Diamond Way Buddhist Center NYC

12/24/2025

Question: Do you think that we will only be interested in the nature of mind once we have mastered our daily life?

Lama Ole's answer: As a way with a goal, yes. Then we will really be able to treasure mind and work deeply with it. How our Diamond Way handles human potential is masterly. We bring the fine qualities out of people, protect sanity by ridiculing political correctness, sidestep even bloated egos and avoid fuzzy or exotic mental states—all without breaking our friendships and connection to life. And we manage all this without getting either unpleasant or extreme. When some levels of realization feel too fast or too much to accomplish, there are always slower but more appropriate ways to continue. Easy is the way: what is relevant to our life then feels ever more exciting and joyful and thus reinforces keeping the highest possible view. Actually this trusting disposition is the most important of all. Holding it, one can walk through the worst of hospitals and not lose this state—while without it, no stay in a cave can keep away tedious and ordinary distractions.

This interview with Lama Ole Nydahl originally took place in the Moscow airport at 3:00 a.m. on August 8, 2011, just off the plane from Siberia. This printed version has a few minor changes.

07/22/2025

"What arises from wisdom is not activity, but the ability to let everything go."

― Lama Ole Nydahl

08/26/2024

Center's life in photos.

12/26/2023

Question: Can you always assume that the more joyful way is the right way?

Lama Ole's answer: In principle, the levels of highest functioning, highest joy, and highest truth are equal. Experiencing greater happiness, seeing things as they are more clearly, and functioning better physically and mentally are intertwined. For example, if you work with proper tools in an interesting environment, then you are closer to the perfection of your nature than if you do something that won't work with tools that are no good.

One just has to be careful not to get attached to the happiness but instead to pass the good feelings on to others. One has to understand that conditioned joys are impermanent.

We should always try to experience joy without an outer cause. Be aware that joy is inherent in one's own mind, and try to let joy become independent from a cause as quickly as possible. Understand that joy is a moment without fabrication - without thoughts, without ideas, without any obstruction. In the moment one is naked and open, joy comes through. Try to reach that state without any outer influence. That comes through meditation; there you learn that your mind can find absolutely anything within itself and out of itself.

11/30/2023

Programs with Robi Szilagy and Peter Gomez

10/14/2023

Program with Julianne Ferenczy

08/15/2023

07/17/2023

Question: Are there any methods against pain in Buddhism?

Lama Ole's answer: A vast topic! The best might be a general Buddhist method and, I’m sorry, it sounds very simple: detachment. That means to always understand that we have our body rather than that we are our body.

Pain is always related to the belief in the reality of experiences that appear in one’s mind. If one knows that this body impermanent and should be used as a tool, then this kind of thinking -"Oh, it’s happening to me. I am the target. I'm suffering!" - this vanishes. It rather becomes, "Yes, there is suffering, and bodies can feel pain," and so on; it becomes less personal. We have to train this attitude while we are young and fresh. Likewise, we don’t learn meditation while dying; we learn it now.

Mantras like OM MANI PEME HUNG or KARMAPA CHENNO are always very good. There are also special mantras and certain breathing practices that can help. But the most important thing is to not take the pain too seriously and to focus on something else.

06/12/2023

Program with Peter Jevos

04/14/2023

At a recent event, His Holiness Karmapa Thaye Dorje was asked the following question:

'Your Holiness, what is stopping me from realizing my true nature, the Buddha nature?'

His Holiness' response:

'Perhaps it is a lack of a sense of adventure that is holding us back from realizing our true nature. It is easy to get used to the mundane life, the daily routines. As a result, we don't want to let go of our familiar atmosphere, the life that we are used to. We are missing a sense of adventure.

I think this is rooted in a deep fear: a fear of facing ourselves; a fear of knowing exactly who we are. It is almost like saying we fear looking at ourselves in the mirror and seeing our own reflections.

Of course, the trouble, or rather the challenge, comes from believing that the mundane elements of our lives somehow define who we are. The errors, the mistakes, the hardships and challenges that we have faced, can sometimes feel like they become a part of us. They hold us back, leaving their mark, sometimes even a sense of trauma. But these experiences are not part of our true nature. In fact, in some ways they can hold us back from seeing our true selves.

Over the years, this kind of habitual pattern can somehow make us not believe in our own true nature, and feel that it is just wishful thinking that our true nature is different - a hopeful dream! So, I think this is what we have to overcome.

So that's why we have to have great courage, and be a bit stern - even a bit stubborn - to really face ourselves.

As practitioners, we will all be faced to some degree by the emotions, challenges and obstacles we experience in life. Without truly facing them, we will never ever realize our true nature.

When we really face ourselves, when we see our true reflections in the mirror, we see that the errors of this life are manifestations of none other than karma and klesha. We are then able to accept the way things are in quite an efficient way. It is almost as though we are tagging or categorizing our mundane experiences. Once we have somehow put them in their own places, we have nothing to see but ourselves and our true potential. This takes courage. It takes courage to face the fear of the past - to overcome the error of seeing our negative experiences as part of our true selves - but we need to do this in order to to help realize our true nature.'

03/15/2023

Programs with Nico Ale and Sasha Rozenberg

01/22/2023

Program with Masha Chlenova and Jonathan Bradley