EC Blog Archive for the ‘EC Event’ Category

The sun was shining all through last sunday’s 3rd Classical Music Matinée under the art nouveau arcades of Gut Hochreute. Six great artists took us on a musical journey to the “New World” with their virtuoso performances, inspired by the 4th of July – American Independence Day.

The four stringplayers of the “Rossini Streichquartett”, pianist Fabio Ceroni of the Munich State Opera house and stunning mezzosoprano Sibylle Wolf gave sweeping performances of e.g. Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” or Gershwin’s famous “Rapsody in Blue”.

The matinée has become a wonderful EC tradition of winding up the statue exhibition with a cultural highlight for the region. We celebrated both with lots of homemade cake and coffee afterwards and are already looking forward to next year’s exhibiton and matinée. Many thanks to all the friends who made this such a joy and big success!

By meike

Last week many friends from Reutlingen came to kick off our first “ECtropy up!” weekend. “ECtropy up!” is a concept of special work’n’joy weekends organized every couple of months at the Europe Center. The aim is making the EC facilities nicer, cleaner, more useful and organized and saving some money by reusing or selling unused material. And of course, we don’t forget to meditate and have fun.

The Reutlingers cleaned our garden house and built a beautiful and safer bridge to make it more easily accessible for guests. Some of them did a great job inside the villa hosting our neighbours on Saturday and helping with the housekeeping and cooking all weekend long while others worked in the forest or the courtyard. Even the road leading up to the EC improved thanks to them – they filled up all the pot-holes caused by the large amounts of rain during the last weeks and cleaned the drainage system along the roadside.

If you would like to join us individually or with your Sangha friends for working and having fun at the Europe Center, please let us know by sending a mail to join@europe-center.org.

By meike

We spent a wonderful day with our local friends from the surrounding farms and villages last weekend. Our neighbours came up to Gut Hochreute for homemade cake, a chat and listening to Beate and Manfred giving two virtuoso musical performances. Of course our guests also got a guided tour of the statue exhibition (open to the public until 04 July, every Sunday 3-5 pm). Some came up with very useful suggestions for the new building after Caty and Philip presented the architects‘ models.

It was a great opportunity for all of us to get to know each other a bit more and to exchange experiences and views. And most of all – for us to say „Dankeschön!“ („Thank you!“) for all the support, openness and warmth our neighbours have shown towards us and the Europe Center during the past years.

We‘re looking forward to welcoming them and hopefully a lot of you again for our Classical Music Summer Matinée under the beautiful EC arcades on 04 July!

By meike

Last weekend friends skilled in statue filling from many countries – even Australia, Canada and New Zealand – met for the second time here at the EC. They exchanged their knowledge and joined efforts to fill around 80 beautiful buddhist statues within just 48 hours.

By meike

The weekend grand finale

(This is a 2nd part of the report from the Russian week. 1st part can be found here.)

From our Russian reporter: Lots of friends joined the Russian week finale on Friday evening and Saturday.

Tolek Sokolov’s Friday lecture was followed by a weekend-opening party at the Bau café. Around midnight, a surprise performance of Russian folk-dances spiced up the party with elaborate traditional costumes and dancing figures (see the video below). Russian sense of humor continued on Saturday during the Russian culture festival. We meditated, worked outside and organized “master-classes” in Russian singing, dancing and cooking.

The cultural highlight of the weekend came on Saturday evening with the concert of a Western Siberia band Drugiye Dyady from the city of Barnaul. They traveled about 6000 km to play their amazing groovy jazz-rock to a great delight of all the 240+ dancing and applauding spectators, including many Immenstadt locals. After 3 joyful and energetic hours of performance they handed the night over to Russian DJs sets.

From the EC team: What do add? During their week at the EC, our Russian friends generously hosted many Austrians, Belgians, Belorussians, a Brazilian, Czechs, Danish, Englishmen, French, Germans, Latvians, a Pole, Scotsmen, Swiss, Ukrainians and a Venezuelan. But in accord with the week’s motto it became clear, that although our passports may be different, there is a bit of a Russian in each of us

Thank you for the great week and many new east-bound connections with the EC!

PS: We started to experiment with videos along with the popular photos on our EC blog. Enjoy the first two!

Russian folk dance in the Bau Café

Drugiye Dyady in Immenstadt

Pictures

By Martin

From our Russian reporter: Most of our Russian group arrived to the Europe Center on April 31st but our journey started already a few days before in Berlin. There, as an unofficial start of the Russian invasion to the EC, we organized a party for the Big Moskovsky – the new Moscow Buddhist center project. It was our response to the Mila center party in December 2009 in Moscow.

At the EC, we were warmly welcomed home by the residents and soon after we received a direct transmission of how the center works and how to take care of the houses since we are in charge for its functioning during the whole week. Our Russian group took the responsibility for the cooking, the cleaning and taking care of the newcomers and guests. We also prepared and organize the program under the motto: Are you all Russians or what? This was the questions everyone who liked to visit our program this week had to answer while meditating, working and getting to know more about the Russian mind & culture.

Since the start of the week on May 3rd, we are exchanging a lot – the Russians made a presentation of the new center in Boyarsk on the Baikal lake and the new Moscow center and the EC team Beata explained about the history of the houses and presented what was going on at the EC last 12 months and what is planned for future. Marina Viller and Olga Komarova made a lecture about the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje’s tour through Russia in 2009. On Friday, one of the first traveling teachers in Russia, Tolek Sokolov, made a lecture about the history of Karma Kagyu Buddhists in Russia which has its roots in traditional Buddhist regions like Kalmykia in the 14th century.

But the Russian week is not over – there is still the whole weekend program, including a concert in Immenstadt, ahead of us! Come and join in!

By Martin

By the  Lithuanian Sangha

The first joint country weekend was a true success. The Lithuanian sangha is grateful to its Italian friends, who accepted and warmly supported the idea of letting  another  sangha co-organize a country weekend at the EC. We jumped the queue as usual and enjoyed it a lot.

The Lithuanian team arrived on Thursday night thanks to bank holidays back home. We enjoyed a nice relaxed Friday with a group trip to local roller coaster and waited for the Italians with a big Lithuanian dinner, which included 50 liters of red beat soup. The weekend continued with the Italian sangha arriving on Friday night, which one could recognize without leaving the room due to significantly increased sound level.

Together we listened to the lectures of Lithuanian and Italian traveling teachers,  presentations of Diamond Way Buddhism’s development in these two distant countries and enjoyed delicious Italian food. On Saturday night the Italians really proved they do it better, by presenting a real Italian trash party followed by karaoke show and tiramisu.

Two sanghas, that do not usually meet too often, enjoyed coming together and finding out new things about each other (for example where Lithuania really is on the map). And as it was said in one famous movie: “I think this is a beginning of a beautiful friendship!”

By cristina

By the Slovak sangha:

“Only a week after Valentine’s day, our hearts are beating fast again. Not only did we have the chance to take care of our amazing Europe Center and help its wonderful residents & team, but we also had a chance to fall in love with the place, if it had not already happened a long time ago.

Slovak cooks cooked healthy and delicious international meals, as well as less healthy but even more delicious Slovak specialties. Besides eating, we meditated a lot and listened to Dharma lectures by Slovak traveling teachers. Saturday evening was dedicated to the history of Diamond Way Buddhism in Slovakia. One could learn that DWB in Slovakia was born only fourteen years ago in the hearts of karate kids, who got inspired by Lama Ole Nydahl. Instead of working only with their bodies, they started to work with their minds as well. We watched a short movie about Slovak Buddhist centers and an inspiring documentary about a journey some of the Slovak sangha made to Mustang. Later on, we enjoyed some social time together with many surprises…

On Sunday morning, we listened to the last lecture, meditated together and cleaned up after lunch. Some made new friends, some deepened old friendships, and some fell in love. This place is just magic. Coming here, it welcomed us with a huge hug of snow and leaving it, it waved us goodbye with rays of sun.”

By meike

It is Sunday evening and the Europe Center seems completely deserted, despite the few people sipping tea, meditating, wandering around and napping after a long and intensive weekend. At least it feels like it, in comparison to the full house only a few hours ago when the Transmission weekend ended with a common meditation on the 16th Karmapa.

The subject – How I met the 16th Karmapa – presented by friends practicing Diamond Way Buddhism already around 30 years, attracted people from many countries. Not even the true Allgäu-winter conditions with half-a-meter of new snow every day, nor the fact that the provisory limited gompa was packed, would discourage friends to come.

The personal experiences, histories, never-before-seen pictures and videos we shared in the last 2 days brought us all closer again to the great inspiring teacher and yogi of Tibet, H.H. the 16th Karmapa. Through his openness to Western students and the power of his wisdom and joy, he planted the seeds for the rapid growth of the Diamond Way Buddhism in the West.

Even today, almost 30 years after his passing, the 16th Karmapa remains the essential source of inspiration and blessing that materializes in the ever growing number of DWB centers around the world. May we all be inspired by his example!

p.s.: many worked hard to make this event possible but the indisputable heroes of the weekend are all the kitchen-magicians and snow-fighters that made the roads and paths accessible. Thank you, friends!

By Martin

Last weekend friends representing the Europe Center in over twenty countries, so-called EC keypeople, came together to meet and work on topics like the role of the EC in the future and the new EC building project – the new big gompa and living space for residents and visitors. This unique event was opened by Lama Ole and Caty on Saturday morning and continued through the whole beautiful sunny winter weekend. More then 300 computers were connected via streaming from all over the world.

The Mittel-Rhein sangha hosted the weekend and Markus from Finland & helpers cooked. The conditions were all there to work, get inspired, make new friends and have a fun, or simply share a great and meaningful time.

Everybody was very much inspired by Lama Ole’s vision. The big wish is to build in the next three years a new gompa in the barn that fits the needs almost perfectly, a common kitchen on the ground floor of the barn and a new building for living next to it. The motto „Let´s do it again!“ is now in everybody’s hearts and we know we will manage again.

By klara