What an Auspicious day to be engaging in Vajrayogini Retreat! This final day of retreat falls on a special tsog offering day. A beautiful rainbow appears in the morning over the festival site to mark the occasion.
In the first retreat session Kadam Morten suggests we emphasize guru yoga. He encourages us to always meditate with blessings and feel the presence of the spiritual guide in our mind. How can we do this? We can do this by focusing on admiring faith.
He explained how admiring faith is the nature of rejoicing. Rejoicing in our guru’s virtuous qualities and activities. There is nowhere we can better see the fruits of his virtues then at an International Summer Festival just like this one.
“The whole thing about rejoicing is you need to feel joy!” he said laughing.
“The function of mindfulness is to hold an object.”
“The function of concentration is to mix your mind with that object.”
“So allow yourself to feel that joy and abide in it. If we can stay with that feeling our practise will be blessed and easy.”
In the second session Kadam Morten encouraged us to focus on the body mandala.
He says how we should use the Yogas of Sleeping, Rising and Experiencing Nectar during our breaks to again and again dissolve away the self that we normally see and arise as our new pure self.
The final session Kadam Morten expressed what a privilege it is to be here with so many Vajrayogini practitioners engaging in retreat in this blessed place.
“We are here as representatives of our various parts of the globe.”
“We should take the time to reflect on our experiences over our time here at this festival. These experiences are our connection to our spiritual guide. Think about how you will take these into your busy daily life.”
The day concludes with an Offering to the Spiritual Guide puja. This tsog offering allows us to renewing commitments and averting obstacles in our practise. It is a special method through which we come under the care and guidance of the Dakas and Dakinis who bestow completion stage realizations.
