EC Blog Archive for the ‘Internationality’ Category

Only a week after Lama Ole finished a tour of the Nordic countries, many Danes, Finns, Norwegians, and Swedes made their way down to Bavaria to meet again – this time at the EC for the Nordic Country Weekend.

The weather could not have been more welcoming to the Vikings –  icy temperatures at night and warm sunshine with bright blue autumn skies all day long. The perfect setting for the Finnish “Outside adventure”, which saw brilliant performances in disciplines like wheelbarrow races. ;-)

For the sanghas of the North, it was a nice opportunity to come together, get to know each other, and focus on the exchange of experiences. Denmark is going to celebrate 40 years of Buddhism in the West next year – we learned a lot about the roots of Buddhism in Western Europe this weekend.

Following the wishes of their teacher, H.H. the 16th Karmapa, Lama Ole and his wife Hannah started one of the first Buddhist Centers in the West in their hometown of Copenhagen in the beginning of the 1970s, after returning from meditating and studying Buddhism for years in the East. Karmapa visited the North for the first time in 1974. Leif Andersen, a contemporary witness and international traveling teacher today, shared lots of inspiring memories and showed pictures from these times. Diamond Way Buddhism in the West started in Skandinavia and Graz – with over 600 centers around the world today.

Rounding up an evening of questions and answers with traveling teachers from all present Nordic countries, the Baucafé saw a very joyful party at night – viking style, of course! This did not stop anyone from showing very informative presentations and telling about the ongoings in their home sanghas on Sunday. Even the very young Icelandic sangha sent greetings and a portrait of their meditation group in Reykjavik via video.

It was certainly a weekend of many new friendships and connections – with lots of fun and tasty regional specialities in and in between the lectures and meetings. Inspired by this weekend, the next and from now on annual meeting of the Nordic sanghas was already fixed for next year in Sweden.

Last weekend we had a wonderful experience here at the Europe Center. It was a bit rainy and cold, so we were more than happy to stay inside for a weekend, eager to learn about the masters and mistresses of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

Manfred Seegers kicked off the weekend with the opening lecture. He explained buddhist terminology and told us that at the end of the packed weekend, we should understand what “Kagyu” means, and if not we would need to start again!

On Saturday morning Kerstin Seifert gave the first of two sessions entitled “Indian and Tibetan origins of our lineage”, and gave us an insight into many of the un-named great female masters of the lineage and of what it might have been like to be Buddhist at that time.

Manfred continued in the afternoon, taking us over the mountains from Indian to Tibet and into the time of the Karmapas. On Saturday evening Kerstin and Manfred were joined by Detlev Goebel from “Buddhism Today” for a question and answer session – with a brief interruption in proceedings for the EC to be connected to Poland, Latvia and other countries for a MoreEC evening via live streaming.

On Sunday the amazing duo concluded the weekend with explanations on the meaning of Guru Yoga practice on the 16th Karmapa and its use through our foundational practices. The perfect end to a wonderfully inspiring weekend!

The dedicated work of the past summer months by the EC roof team is coming to an end – half of the new villa’s roof is almost finished and shining. For the other half, which is to be retiled in 2012, we need your wishes!

As you might know by now – it is not “just” a solid new roof. Our EC villa will be covered by your wishes for the benefit of all. All the wishes already made during and around the summer course are now on the roof – thanks to our professional roof expert Edwin and his team, not a single one of them broke in the tiling process. The wishes of our precious teachers like Shamar Rinpoche, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, Lama Toensang and Lama Ole Nydahl were already placed on the very top of the roof in the middle.

You can buy tiles to write your individual wishes or those of your home sangha directly at the EC when you come or you send them to us by mail and we write them on a tile in your name. All money is collected exclusively for moreEC.

A roof tile with your individual wishes:
suggested donation: 2 Euros or more

An edge roof tile for Diamond Way Buddhist Centers, groups and sanghas:
suggested donation: 108 Euros or more
Of course you can buy as many as you like individually or as a center/group.

It’s easy to place your roof tile order:
1) Write down your wishes
2) Send a mail with your group’s or center’s complete contact information, amount of tiles and your wishes to Frauke: moreroof@yahoo.de
2) Please transfer the money to the respective national accounts with the listed here and write only “Spende Europazentrum” as the reason for payment.

And last but not least  – please don’t forget to come as soon as you can to spend some time under a roof that is being built to last longer than 100 years and consists of your wishes.

In case you think we’re blogging a little bit much about tree climbing at the moment… we agree and promise to stop after this post – at least for a while. ;-)

However, the view we had last weekend from the old spruce behind the Baucafé is something we definitely want to share! Equipped with professional climbing gear and well-secured thanks to the expertise of Jürgen and JC, we made our way up the huge tree – it is something close to 40m in height. So hopefully you enjoy the view as much as we did!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, as they say…

Well, it was a few more than just one apple that we shook and picked from the trees in the courtyard today – it was literally raining apples! Turns out there were so many this year that we now have 200 liters of tasty, EC grown apple juice for you to enjoy here. Or take a 5 or 10 l pack home to your friends! Please just ask us before we run out. :)

With Shamar Rinpoche, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, and Lama Ole teaching thousands of students in Southern Germany, Salzburg, Hamburg and Frankfurt during the last weeks, we had some unusually quiet days at the EC.

Those of us who stayed used the time to focus on meditation, work, spending quality time with friends and family and listening to the live streamings from the courses. The golden Allgäu autumn with still summer-like temperatures and lots of sunshine gave the perfect setting for that. Some brave ones are even still going for daily swims in the Alpsee lake! ;-)

Susan and Chris from Calgary in Canada gave us an insight on Diamond Way Buddhism in Canada,  sharing some inspiring photos and stories from past and present. They came to visit the EC, along with a dozen of other friends from different parts of the world after the Salzburg course.

Slowly the focus is shifting to getting the EC ready for winter. The first snow already fell on the neighbouring mountains – or was that the last snow of the past season? ;-) So we will shake and climb the apple trees in the yard, make our famous EC apple juice, and engage in some extensive fire wood chopping this weekend. Come and join if you like, all help is welcome to get our home winter-ready.

The more quiet times will be over again soon anyway. Coming up are the Transmission Weekend about the Kagyu Masters of the Mahamudra transmission lineage as well as the Nordic Country Weekend. If you would like to come for one of these events, please register here.

After he spent three weeks painting the two new pictures for the Villa’s yellow salon and opening the eyes of several Buddha statues, Thangka painting master Dawa from Nepal guided a course for those interested in learning the high art of thangka painting.

Thangka is a “scroll painting”; an ancient art form that primarily depicts images, such as Buddha aspects, or accomplished teachers from history. Tibetans are historically nomadic, and found it easy to transport artwork in a scroll form. A thangka is a complicated, composite three-dimensional object consisting of: a picture panel which is painted or embroidered, a textile mounting; and one or more of the following: a silk cover, leather corners, wooden dowels at the top and bottom and metal or wooden decorative knobs on the bottom dowel.

Dawa’s lecture about the different styles of thangka painting was the start of a whole week of diligent day and night practice in the villa’s dining room and winter garden, which were transformed into ateliers with a view for this purpose. The sky over Immenstadt provided some nice inspiration for the course – dramatic clouds and rainbows…

Below you can see some extracts of the precious paintings work in Karma Gadhri style that Dawa created on the walls of the meditation hall in Karma Guen, Spain.

Dawa was asked by H.H. Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje to teach his students in the West – so we would like to thank him for coming to the Europe Center in order to do this – and hope to welcome him again here very soon!

After the 4th International Summer course with thousands of people on site – back to normal. Whatever that means at the Europe Center… here’s just a few of the things that have been going on during the last two weeks.

We were quite busy dismantling the course with the help of a lot of friends from Poland, Austria, Russia and many more countries (in fact, we were so busy that we forgot to take pictures! ;-) ). Many, many thanks to everyone who stayed to help!

Conça, her daughter Ananda, and Joachim served us the most delicious brazilian sweet specialties, told about Diamond Way Buddhism in Brazil, and afterwards even taught us how to dance the samba!

As part of the moreEC action, Cristina and Henkjan hosted a hilarious quiz night in the baucafé to raise money for the new EC building, and our South-North-American power couple Yomaira and Jeremiah spent days and nights planning the upcoming moreEC action in the Americas.

And last but not least, René and his beautiful bride Romana tied the knot officially at the EC – accompanied by rainbows. The villa’s yellow salon is an official wedding room of the city of Immenstadt for any couple that would like to get married in this beautiful place. Best wishes to the newlyweds from the EC team!

EC villa’s yellow room now shines even more than before – thanks to two new paintings by renowned thangka painter Dawa, Urken Lama from Kathmandu, Nepal.

For the last weeks, our winter-garden, the beautiful ground floor room overviewing the lake, became Dawa’s atelier. According to the wishes of H.H. 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje, Dawa painted two pictures with the auspicious motives of a dragon and a peacock for the oval frames above the doors connecting the yellow salon with the two neighboring rooms.

Dawa is a master of the Karma Gadri style of Tibetan art. He lives with his wife and daughters in Rumtek, Sikkim (India) and is a close student of 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje. The Karmapa asked him to teach this style to students of Diamond Way Buddhism after finishing the project of painting the walls of the large meditation hall in Karma Guen, Spain.

Dawa also “opened” the eyes of several Buddha statues, like the one of Buddha Maitreya visible on the pictures. During the following week, Dawa will host the first thangka painting course at the Europe Center and we are honored to have him here as our guest for even some more days.