Re: Ole Nydahl and Diamond Way Buddhism
Date: August 13, 2025 06:36PM
Ole Nydahls intentions seem to take buddhism to people who have jobs and are healthy, so they can function even after taking one of the most extreme spiritual paths, that of 'enlightenment'. The path to enlightenment goes by dropping the E out of your e-go. By this I mean all your energy so you either go crazy, as your ego cannot ground itself in the physical body anymore, or you have enough good content in your mind, so you can make out of the -go, back to a new e-go: the mind that has realized being one with everything inside to everything outside. Thats a good view Ole had for buddhism, so that healthy people could see the benefit of it for their lives. When weak people are put into temples and told too many dharma rules in the ordinary life, it has a recipe for disaster in its hands.
The path to enlightenment is similar to mountaineering on the highest mountains: you need to ascend and defy actual death to get to the summit, the way which goes inside the 'death zone': altitudes above 7000m where you will simply start to die out. Once you reach the top of the Mt Enlightenment -path, you will reach a state of 'oneness', but this is not yet enlightement itself, you still need to descend from this extreme high altitude of your consciousness in your body-mind composition.
Now the descend is the hardest part I would say, especially for the person with weaker genes. It will take more effort on avarage for the Ole Nydahl -type genes person, which is Olympic medal -level genes I would say. For such genes its easier to recover, to harsness back the lost 'E' meaning energy, back to your e-go composition of your being. If you now think this path to enlightenment is simply madness, youre right. Thats how it looks onto the eyes of the capitalist born person, for whom staying at 'samsaras' conditional levels is the most important thing for them to succeed in life on the outer level. It makes no sense for this kind of person, one who is NOT READY TO STEP OUT OF SAMSARA.
If you see this way of entering states of the six realms of the wheel, to gain beyond personal wisdom to 'help all beings' it makes a lot of sense. Only one has to make it all the way: to ascend to the summit of the Mt of Highest Wisdom, by using all of ones energy to the brink of insanity, and then descend and ground ones realizations, while being more in a state of relaxation rather than state of activity to exhausta your e-go, which was the effort to rise your consciousness up.
This is the reason why tibetan medicine or chinese medicine dont go well the way of the style of buddhism that Ole Nydahl teaches: living buddhism. Living buddhism means that one member of the sangha ascends ones consciousness to the top of the Mt Enlightenment and then descends it with equal hardship of descending and grounding it down again to 'sea level' of relative height.
Health must be discarded in vajrayana style practicing, or put inside the slot machine of enlightenment. "One must stake everything for enlightenment if one wishes to reach it" -Lama Ole said this many times. The path of enlightenment is one where you must dare to go sick, 'old age' and ultimately (e-go)-death. Then you do it the otherway around of becoming more and more alive and kicking (hopefully) most disease out of your system. TTM or TCM only is valid on the individual level on the descend part, AFTER one has been to the summit of 'Oneness'.
If a practitioner who doesnt understand this ascending and descending of ones consciousness, for the sake of all beings, they will become the animal in the Mt which cuts means for others to summit it. They will become the voices of capitalist middle income (sorry avarage) dreams, and cut the Mt short. The Mt Enlightenment becomes a Mt Wellbeing and the realization of a Buddha will be forgotten, cos the soft people without full realization doesnt wish to see that the state of a Buddha is not easily reached. Health practitioners wish to see people healthy and happy, a true guru / lama devoted to buddhism, wishes to see their students reach the state of a Buddha.
Buddha can look good, be healthy etc, it depends on who you are as a human being. The activity they show in DWB centers is not one that shows this path, at all, or maeby to some extent and they do try to keep the yogi attitude above any and all mundane ordinary attitudes, like that of health. Once anyone is still at their own journey of the 'Mt' they can look ragged, tired etc.
DWB centers are a front for enlightened activity, the coffee shops if you like, to invite people in get cozy and see if someone actually has the dare and guts to ascend and descend their consciousness into full buddhahood. Most have no chance in doing this in the whole DWB sangha. When someone is hard working on the path and gets dark bags under their eyes, they are told to go off the centers. So when the practitioner sees this happen they might get confused: "Didnt Lama Ole tell us to do more and that you have to go beyond your normal sphere of functioning"? It can be seen as a big punishment, and I agree, I see it as a punishment on some level, if they try to kick you out of the center when youve given all your energy to it, by saying things like "I dont think youre fit to live in the center" etc. This is where the DWB center / group system fails, and tibetan buddhism too: it doesnt state clearly how the path of enlightenment goes. DWB or robed they lack imagination or else, so they could make fool proof analogues like that of mountaineering which is an analogoe that I came up with myself and which is the best for enlightement in the whole world.
When it comes to teaching styles, robed teachers have in their subconciousness that everything but enlightenment is restriction. DWB teachers teach that anything in life can be used towards attaining enlightenment. Its a huge difference between robed and lay teachers in this context. I do agree with Nydahl that the robed monks / nuns shouldnt have much if at all business in the lay yogi centers - they dont know how to live our style of lives in the free west, as simple as that! Their style of 'energy practice' is to sneeze one nostril at a time and then jump up and down on cushion, when western healthy avarage person wants to jump on top of their loving partner, if youre a hetero sexual male. Sports of any kind could apply here, when mostly sitting still is the robed underfed choice, the choice of lack of energy.
16th Karmapa meditation is becoming a bit distorted in my opinion, as it kind of promises buddhahood to everyone and anyone. In reality its extremely rare for anyone in the whole world to reach full buddhahood, although boddhisattvas of varying level of realizations appear here and there. Too bad there seems to be absolutely no-one to fix this, as they have not fundamentally realized themselves the path of buddhahood. They have only listened to the tibetan buddhist style "hey...Shhhhh... come to this corner I have something to show you... NO DONT YOU DARE ASK WHY IM TELLING YOU TO DO THIS!!! OBEY MY WORD!!!!"
The more this cycle will go and go around, the less enlightenment there will be on planet earth.
I have never met anyone be it an elightenment boasting teacher or a yogi mind or whoever, and Ive met a few solid ones, who could tell the path of enlightenment with such simple analogu as the mountaineering example on the highest mt's of our world, but myself. Therefore I truly believe that no-one in this world is truly enlightened teacher no matter how much mindtricks like clairvoyance etc etc they may have in their bags that can trick the avarage person to think its something completely supernatural and beyond their logical understanding.
I wish that this solves some misunderstandings for some people. Enlightenment is not magic, its effort and hardship of ascending the consciousness then descending and grounding it again. Yes, it may sound like a path for the stupid, but thats how it is and any and all Buddhas would like my post if this platform had such gestures. I repeated some parts in hopes that you realize the big effort that is needed to become an actual Buddha.