2007 Tibetan Buddhist Spring Festival a hit

The weekend went well and the weather was beautiful. The blessing ceremony was particularly good this year. Personally sometimes I feel the invited politicians who speak during the blessing ceremony tend to be a little political in regards to the content of their speech’s. This year however they kept their speech’s less politically charged. Ironically I think this is because of the pending election. I believe they didn’t want to appear like they were selling their sides views and as a result the speech’s were focused on the festival and Buddhism.

The temple tours were well attended. I had four sessions over the weekend, two on Saturday and two on Sunday. Each session had roughly 50-70 people.

The session went something like this…From the front of the temple a brief history of the Tibetan Buddhist Society and the founder Geshe Loden.
A brief description of the the ornaments on the outside of the building. Then we would move up to the front of the temple where I spoke about the various aspects of the door and the 8 symbols of good fortune. Then into the meditation hall.

Here I would start by adding a little bit of the history of the Buddha and a quick overview of the Buddhist path. I tried to related the different aspects of, for example the Buddha statue, and how they related to our every day ordinary lives. This was by way of setting a context for the listeners, as many had little to no previous contact with Buddhism.

For example, the Buddha sits on a lotus, the lotus symbolizes renunciation. Just as a lotus grows out of the dirty water of a swamp, the mind wishing to be free of suffering and suffering and the causes of suffering (renunciation), naturally develops from the recognition of the human condition - the dissatisfactory nature of life - and how we naturally experience problems. Many people think this is just a fact of life…get over it they may say. The Buddha said that while this is true, it does not have to be that way. There are in fact methods for removing these dissatisfactory issues we experience and so there is something you can do about it. Meditation is a tool used in this process of getting over it!

So, all Buddhist art, either directly or indirectly, is a reminder of some aspect of the process or what we call the path. And what is that path? One could say, in it’s most simplest form the path is the process of replacing dysfunctional states of mind with functional states of mind.

Taking this approach to the tours seemed to be appreciated by the attendees.

Anyhoo I enjoyed myself and in particular I enjoyed the question/answers at the end of the sessions. My favorite question of the weekend was by a 5 year old boy who asked where do the Buddha’s live? He asked this question without any assistance from his father who was sitting near him…it was very funny.