This year our annual great Phowa course lasted for a bit more than a week (21 – 30 May). We had around 700 friends from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia.
On 22 May, Lama Ole Nydahl gave an introductory teaching in Malaga in a full hall with 600 people on the reasons why Buddhists are happy. The next day, in Karma Guen he started the course on Conscious Dying (Phowa), a practice considered among the highest Buddhist practices one can still obtain today.
27 May marked the anniversary of the Enlightenment and Parinirvana of Buddha Shakyamuni: while H. H. Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje also celebrated this auspicious day in New Delhi, we all went to the spectacular Benalmadena Stupa, where Lama Ole gave a teaching in the morning and Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche gave a special, short form of the Mahakala empowerment in the afternoon.
For the next three days back in Karma Guen, Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche was teaching from his book titled The Path to Awakening, a commentary on Je Chekawa´s Seven Points of Mind Training, a practical teaching package on how to incorporate Buddhist practice in daily life while changing our habits of understanding reality. By encouraging us to ask questions, Shamarpa facilitated an interesting and stimulating dialogue.
Meanwhile, we also had many activities: we set forth the highly successful We Create Our Karma... Guen! programme, celebrated the construction of our big kitchen, and created a meeting place for projects such as ITAS, KITS, Karmapa´s Healthcare Project, and Himalaya Hilfe among others.
Once again, thank you all for coming and making the Karma Guen course possible. A special thanks to all our friends from the TEAM!
See you next year!
