EC Blog News & Reports

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

Finally we have a new parking place in front of the EC. In order to create natural borderlines for cars parking up the hill, we planted a dozen of cherry trees – the same way this place looked in the times of the previous house owner.  Our “yard gang” guided by Till, Jürgen, JC and many helpers did a great job. Be prepared for a serious blooming in the spring!

As we want to keep the parking up-the-hill nature-friendly, the number of cars parking up has its limits. The few parking places inside the yard serve for people who live in the houses. Cars that won’t fit on the cherry parking place in front should be always parked on prepaid public parking places in Immenstadt. Visitors coming for busy weekend events can easily use shuttle service we always organize. While registering for an event, don’t forget to write down the shuttle phone number to call to be picked up. Unless, of course, you enjoy nature walks – the short one up to the EC offers the best lake & waterfall views…

By klara

Many visitors from around the Immenstadt came for our statue exhibition opening last Sunday. Six guided tours were led through the villa by some of our experienced travel teachers. Even though the weather was quite cold, the visitors found their way up to the Europe Center on the hill above the lake Alpsee, Immenstadt. They enjoyed the exhibited Buddhas in the art nouveaux athmosphere, as well as coffee and cake in our construction café and lots of information about buddhism, the villa and us.
The statue exhibition is still to be seen every Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. until 4th of July when we have the traditional classical Summer matinee. One hour guided tours will be offered at these times every half hour.  You are all welcomed to come and enjoy.

By klara

I GO EC is the name of a new project, which was inspired by Lama Ole´s wish to be involved more in international activites. The same way as the Hamburg sangha, that comes to the EC every six weeks, the Czechs decided to organize regular weekend trips. For all friends without cars and also those who want company on the way, the Czechs scheduled a line Brno – Prague – Pilsen – EC and back every two months. There will always be two vans leaving Brno on Friday evening and coming back on Sunday night. This weekend was the pilot one, and it already brought nice success – at the end of the weekend friends did not want to leave the EC and some were immediately trying to find ways to stay here longer or come more often.. simply I GO EC!

By klara

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

With a little delay in posting and big thanks to Vienna sangha, who participated in organization of the event, we are here with the blog from the 5th Transmission weekend!

Whole event started with Friday evening lecture about the transmission of Buddhist art from East to West. As the topic of the whole weekend was quite vast, therefore a basic overview of how Buddhist art and symbolism came to the West was needed.

Saturday morning was dedicated to explanations of the statues, especially the clay statues from Braunsweig or Ladakh. In the afternoon we went into depths of  meanings of  symbols used on thankas, usually connected with meditation practices  in Buddhism. Whole day was rounded by many questions and answers as well as several stories.

On Sunday morning we got the transmission of how thankas are made, especially thankas used in our centers which are mainly made in Karma Gadri style. Despite the fact that deep meaning of symbols is only explained by one’s teacher in connection with particular yidam practice, a knowledge gained during this weekend will certainly help us for better understanding the goal of all Buddhist symbols – understanding the nature of our mind.

By klara

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

The tone for the Swiss weekend was given among other things by the following message: “Dear all:-)) short reminder: bring a little bit of your favorite “schocki” with you to Allgäu for our friends from around the world “. We responded accordingly and as a result, on every table of the Europe Center, chocolate appeared as if it came from the horn of abundance.

The activity planning was prepared in advance. Each one of the bigger centers would take care of one of the meals. There would be lectures by our Swiss teachers: Anne, Markus and Matthias; the Swiss centers would present their projects; Amden would have a special presentation and Alain and Päddu,  our Bernese DJ’s, would animate the party on Saturday evening at the Bau Café.

But the Swiss can be flexible as well. The weather was gorgeous and roses, flowers and trees had to be planted! What else to do? The plan was dropped and we did what was needed to be done with a lot of pleasure.

The menus were typically Swiss. On Saturday evening the centers presented their projects and talked about their history: Bern presented its new G14 house; Basel, St. Gallen and Zurich talked about their newest plans. The friends from Luzern offered us “Vo Luzärn gage Wäggis zue” accompanied by a guitar and the typical rocking movement.

In the evening at the Bau Café the DJ’s Päddu and Alain, as well as our bartenders from Amden: Mona, Corinne and René animated the party with good music, drinks and fantastic Swiss “Bergkäse”.

On Sunday, big cleaning action, more planting and a video of the Swiss Stupas rounded the weekend up. It was a fantastic experience. We are all looking forward to repeating it again soon.

By cristina