On a Sunday evening in Laval, France, nineteen children joined Mingyur Rinpoche on the stage. Each had a single sentence to share: what does meditation mean to you?
“Meditation is love and compassion.”
“Meditation is being calm.”
“Meditation is being concentrated and relaxed at the same time.”
“Meditation is the mind of life.”
“Meditation is connected to the mind.”
“Meditation is rest.”
“Meditation is compassion.”
“Meditation is love.”
“Meditation is being quiet.”
“Meditation is working hard.”
“Meditation is being confident.”
“Meditation is being in the present moment.”
“Meditation is learning how to be friends with ourselves.”
No two answers were the same, and every one of them was true.
That moment closed a weekend that was, a first for Tergar Schools and the Tergar community. Alongside the Anywhere, Anytime Meditation program that brought adult participants together with Mingyur Rinpoche, Tergar France hosted something that had never happened before: a full parallel children’s program, running session for session across both days, designed specifically to bring the Tergar Schools model to life for a new generation.
The program was designed by Tergar Community Member Olivia Grauer and Tergar Guides Amy Roth and Veronika Bílá, drawing on materials from Tergar Schools and Middle Way Education along with their own experience and creativity, with support from Justin Kelley, Executive Director Tergar Schools. To deliver it they were joined by Lama Tashi Tergar Guide Frédéric Auquier and Tergar Guide and Tergar Schools Director of Development Fionnuala Daffy and of course Mingyur Rinpoche himself.
On Saturday, Mingyur Rinpoche taught the children directly, introducing basic goodness and the qualities at the heart of the Tergar Schools model: awareness, love, compassion, wisdom, and joy. The rest of the day unfolded through activities built around those same qualities. In “Treasure Inside,” children searched out a stone and decorated it as a symbol of something good already within them. Frédéric led a session on awareness meditation suited to young minds. Later, a sensory awareness walk invited the children to slow down and simply notice the world around them, through touch, sound, and sight.
That evening, while the children rested, their parents gathered for an experiential introduction to Tergar Schools, led by Mingyur Rinpoche and Fionnuala with input from Frédéric. Rather than a lecture, it was built around three simple exercises: noticing, understanding, and responding to a single image; recalling someone who had shown them care as a child and naming the qualities that person had awakened in them; and reflecting on what they most hope to see their own children grow into. Parents arrived at their own answers: kind, resilient, curious, confident, compassionate. Rinpoche and Fionnuala then shared where those same aspirations are already taking shape: in the pilot school in Kathmandu, now home to 82 students and a growing faculty, and in the new campus underway in Yolmo, in the Himalayan foothills, which will one day welcome 500 students.
Sunday built toward the weekend’s final moment. The children opened with a morning circle and a short awareness practice, then turned to love and compassion, introduced through a “Seeing the Good” exercise. Lama Tashi taught on love and compassion directly, and the children began decorating prayer flags, each one carrying a wish for the world. Mingyur Rinpoche returned for a teaching and question-and-answer session with the children, and later in the day Alexandre Jollien spoke on what love and compassion look like in action.
By early evening, the flags were finished, covered in color and in wishes written by hand. When the children took the stage for their closing moment with Rinpoche, they brought the flags with them and offered them to him, to be carried to the children of Tergar School in Kathmandu. It was a small gesture with a large intention: two groups of children, thousands of miles apart, connected through a shared wish for the world.
It’s easy, watching children speak about meditation as rest, or as friendship with oneself, to think they’ve simply understood something adults spend years trying to learn. Perhaps that’s closer to the truth than not. The Laval program was designed as a first attempt at bringing the Tergar Schools model beyond the classroom and into a single, intensive weekend. Judging by what the children said on that stage, it won’t be the last.
Special thanks to photographer Olivier Adam for capturing the weekend so beautifully.
