Re: Ole Nydahl and Diamond Way Buddhism
Date: June 05, 2009 06:07PM
Yes Tomek Lehnert is the third one, according to my knowledge, but there is also certain Gergö (if I got his name right) from Budapest, who is also high ranking. Plus I believe Ole has a new girlfriend - she looks very much like Hannah did. So there are more possibilities now. Tomek will probably not outlive Ole - and I do not wish him any wrong, but his health state is not very stable. In that case he will be replaced either with Gergö or with Pedro Gomez.
The organization has become quite a structure by now. There are three levels of traveling teachers, of course with Ole on the top. There are so called local teachers, then there are national teachers - these two are allowed only to teach within borders of one country, local one can have only internal lectures and no public ones, there are exceptions to this general rule, national teachers can upon the invitation teach in some other countries as well, if Ole allows them to do so. Then there are international teachers - who can teach also abroad. Eventually every local teacher will be promoted to the national and international level, that is if they do not make some mistake, which would lead to their withdrawal from the teaching position (seen this happen a few times). Now there are about 35 international teachers, if I am right, I have no clue how many national there are (it might be around 2 hundred). In Czech republic, there are 10 traveling teachers of whom at least one is also international, the rest of them are national ones. Almost every other year there is someone new promoted to the role of a local or national teacher as group continues to grow. It seems that eventually there will be some body of some senior international traveling teachers who will then take Ole´s role as a teachers. However they will probably not have financial control. I think that in a few years´ time we will see this progression, those people will receive a title of some sort and will be recognized by Ole as "his future lineage holders". Let´s wait and see, I think it is very likely for that to occur around year 2012 (no mystical connotations intended), when Ole will be 70 years old.
I do not think that the organization will fall apart, they are quite smart and have already been working for years on plans for the future. The organization might have less of a growth after Ole´s death, but measure of the decrease will probably not be great. It would be interesting to know how many people where attracted to join by "traveling teachers" and how much by Ole himself.
There are a few scenarios which I see how DW could cease to exist after Ole is no more:
A)It would merge with other more standard buddhist group (or some parts of it would be merged with different groups).
B)There would be a major split over the property ownership (I think this is very unlikely).
C)There would be split over spiritual and/or power responsibilities.
I think A or C are quite likely to occur, or combination of them. But it since Ole is doing all he can to prevent this, it is also quite likely that he will succeed.