Four weeks of meditation retreat came to an end with Lama Ole’s departure for his tour of Hongkong, Australia, and New Zealand on Wednesday – we think that these impressions from the last weeks of February do not need further comment. ;-)
One evening of the February book retreat, Lama Ole and Caty met the teams working for and contributing to the Munich Buddhist Center as well as the smaller meditation groups situated close to Munich: Dachau, Munich South-East and Murnau.
It was Caty’s idea to get together in the Diamond Room in order to see the smart and often also new faces of the people who are right now active in the sangha. Plenty of teams with fresh and motivated members reported about their main activities and tasks, e.g. the centers’ program, the Dharma shop, library, translation, cleaning and maintenance of the house or finances and many other voluntary activities.
Everyone got a chance to ask questions related to their work in the teams. Furthermore, Lama Ole and Caty got to know the people guiding the meditation and giving introductory talks, supported by the 13 traveling teachers asked by Lama Ole to teach Buddhism who live in Munich. This also illustrates the beneficial and well-functioning mixture of experienced Buddhists and new sangha members which can be found in all the teams.
Finally and with great joy, the Munich Sangha presented to Lama Ole a check for moreEC from the financial surplus of the center’s activities before Lama Ole gave blessing to everyone present to round of a very inspiring evening.
by the Munich Sangha
Stupas are Buddhist monuments symbolizing the enlightened mind as well as the life of Buddha. They can be found all over Tibet, and many have been built in the West over the last decades, e.g. in Spain, Greece, Germany, Russia and Austria last year.
Every stupa contains relics and a “life tree” covered with mantras – the heart of a stupa. This central axis stands for different aspects of the wisdom of a Buddha. As with every element of a stupa, there are certain requirements concerning which tree is suitable to be used as a lifetree. According to the detailed traditional instructions, Lama Ole chose a tree from the EC forest during his February book retreat for the next stupa to be built in Europe this summer.
After the “tree action”, there was enough time to celebrate this special day together on the snowy hills of the Europe Center grounds.
Here’s an insight on what the ongoing book retreat up on the second floor of the EC villa looks like.
In book retreat for the whole month of February with the exception of two weekend courses in Prague and Heidelberg in between, Lama Ole, Caty, and Maike Weigelt are working the whole day on a new book about the main meditation practices of Diamond Way Buddhism in the West – e.g. the Foundational Practices (Tib. ngöndro) or the Meditation on the 8th Karmapa. They are an experienced book-writing team: Maike types in the remarks and additions which Lama Ole is writing by hand into the explanations he wrote many years ago, while Caty is editing. This way it is possible to work on several chapters at the same time. The outcome will be a modern elaboration on all our main meditations, fit especially for lay practitioners in the Western world.
From time to time, Lama Ole takes a short break from writing to guide the morning meditation, to help with the work outside, or to answer his students’ questions in the evenings.
We are often asked about the differences of book retreats and project days. On project days, Lama Ole usually has many different activities during the day. He writes articles, makes phone calls, answers emails, gives interviews, or meets with teams working on different projects worldwide. Writing a book requires more one-pointed focus and uninterrupted working atmosphere for days or even weeks. Other work then slows down to minimum, reserved usually to late night after-hours.
Halfway through Lama Ole’s book February book retreat , here’s a glimpse of some the activity that has been going on and continues to go on.
To get the most out of these weeks for everyone visiting the EC, traveling teachers are guiding a meditation retreat in the Lama’s power field, with four meditation sessions per day. At the same time, Lama Ole has enough uninterrupted time to focus on writing the book together with Caty. The book will be about the different meditation practices of Diamond Way Buddhism. Before Lama Ole started to write, he gave a lecture about the meditation on the 16th Karmapa and spontaneously guided the morning meditation. The transcript of the lecture is now being used for the book.
In between the meditation sessions and meals everyone participating helps with the housekeeping, outside work, or restoring the villa for an hour; and of course there is also time to enjoy the EC winter wonderland.
In the evenings there is time to chat with friends from all across the globe, ask questions and listen to Dharma teachings. Guido and Florinda from Austria talked about Love and Partnership from a Buddhist perspective. The following night, Lama Ole decided to leave his desk for a few hours to join his old friends Pedro and Dorrit, recalling how the 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje came to the West as a child. There was so much to tell and so many memories to share that Pedro spontaneously gave a second lecture the following afternoon.
The meditation retreat will continue for the duration of Lama Ole’s book retreat.
A kind of state of emergency happened at the EC lasting about 36 hours: During the book-retreat a heavy gale swept through the Allgäu region and brought more than one meter of fresh snow.
Despite four meditation sessions a day and the intense bookwork, friends from all parts of the world tirelessly shoveled the masses of snow from morning until night. Lama Ole joyfully insisted on taking part, interrupting his bookwork several times and ploughed through the snowdrifts in his familiar powerful manner.
Supported by a snowplough and a wheel loader that kept the road free and pushed the piled up snow heaps to the sides, most of the visitors could arrive or depart without too big problems, also without getting stuck. Regardless the heavy storm which whipped into one’s face, made the clothes white and the neighboring shoveler disappear behind swirled up snow clouds, everybody’s mood was excellent – and for many a unique experience! As a nice close to the day, Lama Ole guided the evening meditation and then watched an exciting movie together into the night.
— by Pit Weigelt
Taking a short break from writing a new book about meditation in Diamond Way Buddhism, Lama Ole and Caty went for a walk up the mountain with the guests at the EC – enjoying the sunshine and the view across Allgäu at Siberian temperatures around -25° Celsius.
Lama Ole quite frequently spends his project days at the Europe Center. Therefore we worked on a concept to get the most out of those days and weeks for everyone.
On the one hand, we need to make sure that the Lama and his team have enough time to focus on writing books or articles, answering his students’ mails or working on other projects that need very focused attention. On the other hand, many friends come during those weeks and we want them to get the most of what the Europe Center is about – connecting on a worldwide level and meditating and learning together.
Frank Huhn was asked by Lama Ole to teach Buddhism many years ago and kindly agreed to guide the first open meditation retreat during the project days. With an average of approximately 80 people on site each day, we practiced together up to five times a day, listened to lectures and talks in the evening and had lots of time to exchange during the meals and in between the sessions.
In between work, Lama Ole found the time to guide meditations and give blessing, as well as for a moreEC movie night in the Diamond Room. He answered questions in personal interviews for hours and started a 12 hour meditation on the 16th Karmapa before leaving for lectures in Poland, Austria, Slovakia and Greece.
Actually – there is no business as usual at the EC. Every day is different and brings all kinds of challenges on many levels. So we caught up randomly with just some of the activity going on all over the place to give you some impressions.
Olena from Ukraine for example spent most of the time organizing her home country’s moreEC via the internet. Ewa and Janosh spent days carefully restoring some walls in the villa, while others wrapped our moreEC “retreat huts” for the New Year’s course in Hamburg.
Leonie, Alexandra and Ilona took care of bookkeeping and guest registration in the office, Frank gave explanations on meditation practice in the Yellow room, and our EC electrician Jörg fixed some lamps in the basement of the villa.
Bernd, Jürgen and Frank brought our Christmas tree inside. And – to really get us into a holiday mood – it also finally snowed. A lot!
The snow team ploughed the snow on the road and in the courtyard with the tractor several times a day to enable the cars to go up and down from Immenstadt. The heavy snowstorm loosened a metal board on the roof – so JC climbed up to fix it.
Besides all these activities, of course we also found the time to meditate in the cosy gompa and enjoy winter outside. To warm us up again afterwards, Sonia, Frauke and Henkjan cooked a delicious Italian dinner – for everyone to enjoy some time together before the holidays and to raise some money for moreEC.
Happy holidays from the EC team to everyone
One of the EC Sangha’s annual holiday traditions is taking a cosy evening to sign the EC New Year’s cards together. They are sent to each of the over 600 Diamond Way Buddhist Centers as well as several teachers and friends worldwide – that makes it just about 800 cards to sign. ;-)
We left a blank space on the cards for a good reason. Finally arriving home after a delayed journey back from South America, Lama Ole and Caty decided to ignore their jetlag and diligently signed every single one of the cards. While signing, they shared some stories from Lama Ole’s recent tour through North and South America.
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