Diamond Way Buddhist Center Gent

Baudelostraat te Gent.

Here the first public meditation sessions have been organised exactly 20 years ago in November. Lamas Ole and Hannah Nydhal visited us here together with Tomek Lehnert.

Dearest Lama.

In 1972 the 16th Karmapa sent Lama Ole and his wife Hannah Nydahl to teach in the West. They were given the task of teaching and founding Buddhist centers in the Western world in the name of the 16th Karmapa. He empowered them to give the Bodhisattva Promise and to give Refuge, a ceremony where one formally becomes a Buddhist. Lama Ole has given refuge to more than 500, 000 people since then.

Precious Teachers

We are getting pro 😀

On their honeymoon in 1968, Lama Ole and his wife Hannah met the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. The 16th Karmapa asked them to teach Diamond Way Buddhism and meditation in the West, and to found Buddhist centers.
https://lama-ole-nydahl.org/

Dear all!

We are opening our doors back after the summer break on 10th of September for our usual Tuesday’s public meditations at 20:00.

You are very welcome to come and join our group. No preparation is necessary and the sessions are free of charge.

Best regards,
Yours DWBC Gent

In London center

16th Karmapa statue has arrived ❤️

Happy birthday to our Lama, our Friend, our Hero!!! ❤️

8 Karmapa retreat with Andriy Taloshny

Lecture about Diamond way meditation ❤️

Thaye Dorje, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, shares the following message on recent natural and man-made disasters.

Dear Dharma friends,
Like many of you, I also do my best to follow the world news as closely as I can, and the recent weeks and months have seen yet another succession of both man-made and natural disasters – all of which have caused me great concern and sorrow.

Among the many wars raging around the world, the one that has recently erupted in the Near East is particularly worrisome. In the meantime, the armed conflict in Ukraine remains unresolved, with no end to the battling in sight. Moreover, all of these conflicts lead to increasing polarisation and violence even in the West, with countless individuals feeling compelled to take sides and cast blame, and emotions getting ever more heated.

And as if all of that weren’t enough, there is no end to the series of natural calamities constantly hitting all corners of the globe, such as the recent earthquake that struck in the remote area of Jajarkot in western Nepal last Friday night. Over 150 people lost their lives in this disaster, hundreds more were injured and thousands lost their homes and all their belongings. Video footage on local media showed the crumbled facades of multi-storied brick houses, as well as pictures of desperate people digging through the rubble in the dark to pull survivors from the remains of the collapsed buildings – watching these images was truly heart-breaking.

When faced with this constant onset of bad news, it is only human to feel discouraged or even hopeless. As practitioners we might get the sense that our Dharma practice is weak and powerless, since we aren’t able to prevent or even alleviate the suffering of sentient beings.

However, we should always remind ourselves that the Buddha’s teaching was never about escaping or preventing change or suffering – no one will be able to do that, because they are the nature of life itself. In fact, the methods shared by the Buddha are all means to inspire us to fully accept and embrace change – in this way, liberation could be described as the complete acceptance of change.

So therefore, dear Dharma friends, please practice with this in mind. Practice as well as you can, but not with a sense of a burden or a mission. All you need to do is just do your best to use the means of the Buddha Dharma to fully accept impermanence and change, whatever form they may take.

If you can do that, it doesn’t mean that you need to be strong all the time or have all the answers. But simply accepting that life is ever-changing, impermanent, will go a long way towards easing your own anxiety and fear, and this in turn will convey an impression of courage and comfort to all those whose lives you touch, and help calm their own minds and hearts.

And with a calm mind and heart they themselves may also, in time, be able to see through the illusion of permanence and control, and come to terms with the ever-changing nature of life.

I feel that if we can practice in this way, there is no greater help that we can provide to our fellow sentient beings.

With prayers

Thaye Dorje, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa

https://www.karmapa.org/karmapa-on-recent-disasters/

Dearest friends! Starting from 5th September we reopen the meditation evenings each Tuesdays at 20:00.

Please come numerous,

Yours DWBC Gent.

Beautiful Europe Center