EC Blog Archive for the ‘About the EC’ Category

One of many international meetings during the summer course and definitely a very significant one – on Saturday the new board of trustees of the Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation met in the EC Villa.

The goal of the Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation is to make the millennium-old Buddhist wisdom accessible to the people of the modern world. The tradition of the Diamond Way, which is threatened in the East, should be preserved for future generations in the West. In due time, its methods and values should be returned to its countries of origin.

The foundation…
• offers public access to Buddhist teachings and meditations.
• creates publicly-accessible places for meeting, exchange, studies and retreat.
• is asked to support Buddhist-oriented terminal care.
• finances the translation of traditional Buddhist texts into western languages
• supports Buddhist art, Tibetan medicine and culture.
• organizes, attends to and supports international Buddhist networks.
• supports charitable and social services within the context of a non-profit organization.

The foundation works worldwide with our 600 Buddhist centers. Over the next year, the main focus will be on the extension of the Europe Center and the construction of its new buildings. After this, the foundation’s focus of activity is going to shift to other projects all over the world again.
If you would like to know more about the Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation, please visit www.buddhismus-stiftung.de.

Just a quick snapshot from the team area behind the kitchen proving how easy it is to catch buddhists from lots of different countries having fun after lunch together.

Jean Christophe from France, Marek from Warsaw/Poland, Macarena from Buenos Aires/Argentina, Johanna from Graz/Austria, Eckart from Buenos Aires, Helena from Rejkjavik/Iceland – and Copenhagen/Denmark – Axel and Lisa from Argentina, Doris from Innsbruck/Austria and John from Madison, USA.

Spontaneously sharing a laugh, experiences and stories over a meal surely creates new and deepens old friendships across the globe that are going to last much longer than this course!

It’s done! The tents are up and “furnished”, many many friends are already here awaiting the kick-off of the 4th International Summer Course at the EC.

In between all the buzzing activity of the course build-up, there was also a different side to the last four weeks. Volen from Bulgaria beautifully captured some of the more quiet moments of friendship, reflection, relaxation, and meditation. Enjoy!

On the one hand a time is passing very quickly here, during the build-up phase of the International Summer Course, on the other hand we can not agree with the calendar: for us a few days here feels more like weeks.. :) Sometimes our posts on the blog are not as fast as the work outside and also in the offices – we want to show you some „old” photos of the moments of preparing the floor in the gompa tent and moments of sharing work and fun.

Nowadays we have a few sunny days after a lot of rainy hours. So when you consider that the mud outside the gompa tent was similar to that inside the tent, you can imagine how difficult it was to set up a wooden floor. The work is not only happening with construction or building up the course. We have a bunch of friends who at the same time are quietly working on their computers – preparing the moreEC campaign, graphics, registration systems, program schedules, translations and much much more.

Of course we are not only working: we have lectures of the traveling teachers who are here (like John from the US or Peter from Spain), movie evenings, late night talks and – surprisingly – parties in the Bau-Cafe :)

..and only a few days and we meet with our Lamas and thousands of our friends! Life is great at the EC!

The renewal of the EC villa’s roof is well on the way – and it will be a very special roof: 14.000 tiles will cover the villa for at least a century – and we want every single one of them to have a wish for the benefit of all on it! So next time you come to the Europe Center, just “buy” as many roof tiles as you like – for whichever “price” you like – and write your wishes on them. All these donations will be used to support the new EC buildings.

You can also take your own piece of the house home or give it to a friend as a present – an old roof tile, sealed with the Diamond Way firewheel.
Diamond Way Buddhist Centers and Groups can pre-order a special rounded tile that will later go onto the top of the roof for 108 Euros by e-mail. The whole sangha can write their wishes on one – like the Hamburgers already did.

Lama Ole already wrote his wish on a sealed tile after returning from working in the forest this week – “For timeless growth of our Diamond Way!”. Lama Ole’s other wish that is going to be one of the thousands covering our EC villa:

“May all who stood here obtain every goal!”

Here comes the sun – after three days of monsoon-like rain, we finally dared to take a camera outside to show you the results of the hard work that has been going on regardless of the weather.

Many friends stayed to help after the 2nd build-up weekend, and we have never seen the big tents go up in such a short time. So many people having so much fun together despite being soaked to the bones while putting them up. We are truely amazed at the spirit in this year’s build-up phase and would like to thank everyone who came for their great support and diligence!

And then there was a very special supporter of the work – following a movie night together in the Diamond Room, Lama Ole joined the boys for some serious wood chipping behind the barn. Afterwards he returned to his desk to work on projects like an interview for “Buddhism Today” together with Caty and the team.

Still there is of course looots of work left until the course starts – so please come, put up your tent in the sunshine and join the fun!

On the pictures you can also see the new dishwashing machine for the course. No more bringing your own dishes and cleaning them yourself afterwards – just pick up plate and cutlery and enjoy the service! :)

On Sunday evening Lama Ole arrived at the EC directly after a phowa course in the Czech Republic. He will spend a few project days here before he leaves to Stupkalnis in Lithuania. On Monday we joined him on the walk around our property looking from the highest points of the land onto the Summer course building site. The Lama enjoyed the forest and he showed everybody the places he walked with the 17th Karmapa on his first visit to the Europe Center in 2007. To get the impression see the photos from Anastasia from Russia.

We greatly appreciate that our neighbors and locals from the towns around in general are very open and supportive when it comes to the Europe Center and its activities. To say thank you we organize – already since our first year at the Gut Hochreute – two events: the Neighbors’ Day (with barbeque and cakes, this year baked with love by a group of Danish beauties) and the Classical Summer Matinée with live classical music and a late „Weißwurst-Frühstück“).

It all developed into a lovely tradition. This year, there were more visitors than ever and an amazing concert focused on Italian classics like Rossini. After each piece, the three artists from amongst our Buddhist friends received a great applause and at the end they had to add two pieces before the audience let them go. A relaxed weekend atmosphere amongst friends. Thank you Immenstadt!

Meditation in retreat, running and building up a retreat place were the main topics of last week’s 8th EC Transmission Weekend. Besides meditating together a lot, experienced friends running retreat places e.g. in Spain, Austria, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Greece, Switzerland and Lithuania, shared their experiences and gave advice on how to do a mediation retreat or run a retreat place.

Buddhist meditation shows the mind to the practitioner. It reduces the influence of habits,  expectations, as well as  solidified patterns. A retreat of a few days or weeks tremendously amplifies such results by creating more distance to everyday life. The lack of distraction by daily necessities leads to a deeper and more fluid experience of calmness of mind and insight. Due to the view in Diamond Way Buddhism, shorter retreats and daily life blend together excellently and have beneficial effects on each other. Diamond Way retreat centers enable modern people having family and profession; the combination of activity and meditation. The local friends who uphold the retreat centers are well experienced and skilled people in meditation and have a profound understanding of Buddha’s teachings.

If you would like to know more about the different kinds of retreat, here’s more info: diamondway-buddhism.org.

To give everyone a better idea what’s keeping us busy at the Europe Center everyday, we are going to introduce some of our ongoing long term projects and teams!

With the professional supervision of our resident restorator Beate, Leonie and Max are refurnishing the outer windows and window frames of the monument protected art noveau villa. They were originally painted with oil-based paint, but later a different kind of paint was put on top. This second layer is causing the first one to chip off bit by bit. Therefore all the wooden frames now need thorough treatment: after carefully scratching off the old layers of paint, the wooden parts are being restored – rotten parts are exchanged and cuts and cracks are glued. Afterwards the wood is painted again with oil paint as it was done originally.

When you come to visit the EC, you are very welcome to learn how to do this and join the window-painting task force! ;-) Just ask Beate, who has been taking care of beautifully restoring and preserving our buildings ever since Gut Hochreute became the Europe Center.