Heartbeat Project – Inspiration for your life

Official kick-off of the Heartbeat Project was at this year´s Summer Course. Here you can read what it is about and how the first “heartbeaters” expierenced their stay at Europe Center.

Dear friends, many of you who were present in the Summer Course this year, could see the Heartbeat Project stand among other international projects. The Heartbeat Project supports Lama Ole’s vision of the Europe Center, an International Diamond Way Buddhism project, as a means to keep our global Diamond Way community constantly connected. At the stand, people from all over the world made wishes to visit the Europe Center for a couple of months and bring the spirit and flavor of their local Diamond Way center here. When they return home, they carry their stories and friendships back home. This way, the EC hosts a space to let the bonds of our global Diamond Way family steadily deepen and grow.

Even before the official launch of the project at the Summer Course, we had the honor to welcome our first international friends who were inspired by the Heartbeat vision and sent by their country. They were Alex and Enrique from Mexico, and here they share their experience of staying in EC.

Alex: “I know it may sound like a cliché but the time I spent in the Europe Center thanks to the Heartbeat project literally changed my life.

The impact is obvious: since my return, my personal practice has been as strong as ever, I have become a resident in my local Live-in-Center, I now live with a beautiful German lady I met during my time at the EC and my travel plans have grown significantly.

I come from a small center in Playa del Carmen, in the heart of the Mexican Caribbean. For us, if you want to see the Lama and connect with the world sangha, you have to travel, which considering the strength of our currency, is not always easy.

The Heartbeat project presented a “can’t-miss opportunity”, for although I had the possibility to pay for my own expenses during my 30-day stay in the EC, through the Heartbeat initiative the Mexican sangha worked -and partied- together to gather the money for the plane ticket. Needless to say, my motivation levels were off the roof.

The experience is all about connecting with people, which is pretty easy when everybody welcomes you with a: “Oh! You’re the Heartbeat guy”, a big smile and an open heart.

I strongly recommend getting there willing to do some serious work and to contribute in any way you can. The connections you make working side by side with your fellow bodhisattvas are of the strongest kind. There’s nothing more satisfying than working together for the benefit of others.

The connections made there within one month are so strong that some friends have already visited us in Playa del Carmen, and some of them even agreed to contribute monthly to our small center!

Before visiting the EC, I had the feeling that I was only getting the ripples of the activity generated far away. Spending time at the Europe Center is like standing directly under a huge waterfall where this ripple effect is created. It’s like being connected directly to source, living alongside a strong current producing Buddhism for the benefit of all.

Enrique: “The experience I made in the EC through the Heartbeat Project was something that went beyond any of my personal expectations. An authentic turning point in my life.

Since the first moment I arrived I found not only “good” friends as I anticipated, but a big family with a deep and strong connection, even though almost all the faces were new to me. Coming back after spending a long time away from home and nowhere near your comfort zone is a feeling which is pretty hard to describe, but great to experience!!

Now, the important stuff, my practice! After almost nine years since I started my prostrations, and more than six of being stuck in the last third of the way, what I was really looking for when I accepted the invitation to the Heartbeat Project by Christian, was some inspiration to find the rhythm and persistence in my personal practice… and what I found really blew my mind.

I don’t know if it was the strong energy field of the Lama, the blessing coming from all the never ending activity of all the friends, the thousands of mantras repeated every day in both Gompas, or all of these together (or something else)… but fact is that already a few days after my arrival I was doing three malas of prostrations every single day, as if it was more natural than breathing. Simply amazing!!

I could continue writing pages and pages about my two-months experience, but I think is better to keep it to myself and invite everybody to participate in the Heartbeat Project to write their own story. I’m sure it will be the experience of your life too!”