EC Blog Archive for February, 2011

Last weekend friends from the Diamond Way buddhist center in Cologne/Germany came to present their new project. Their “Maarweg Roadshow” was a great adventure for us. We got to feel the Cologners’ passion about finding a place after eight years of searching for it. We had a chance to discuss their vision, taste the traditional food and drinks and… chorus together „Let’s do it Maaaaarway!”. Surprisingly, at the same time we also had guests from Düsseldorf – it seems those two centers always show up together ;) What to do – we meditated, worked on the EC’s road and had fun together. And now we understand why Lama Ole said “The Maarweg is the first class!”.

After this exciting weekend, thanks to our guest and neighbour, we got to know two centers in Latin America. Macarena and Sebastian fulfilled our wishes and took us on a story-telling trip trough the buddhist center in Buenos Aires/Argentina and the retreat center Karma Dechen Ling (KDL)/Uruguay. Anecdotes about a phowa course in KDL with 200 friends from 20 different countries and a collaboration of Spanish speaking countries touched us deeply. Suddenly everybody felt a connection to our friends on the other continent and wished not only to hear stories and look at photos – but also to visit those places for real one day. And… we are all warmly invited to do so!

Before leaving for Hong Kong this morning, Lama Ole gave us yet another great gift to round off two weeks of project days at the EC last night – meditating together with around 100 friends, answering questions, and giving blessing.

We would like to thank the Lama and everyone who came and contributed to make this two inspiring weeks to remember for a long time. Never before did we welcome so many people coming here to meditate in the Lama’s powerfield, spending quality time together and helping to run the Europe Center during a retreat. Many pointed out how much the EC really has become home for them by now. So we are looking forward to having you all back here at home very soon!

We just had an EC residents and long term guests dinner. Getting together for an easy time over a meal makes everything flow much smoother in the center and we all enjoyed it very much and decided to do it regularly. Tonight we talked mainly about a paradox we often face here:

• we always seem to lack helpers for the jobs the daily center life and projects require
• many of our guests feel a bit lost here and don’t know how to help when they want to

With so many people coming and going all the time, it’s crucial to have a clear, easy-to-understand and ongoing way of matching these offers and demands together. We’ll try to learn from the great Summer Course’s job center and come up with something friendly and practical that will make the lives of both guests and residents at the EC easier.

And finally a small quiz for you: what do traveling teachers Florinda Czeija, Egle Rasimaite, Wojtek Tracewski, Gert Boll, Honza Matuska and Peter Malinowski have in common?

After guiding a meditation course in Karlsruhe with 2000+ students over the weekend, Lama Ole arrived back at the EC last night, followed by “a couple” of friends. He will spend two more days of his work retreat here before leaving for touring Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Welcome home, everyone!

Last Sunday we sat down with 3 of friends to talk. It was very late after a busy Summer Course Team weekend, and one of us posed a simple question – how was your day? As we started to recount each other’s day, this impressive list of things that happened in the last 24 hours appeared:

• the EC Steering Team met, as every Sunday, to work on an agenda of questions, issues and tasks that accumulated over the past week
• Shamar Rinpoche greeted all while on the phone with Lama Ole
• Lama Ole finished a manuscript of a new question-and-answers book and a first part of a three-part article on transmission
• the Summer Course core team summed up the very successful weekend and fixed the program of the upcoming Summer Course 2011
• Manfred K. came from Munich to set up a new address book system for Lama Ole’s team (aka “the pool”)
• Bulgarian friends visiting the EC drove home happily with 3 new statues for their centers
• 2 film crews shooting documentary movies about Lama Ole and Hannah came to the EC to discuss their projects and their financing
• the Press Team sent out a statement about the recent events in the East
• a new Diamond Way Musicians international group was created, putting together sangha musicians who want to support various projects (e.g. movies) with their music
• old water boiler in the villa collapsed – accidentally, all the experts were around and replaced almost it immediately
• the new EC road sign was designed
• we (finally) sent out Lama Ole’s New Year’s cards

And this was just the 3 of us talking about things we were involved in mostly outside of the Summer Course team weekend program. The other 90 people attending the weekend would add much more to the list as their teams met to prepare the Summer Course: the gompa team, the transportation team, the finance team, the purchasing team, the registration team, the dharma shop, mini-market & merchandising teams, the cafeteria, the childcare, the sound team, the kitchen team, the medical team, the I-grow-EC! team… you name it.

Life’s never boring! Especially at the EC.

During Lama Ole’s stay, the EC fills up with friends from around the world. They enjoy being in the Lama‘s powerfield – meditating, working and enjoying each other.

The day started with a special gift – Lama Ole guided the morning meditation. He showed everybody how he would like us to read the meditation, where to give people time. Afterwards he again pointed out how important it is to go deeper and to pause, as every single word has deep meaning. How important it is to find „the space in between“… If we catch that moment of naked mind, it means big progress.

What a beautiful beginning of another meaningful day.