EC Blog Archive for the ‘EC Event’ Category

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!

By alex

Once again whilst many guests enjoyed the beauty and richness of the statue exhibition in the villa, a group of friends skilled in statue filling got together in the Diamond room. For the third year they  met  in the EC to exchange their knowledge and joint efforts to fill many statues from friends around the world.

Statue filling is an ancient Buddhist discipline with its own very special transmissions and knowledge. Tibetan Buddhist statues embody a profound symbolism that goes far beyond purely artistic expression. The statues serve as inspiration for meditation practice and thereby function as a key to opening deep layers in the meditator’s subconscious.

By ecteam

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.

By meike

Last night Maike Brill and Anthony Smith from Canberra, Australia, gave a wonderful example of how entertaining fundraising for the new building of the Europe Center can be – and certainly will be this year!

The two artists are currently touring Germany – it was Maike’s own idea to “stop by” on their way and give a concert in Immenstadt for the benefit of the EC. The “Barock Keller” was the perfect location to enjoy their special blend of classic cabaret, Portuguese fado, German songs of the 30s and contemporary masterpieces. The audience was visibly overwhelmed by Maike’s passionate, intelligent and totally uninhibited singing of songs by artists from Marlene Dietrich to Tom Waits.

If you would like to organize a concert event with Maike and Anthony in your town for the benefit of the EC — please send a mail to join@europe-center.org.

And soon…. it’s YOUR turn! There surely won’t be any boundaries for your creativity in fundraising for the new gompa and living space. We are looking for your ideas! MORE EC !

By meike

Thanks to the Ulm and Stuttgart sanghas’ activity last weekend, the Europe Center is shining even more now! Maybe also a little bit extra-inspired by Pit’s lecture on Bodhisattva activities on Friday night, they pretty much proved all those concepts about Germans being the most thorough cleaners on the planet to be quite true. No lamp was too high up, no window too far out(side) and no spiderweb too invisible to be spotted immediately by their eagle eyes!

However, they still had enough energy to chat and party the night away in the Baucafé, together with the EC sangha, Bernward, Holm and the Bavarian press group working in the Diamond Room Gompa over the weekend.

If anyone ever thought cleaning was boring – everyone present at the EC last weekend now knows one thing for sure: it can also be a whole lot of FUN!!!!!

By meike

A couple of days that were supposed to be the Polish Country Weekend at the EC turned out to be a weekend course with Lama Ole – organised by Poles!

Polish friends step by step were taking over the Europe Center many days ahead of the planned weekend. Due to the registration process, we knew that there would be plenty of friends arriving not only from every part of Poland but also from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, England, Ireland, France and Germany. On Friday evening, after a wonderful welcome at the EC, we had a chance to taste a delicious Polish dinner. Afterwards everybody gathered in the big gompa tent for presentations of some Polish retreat centers, city centers and buddhist projects. To the great astonishment of many, Lama Ole, who was in book retreat at this time, joined us and made memorable comments during the Kuchary retreat center presentation: “It was from here where all the Buddhism in Eastern Europe and Russia started.” After greeting everybody and wishing us a very good evening, the Lama left and Tomek Lehnert started a lecture: “Teacher-Student-Relationship – my 20 years on the road with Lama Ole and Hannah”. Late at night, after the lecture, many friends joined the „Take It Easy” Kick-off party featuring a beatbox concert by Blady Kris and we enjoyed it to great extent.

Saturday morning started with a common meditation on the 16th Karmapa. After that everybody enjoyed having breakfast outside, since the weather was unusually sunny and warm. Later on we listened to the inspiring Caty who was telling about the Europe Center and the plans for its development. After a traditionally Polish cuisine lunch everybody gathered in the tent because the most important part of the weekend was about to start: „The History of Diamond Way Buddhism in Poland” Part 1. Polish travelling teachers: Mira Boboli, Maggie Lehnert, Wojtek Lehnert, Wojtek Tracewski, Rafał Olech, Włodek Wiszka and Marcin Barański together with Wojtek Kossowski and special guest Ania Czapnik were describing the very beginning of Buddhism in Poland. Another great surprise happened – our wonderful Lama Ole decided to spend more time with all of us. He joined us not only during the afternoon session but also he gave a lecture in the evening. Wonderful! Spontaneity is one of Polish distinctive features – therefore the whole day schedule was immediately changed. It was not the only time, as we all were to find out later. During the Lama’s evening lecture we had many friends here and Lama Ole’s last sentence that night was: “So what do I have in the program tomorrow? Bodhisattva promise and blessings?”. We couldn’t believe it We finished the day with a great party and an auction where many friends shared their generosity and donated some money to support the EC. The party powered by DJ Romero went on until early Sunday morning

After a late breakfast on Sunday morning there was a presentation of a great exhibition “Buddha Travelling West”, which we prepared especially for the EC. Afterwards all of us gave the Boddhisatva promise. It was very touching experience for all of us. Lama Ole gave a short speech. What made the strongest impression was one of the Lama’s sentences: “The active patience means to travel very far away to meet your teacher”. The blessing afterwards lasted till 6 p.m. Everybody who was visiting the Europe Center for the first time got a great gift – a set of relics from many European initiations – which were given out in 2008 during the first International EC Summer Course.

All of us were totally amazed by everything that happened this weekend and now the EC is a familiar place for all of us. We would like to visit the Europe Center as often as possible. It is much closer then we thought. See you soon!

The Polish Sangha

By hubert

On the last weekend in March, the Europe Center hosted a unique cross-field event, mapping the exciting intersection between Buddhism and Science. Within the frame of the 7th Transmission weekend, these two ways of understanding reality were presented by Traveling Teachers who are also scientists, supported by a few dharma friends, themselves working in different fields of science. We started off with a look on how both Buddhism and Science use reasoning and evidence to support their explanations. The Buddhist philosophy and logic has developed continuously over the 2450 years of its existence, often being directly confronted with other world views and religions. Science evolves through its never-ending self-disproving cycle, where each generation of scientists replaces the existing theories with their new, more accurate models and concepts.

Over the weekend, we then explored neuroscience and psychology—especially in relation to meditation—with Dr Peter Malinowski (UK), Jean Paul Pozuelos (Spain) and Michael Fuchs (Germany), physics and mathematics with Dr Matt Huddleston (UK), Mag. Guido Czeija (Austria), Dr Nick Neshev (Bulgaria) and Dr Rene Staritzbichler (Germany). Over 20 researchers also presented their work at Saturday’s “market place” with their posters filling most of the Diamond room walls. At the end of the event we even touched the exponentially growing world of computer science and artificial intelligence with a brief contribution by Prof Dr Jörg Siekmann (Germany).

And as heaps of papers were filled with dense notes and heads with fascinating facts, new friendships and bonds were formed while meditating and socializing together.

PS: Thanks Daniel & the Frankfurters for keeping the whole crowd well nurtured the whole time!

Photos by Simon Pruciak

By Martin

Last weekend we had a great pleasure to host our precious international traveling teachers, so-called TTs. After the last meeting, they decided to have a even more time together so their weekend started already on Thursday evening. The purpose of the meeting was mainly to get to know each other better, to discuss the challenges in their work and the future.

The TTs also prepared a bunch of questions for the Lama, who video-called them for a session of question and answers from Australia. The rest of us at the EC also enjoyed a lot — especially the long evenings with their stories from traveling around the world. Even for the widely international EC standards, it is not an everyday treat to have teachers from South America, North America, Russia & Europe — altogether from 15 different countries — at one table. And they were not even in a hurry to teach somewhere as usual!

Some of the traveling teachers stayed few days longer at the EC so we used the opportunity for dharma – Wojtek Tracewski, who is a TT for the longest time from Polish TTs, gave an energetic lecture before leaving for his Swiss tour which was a perfect ending of the event. Thank everyone for a wonderful weekend!

By hubert

Modern communication technology knows no distances. The International Travelling Teachers’ meeting at the EC kicked of on Friday with a 90 minute conference call to Lama Ole, who is currently touring Australia. After this “meeting”, the present travelling teachers as well as the Europe Center team were happy to be the first ones congratulating the Lama on his 70th birthday – from the EC Diamond Room straight to Australia’s Gold Coast.

To follow Lama Ole on his way through Australia and New Zealand and to see more pictures of his birthday, please have a look at his flickr page and at the live tour page!

We would like to thank Lama Ole for his tireless and ever inspiring work for the benefit of all – and wish him many, many happy returns!!!

By meike

Looking back, we were quite lucky with the amount of snow we had for our first skiing weekend in February – shortly before there most almost no snow, and afterwards the white magic melted away again as well. It has been a very mild winter in Allgäu this year. Since we all had a wonderful time both inside and outside, we will certainly have another Skiing & Meditation Weekend next year – we only have to decide on the date and which of the hundreds of beautiful slopes surrounding the EC we want to ski or board down!

Our skiing traveling teachers Maxi and Gerhard from Graz in Austria shared inspiring stories of how they started the first western Diamond Way Buddhist center in 1972. After studying Buddhism in the Himalayas, Lama Ole Nydahl for the first time gave people in the West buddhist refuge – the entry into the buddhist path. Ever since then, many high Lamas and Rinpoches visited Graz, a stupa was built – and over 600 centers were founded worldwide until today.

By meike