Everybody Welcome – Making room in our heart for all living beings

Meditation Retreat

“Everybody Welcome!”. It’s a phrase we hear so often that rarely do we stop to think about what it means. Our Teacher, the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, used to begin all his public teachings with this phrase. It is not always possible to make everyone physically welcome, but we can learn to make room in our heart for every living being, excluding no one at all, for any reason whatsoever. This is the essence of love, and it’s not easy. On this day retreat we will learn to use meditation to open our hearts and overcome the obstacles to genuinely loving both others and ourselves, whatever they (or we) are like. The emphasis will be on meditation, so the instructions will be brief to leave plenty of time for quiet, focussed meditation. A key aspect of meditation is deep and sustained concentration. This is something that in our busy, distracted world is particularly difficult, but if we wish to experience lasting peace of mind and attain genuine spiritual realizations we definitely need to train in meditative concentration. To do this we need to choose an object – something to focus our mind on. One of the very best objects is love for all beings. Through choosing love as our object of training in meditative concentration, not only will our concentration improve, but we will naturally become more loving and compassionate people.