I'm pretty confident Steve James had no influence on the decision to expel me from the Liverpool centre. The leader in Liverpool has a pretty inflated sense of his own importance and wouldn't see the need to confide in Steve James or anyone alse. I can't comment on Steve James' influence in other centres.

The famous Phowa injury. A friend of mine who posted on this forum a short while ago, JohnLpool, attended a Phowa course with me in Spain once. At the end, after Ole had identified the mark, I had John take a picture of my head so I could check ... there was nothing. Both John and I agreed that there was no blood, no blister, nothing. I mentioned this to the leaders of the Liverpool centre and they made two comments. The first was that I wasn't qualified to detect or recognize a small cut on my head. The second was that perhaps the sign was 'internal'. In response I commented that I'm more than qualified to know if there is a wound to the top of my own head and that an 'internal' sign was just a smoke screen for the fact that no sign manifested itself. I did Phowa five times and never got the sign and I'm bald so it would be easy to spot. I would like to add though that I found Phowa a very useful experience and do feel that I benefited from the long meditation sessions.

I also attended Phowa with another friend who is also bald and he never got the sign either.

Steve

Quote
SteveLpool
To Puella

I also recall the letter criticising his students for discussing Islam in his centres. I agree with you that this stinks of hypocrisy. Nydahl has been extremely vocal in his condemnation of Islam and in my experience some of his students who are already harbouring racial prejudices see this as an endorsement of their racism. Here is a quote from the same open letter by Shamarpa commenting on Nydahl.
Steve

SteveLpool and Kate thank you for your comments.

SteveLpool more or less in the same time Ole sent the letter criticising his students for discussing Islam in his centres, Tomek Lehnert sent a letter to all diamond way centers worldwide with a photo of a buddhist from Russia. I don't remember whether the name of the man was mentioned but the letter very clearly said that this man was excluded and has no right to enter any of diamond way centers.

At that time they had something like 600 centers and he sent it to all of them, informing a couple of thousands people about this man.

Imagine they did it to someone form Russia. If they have done it to somebody in a different country, there would be human rights issue. But Russian …

I wonder if all of us ex-members have had our pictures sent to all or some of the cult's centres with the made-up allegations of being 'mentally ill' and such that we have had made against us?

So he's happy to say racist things about Islam and other groups himself in his lectures, but doesn't want his followers doing the same in his groups? And obviously doesn't want videos of him making these racist comments on the internet?

Do you by any chance have the letter or know where I could see a copy? Or better yet post it up here for all of us. I'd love to see this letter. It could prove to be very incrimination for Ole and his cult.

News article that has come to my attention: [iengage.org.uk]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2012 10:58PM by ~*~ k a t e ~*~.

hello from psychiatric clinic!
sorry puella couldn't resist to make this silly joke. My experience with DWB is very similar with others who contribute on this forum. I was/am looking for answers and DW organisation fitted me well, similar age of people, charismatic former pot smoking acid taking leader. And of course wild parties.
My love story with DWB finished when i met my girlfriend(Adrienn) who contributed earlier on this forum.We went through really difficult time, she was trying to show me what issues this organisation has and I , on other hand, was trying to defend the organisation. But slowly bit by bit i started to see how things really are.
and that really shocked me. phone calls from"friends" giving me hints about how Adrienn on purpose was trying to disturb Karmapa's empowerment in London (it was in one of South Bank venues not in Royal Albert Hall as Adrienn mentions in her post. may be one day Karmapa will have that many followers in UK that he will need RAH to fit them there.)
And yes so called friends,not many stayed in touch after Adrienns and our little girls exclusion from the centre. ( That time she was just one year old).
it was very peculiar situation,Daffydd Morris caught a moment when no one else was around us apart me Adrienn and little daughter.
"You two are not welcome in the centre- said Daffydd, My question straight away was " what did I do Daffydd that you are kicking me out".
"No, you can stay".
"So you are kicking out a small child from the centre which is not even your centre and no one appointed you as a leader?"
"Yes"- was his answer.
Few days latter we got a Daffydd's e-mail saying that Adrienn is not aloud to attend Lama Ole's lecture which was in London. I had to make a phone call to him and explain that he is not in title to tell Buddhist practitioners who they can or can't see. he was trying to tell me that he can if lecture is organised by his organisation.
to this I told him that he should stop making his own rules.
later i got a message that we are aloud to go to the lecture. Well, we never went, as by that time it was clear what kind of organisation it was.
for me personally this experience with DWB and Ole came out as positive.
I got in to Buddha's teachings even more. I learned to sit for longer. But most importantly i understood something, not all Buddhist organisations are about Buddhism some of them are about anything else but Buddha's teachings.
My phowa experience is just excellent, long hours concentration on nature of ones mind really interesting thing. Talking about a sign on top of my had, I did not see it but people told me that i have it and i accepted that as a truth. I can not know if phowa will work in time of my death i will see and let you know :)))
I red someore today a comment,
" My personal guideline when trying to determine whether a denomination is a cult or not is that if the group itself has to spend a significant portion of its time explaining to prospective and increasingly disgruntled members why it is NOT a cult, it is."
I like that.
On funny note, as we know Ole travels a lot , does he ever used "fly Emirates" or any other Arabic airline?

Quote
dariusb
And yes so called friends,not many stayed in touch after Adrienns and our little girls exclusion from the centre. ( That time she was just one year old).
it was very peculiar situation,Daffydd Morris caught a moment when no one else was around us apart me Adrienn and little daughter.
"You two are not welcome in the centre- said Daffydd, My question straight away was " what did I do Daffydd that you are kicking me out".
"No, you can stay".
"So you are kicking out a small child from the centre which is not even your centre and no one appointed you as a leader?"
"Yes"- was his answer.

Dariusb, that's what they do. That is a deliberate strategy to split a couple, family or a friendship by excluding one person and telling the other one that he/she can stay. In this way the excluded person is deprived of any kind of support, even from the closest environment.
This is what you can call a crime of white glove. The ploy is: if the closest friends, family or partner of an excluded person decide to choose religious obedience over supporting their dear ones that constitutes a definite proof that the excluded person was mentally ill.
I congratulate you that you were able to stand by your woman but trust me not everyone had such strength.

If I am correct about timing, soon after Daffydd Morris excluded Adrienns he became a diamond way buddhist teacher.

@ puella
If I am correct about timing, soon after Daffydd Morris excluded Adrienns he became a diamond way buddhist teacher.

do you mean that Daffydd became TT (travelling teacher)? He was already TT that time .
I don't think they can be called Buddhist teachers ,for very simple reason, they are part of school of TB and to become a teacher one needs adequate training and most of TT do not have one. Most of them became TT just because they have been long time with DWB or Ole saw them fit to propagate his line of teaching.
I can't deny that some of TT were quite educated in the teachings but most just repeated Ole's words over and over again.
I remember once in " South centre" Daffydd was giving a lecture, i don't remember what was the topic exactly, and he said something about mind, that all there is just play of our mind or something similar and Peter( i think it is the same Peter who contributes on this forum) asked him why mind is like that. i could see that this question made Daffydd cross and confused, his answer was " because it can".
But the answer like that implies some kind of believe that a mind is some independent thing and separate from us?

Different story;
I and some polish guy( sorry i do not remember his name ) were discussing just seen one of Oles videos. In that video Ole was talking about his political views( Islam Muslims etc.) and that really intelligent polish guy asked me and others, " so when does he speak as a Buddhist teacher and when does he speak as concerned citizen?"
"I think he is mixing up both same time"- added that guy.
In that moment we all around him tried to explain how wrong he is and how he does not understand Ole. I did not know that this cleaver Polish guy had a degree in philosophy.
Why i shared this story? just to show how simple it is to take someone's words for granted and not to apply any critical thinking especially if one is a leader of a organisation.

Quote
dariusb
" so when does he speak as a Buddhist teacher and when does he speak as concerned citizen?"
"I think he is mixing up both same time"- added that guy.

If Ole was a concerned citizen he should start a political party.
As far as I know one can start a political party in a country he/she is a citizen of.
Now, Ole is a Danish citizen and most probably he cannot get any other citizenship, even if he wanted to, because he has got a criminal record. Therefore he can only start a political party in Denmark. I know little about Danish law on political parties but the question is whether a person with a criminal record can start a party. Most probably yes, but can such person be a candidate and so on. I mean if you become a public person in a political life, your criminal record also becomes public. Few people will take you seriously if you have one.

It's different for a religion though. If people think you are a god, few will bother whether you have a criminal record or not.

Heh heh.

In Kaygu, one of the legendary heroes of the lineage started out as a black magician and murderer and ended up becoming a heroic practitioner.

Milrepa

And all sorts of scary ass local demons have been re-imaged in all the Vajrayana lineages and turned into Dharmapala--Dharma protectors.

Point is though, Milrepa did heavy penance and lived under the tutelage of a guru for a long time.

Very different from Ole scampering aroung loose.

Milrepa put away his bad magic and went on a totally different trajector.

We havent heard of Ole putting aside his childish toys or --out bursts.

[www.lama-ole-nydahl.org]

[www.lama-ole-nydahl.de]