reading, and please leave any of your Festival impressions in the Comments below if you feel so inclined.

Postscript

Talking about the world being kinder and wiser, (first paragraph), note to self: I have found these few weeks in England to be a welcome break from the political hand-wringing that is hard to avoid in the States. Right now on this train I’m sitting opposite a grandfather who is smiling delightedly as his grandson tells him a story, and in Ulverston, let alone at the Festival, I met a lot of friendly locals. People everywhere are still kind and moreorless sane, or at least not as insane as they seem to be when I’m immersed in the highly curated “news”. England feels quieter and more gentle to me; and of course that is because I have temporarily opted out of certain ideas of America just by being here, plus I’m not feeding on the British news instead, lol. There is no reason, I think, why I cannot continue to opt out when I get home – not in terms of caring, of course, as I never want to opt out of that. No, I mean in terms of immersion in the non-stop frustrating news updates over which I have zero say. Let’s see how I get on.

Again, over to you.