Ole Nydahl

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Ole and Hannah Nydahl (2006)

Ole Nydahl (born March 19, 1941 near Copenhagen , Denmark ), also known as Lama Ole , is a lama and founder of Diamond Way Buddhism. He represents teachings of the Tibetan Karma Kagyu school according to Thaye Dorje. Along with the second lineage holder Orgyen Thrinle Dorje, the Diamond Way belongs to the Kagyu School and is one of the four main directions of Tibetan Buddhism . The Diamond Way is aimed primarily at Westerners and hardly plays a role in traditional Buddhist countries. Since the early 1970s, Nydahl has been traveling the world, giving lectures and meditation courses and founding Buddhist centers on the Diamond Way.

Life

First encounter with Buddhist teachers

Ole Nydahl grew up in Denmark, studied English, German and philosophy in Copenhagen from 1960 to 1969 and for a few semesters also in Tübingen and Munich . He passed the Philosophicum with top marks and began a doctoral thesis on "Aldous Huxley and the lucky vision" without completing it.

In 1966 Ole Nydahl met his wife Hannah , who died in 2007 . In search of mind-altering experiences, they used various drugs and smuggled hashish from the Middle East for a while . In 1969 the couple were arrested for drug smuggling. He used the time in pre-trial detention for meditation. In 1970 Nydahl decided not to take any more drugs. The couple had concluded that the drugs were interfering with their meditation experience; in addition, many of her friends at the time had died from drug use. Therefore, Nydahl advises his students against drugs.

The couple went on honeymoon to Nepal in 1968 . There they met the Drukpa - Siddha Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche . In 1969, they traveled to the country for the second time and attended the crown ceremony held by the 16th Karmapa in Kathmandu .

Buddhist training

After the British Freda Bedi became the first western student of the 16th Karmapa in 1960 - she lived in a room directly below the Karmapa in Rumtek Monastery in Sikkhim and became his right hand - and after the 16th Karmapa she and another British woman, Diane Perry, who later became known as Tenzin Palmo , ordained in 1966 and 1967, 9 years after Freda Bedi, Ole and Hannah Nydahl also became western students of the 16th  Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje , the main lineage holder of the Karma Kagyü- School with which they developed a close relationship. They studied and meditated with him for three years. During this time they were also taught by other Kagyu teachers such as Kalu Rinpoche , Künzig Shamar Rinpoche , Jamgön Kongtrul Karma Lodrö Chökyi Sengge, Situ Rinpoche and others. Both also became students of Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche and Künzig Shamar Rinpoche. Ole Nydahl did not conduct any traditional monastic training or 3-year retreats that lamas of the Karma Kagyu lineage usually do.

Diamond Way Centers and Foundation

In 1973 Hannah and Ole Nydahl were commissioned by the 16th Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyu School who died in 1981, to set up centers of the Karma Kagyu lineage in the west. Following the wishes of the 16th Karmapa, Hannah and Ole Nydahl went on extensive lecture tours from 1973 onwards. There are now 679 Buddhist centers or groups of the Diamond Way in Europe (143 of them in Germany), Asia, America, Australia and Africa, which were founded by Ole Nydahl and are known under the name Diamond Way Centers .

Ole Nydahl is co-founder and chairman of the board of the "Buddhism Foundation Diamond Way of the Karma Kagyu Lineage", a foundation under German law. It supports projects around the world such as a library in Karma Guen (Spain), in which Buddhist texts are collected and translated, a retreat site in Altai (Russia) and a center of the Diamond Way in Hamburg. At the invitation of the Olympic Committee, an international team of Buddhist teachers supervised the participating athletes in seven languages ​​for several weeks at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. In autumn 2008 the Diamond Way Foundation organized a statue exhibition in the European Parliament in Brussels: under the title “Timeless Values”, rare exhibits from Tibet, Nepal and India, some hundreds of years old, were shown. In 2007 the foundation established the “Europe Center” in Immenstadt im Allgäu , an international meeting center for Buddhists from all over the world. The aim of the Buddhism Foundation is the worldwide preservation and promotion of the tradition of lay Buddhism, which combines Buddhist meditation practice with family and professional life.

According to the statutes report, the foundation had a capital of 12.5 million euros in 2009. According to Section 12 of the Articles of Association, Ole Nydahl is authorized to issue instructions in all internal matters. The management board consists of a total of six people and is monitored by a supervisory board.

Teaching

Ole Nydahl constantly travels large parts of the world to teach his students and other people interested in Buddhism. Courses on various topics, such as the Mahamudra (Great Seal), are intended to give the audience a deeper understanding of Diamond Way Buddhism. It is important to Nydahl that teaching and meditation texts are largely available to his students in their respective mother tongues.

A teaching passed on by him is the Phowa , a meditation that is supposed to serve as preparation for the hour of death and is therefore also called the meditation of conscious dying in the Diamond Way ; Nydahl gave the first course on this in 1987. In 1972 he had learned this meditation from the Drikung Kagyu Lama Ayang Rinpoche. The Phowa variant taught by Ole Nydahl comes from the Longchen-Nyingthig tradition of the Nyingma school .

Ole Nydahl's students are lay Buddhists who mainly live in the Western culture, since, in Ole Nydahl's opinion, traditional training in celibate, monastic retreat is not very suitable for the Western way of life. This view is not shared by all lamas of the Karma Kagyu lineage and teachers from other Buddhist communities.

The 16th Karmapa certifies Ole Nydahl in letters from 1972 and 1978 the ability to impart the basics of Buddhist teaching and appoints him as head of the European Karma-Kagyu centers. Ole Nydahl explains that Shamar Rinpoche awarded him the title of Lama in 1982, but he does not present any document on his website. In letters from 1983, 1995, and 2006, high-ranking Kagyu authorities Khenpo Chödrak Thenpel Rinpoche and Shamar Rinpoche discuss his teaching qualifications. In the 1983 letter, Shamar Rinpoche confirmed him as a Buddhist master, a title that is not the same as the title "Lama", and certified that he was able to lead meditations and introduce those interested in Buddhist teachings. In the letters of 1995 and 2006, Shamar Rinpoche and Khenpo Chödrak Thenpel Rinpoche confirmed him in response to doubts about the legitimacy of his title as Lama and found him qualified to pass on the Buddhist teachings (Dharma).

During his lectures, Nydahl also makes statements on politics and world events, especially on topics that, in his opinion, receive too little attention. He justifies this with the intention of stimulating thought and awakening in his students a sense of political responsibility, which in his opinion should go hand in hand with the acceptance of Buddhist philosophy.

Among other things, Nydahl warns of global population growth , because this goes hand in hand with a general deterioration in living conditions and a loss of human dignity . Nydahl sees a cultural contrast between Islam and the western society of values. He criticizes an expanding Islamic parallel society and human rights violations through Sharia law and crimes that are carried out in the name of Allah, "the cruel God". In an interview, Nydahl said: “Judaism and Christianity are fine. I warn against Islam. I know the Koran and the life story of Muhammad and I believe we have no use for it in our society ”. He also criticizes the oppression of women in Islam. During the annual meeting of the German Diamentweg Buddhists in Immenstadt im Allgäu in July 2019, several local politicians described Nydahl as “right-wing radical” because of his criticism of Islam. Nydahl protests against accusations of xenophobia and wants his statements to be understood as a criticism of “political Islam”. Nydahl affirmed: In Diamond Way Buddhism there should be “no place for racism and discrimination.” The Kempten public prosecutor found in 2018 that Nydahl's criticism of Islam is protected by freedom of expression.

Since 1999, these teachings have been openly criticized by the German Buddhist Union eV (DBU) because of Nydahl's attitude to Islam, his political statements, his way of speaking, his self-assessment and his relationship with women. There have been direct meetings between both sides since October 2000 and "although different points of view became clear, both sides showed a willingness to learn from the past and to reinforce similarities". At the beginning of 2019, the differences between the BDD and parts of the DBU escalated. In June 2019, the BDD finally announced its exit from the DBU in order to forestall an expulsion.

Burkhard Scherer , himself a student of Ole Nydahl, places the practice of Diamond Way Buddhism and Nydahl in the historical context of the “Essence Mahamudra” of the Indian Mahasiddhas, which is characteristic of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

As part of his teaching activity, Ole Nydahl wrote several Buddhist books, some of them autobiographical, which were published in several languages.

In the Karmapa conflict over the succession of the 16th Karmapa, the lineage holder of the Karma Kagyu lineage, Nydahl supports Thaye Dorje .

criticism

In the context of Nydahl's lectures, he expressed himself hostile to xenophobia and Muslims. Nydahl denied this, but it was confirmed in court proceedings in Vienna that Ole Nydahl "may be accused of xenophobia and the blanket denigration of Islam."

Works

Web links

Commons : Ole Nydahl  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lama Ole Nydahl - pioneer of Diamond Way Buddhism in the West. Retrieved August 14, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Lama Ole Nydahl: His teachers. Retrieved August 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Buddhism Today: The Lineage Holders of the Karma Kaygü Tradition - Part 1. Accessed August 14, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Diamond Way Buddhism: Buddha's Teaching. Retrieved August 14, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Lama Ole Nydahl - The official homepage. Retrieved August 14, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Ole Nydahl: Across all borders: how the Buddhas came to the West . Aurum, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89901-053-1 .
  7. ↑ Ole Nydahl: The Buddhas from the roof of the world , p. 127ff.
  8. ↑ Mackenzie, Vicki 1998. Cave in the Snow: Tenzin Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment. Bloomsbury: New York, p. 96, 138, 139 and http://tenzinpalmo.com/jetsunma-tenzin-palmo/
  9. ↑ Acknowledgment letters for the llama title (Homepage Nydahl)
  10. ^ Search for a Diamond Way Buddhist Center. Retrieved November 9, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Buddhism in Germany: Meditation and Buddha's Teaching - Diamond Way. Retrieved November 3, 2019 .
  12. ^ Diamond Way Foundation
  13. ↑ Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation: Olympic Games  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.buddhismus-stiftung.de  
  14. ↑ Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation: Brussels Exhibition  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.buddhismus-stiftung.de  
  15. ↑ Europe Center
  16. ↑ Annual report 2010
  17. ^ Articles of Association
  18. ↑ Board of Directors and Supervisory Board
  19. ↑ Interview in Diners Club Magazine ( Memento from September 19, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) and Kagyü Life, No. 23 July 1997, p. 36
  20. ↑ Ole Nydahl: The Buddhas from the roof of the world , p. 107
  21. ↑ Ole Nydahl: The Buddhas from the roof of the world , p. 229
  22. ↑ Acknowledgment letters for the llama title (Homepage Nydahl)
  23. ↑ Ole Nydahl on meditation (Homepage Nydahl)
  24. ↑ Lama Ole Nydahl, Controversial, Unconventional Lama, Speaks Tonight ( Memento of the original from June 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.wweek.com
  25. ↑ Diamond Way Buddhism Criticism of Ole Nydahl Islamism reproach. July 31, 2019, accessed August 10, 2019 .
  26. ↑ Lotus leaves 13/1999, No. 4, p. 64f.
  27. ↑ Frank Hendrik Hortz: Is the Diamond Way now flying out of the DBU? , accessed on March 10, 2019
  28. ↑ Declaration of withdrawal of the Buddhist umbrella organization Diamantweg from the DBU eV Accessed on October 8, 2019 (German).
  29. ^ Statement of the board of the DBU on the exit of the BDD from the DBU -Buddhismus Deutschland. Retrieved on July 25, 2019 (German).
  30. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110812232525/http://www.randomhouse.de/author/author.jsp?per=156968
  31. ^ Burkhard Scherer: Interpreting the Diamond Way: Contemporary Convert Buddhism in Transition. in: Journal of Global Buddhism 10/2009, p. 17ff. https://web.archive.org/web/20100613162852/http://www.globalbuddhism.org/contents.html
  32. ↑ Lama Ole Nydahl was already noticed decades ago with racist tones on www.rechtsaussen.de, accessed on August 25, 2020
  33. ↑ After questionable statements, including in Immenstadt: the court considers Lama Ole Nydahl to be xenophobic. Retrieved August 23, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Nydahl, Ole
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish Buddhist, Lama
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH near Copenhagen