The 30th Annual Summer Course

/in , /by

It’s been a busy summer, with amazing meditation courses at The Europe Center, Karma Berchen Ling and Karma Guen, but now that quieter autumn has set in at Lolland, we can catch up with our blog again…

As all Diamond Way Buddhists know by now, Lama Ole had surgery on his upper spine early this summer, and was unable to travel for a few months. For us at Lolland, that meant making strong wishes for his speedy recovery, but also a quick reorganisation of the schedule for the upcoming 30th Annual Summer Course.

It was planned as a course on the practice of Guru Yoga, the powerful meditation methods emphasised by our Karma Kagyu teachers, and a few emails ensured that North German teachers Michaela Fritzges and Gerd Boll, adopted Dane Tomek Lehnert, and our resident Matt Balara, agreed to speak on the subject in Lama Ole’s absence.

After four successful building up weekends, everything was ready for around two hundred friends who came from Denmark and Germany, but also as far away as the USA and Argentina, a comfortably cozy course. On the first evening Matt spoke on the teacher/student relationship in Diamond Way Buddhism, the next night Michaela went into detail on the 16th Karmapa meditation, our primary practice, Gerd followed that with an in-depth history of the Karma Kagyu lineage and Tomek rounded it all off with the hair-raising story of smuggling the 17th Karmapa out of Chinese occupied Tibet.

Between lectures there was plenty of time for everyone to meditate in our beautiful gompa or outside around the stupa. On Wednesday we spent twelve hours focussing on the 16th Karmapa mediation, keeping it going constantly with at least one person practicing at all times between 8 am and 8 pm, when Lama Ole joined us over Skype to end the meditation with us and say a few words.

Reflecting the course’s very international nature, Thursday night’s teachings came from a panel of four: Bea and Julia from Germany and Denmark respectively, Lolland’s primary sanghas, as well as John from the USA and Macarena from Argentina, representing North and South America.

And surely anyone who was there will agree: the crowning moment of this year’s course was the completion of the stupa renovation, with Lama Ole participating through Skype. You can read more about it here.

Thank you to everyone who came and made it such a relaxed, joyful and friendly summer course! And whether you came or not, we look forward to seeing you here next year!