Head 2 Heart
Lama · Lineage · Transmission

To realize the nature of mind, we must bring the teachings from our heads to our hearts, moving from an intellectual understanding to realization. During the course, we will receive teachings, meditate together, and connect. The following Diamond Way teachers will join us.

Karola B. Schneider has studied and practiced Buddhism for over 35 years. She took refuge in 1978 in her native Germany and has been living in a Buddhist retreat center in Schwarzenberg, which hosts Diamond Way Buddhist practitioners from around the world for personal retreats. Since 1992 Karola has been teaching Buddhism around the globe, travelling throughout Europe, Russia, USA and South America. In her lectures Karola emphasizes a contemporary form of transmission of Buddhist teachings for a modern everyday life. Professionally Karola holds a private practice as a doctor of Chinese medicine.

Maggie Lehnert Kossowski was born in Gdansk, Poland, and, as her father was a diplomat, grew up moving between South America, Africa and Europe. She studied English Literature at the Universities of Gdansk and Poznan. In 1982 Maggie took Buddhist refuge with Lama Ole Nydahl. In 1987 she met the great Buddhist master from Bhutan, Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche and became his personal secretary, assisting Rinpoche in his activity around the world and in his seat in Kathmandu, Nepal until his death in 2003. Under the spiritual guidance of Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche, Maggie together with her husband Wojtek Kossowski, participated in the construction of more than 20 Stupas in the West. Maggie also supported the activity of Shamar Rinpoche in the last years of his life until his death in 2014. Presently, Maggie lives in Benalmádena, Spain, where she president of the Karma Kagyu Cultural Association of Benalmádena and coordinates the activities of the Enlightenment Stupa, under the spiritual guidance of H.H. the 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje.

Jesper Jorgensen, born on Bornholm (DK) in 1957, met Diamond Way Buddhism and his teacher Lama Ole Nydahl in March 1988, in Aarhus Denmark. The next day Lama Ole asked him to move into the center in Odense, DK. In October 1991, at the request of Lama Ole, he moved to San Francisco, California where he helped start the first of Lama Ole's centers in the US, and later the expansion throughout the Americas. Jesper has been traveling to give talks in Meditation centers in North and Central America, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe and Russia. At the New Years Course in Hamburg in 1996, he met his wife to be Charlotte, who moved to San Francisco to join him there in 1998. In August, 2007 Jesper and Charlotte moved to Colorado to find and start the first national Retreat Center for North America (Dakini Ranch). When that initial concept was changed to several regional retreat centers in November 2008, Lama Ole asked them to move back to Europe and help with the running of the newly acquired Europe Center in Immenstadt, Germany. They moved into the EC January 2009 and lived there for about 4 years. Now they live and work 15 minutes from the EC, together with their two children, Helena Born in Colorado and Bjørn born in Immenstadt, Germany.

Tomek Lehnert was born in 1956 in Gdansk, Poland. He studied Civil Engineering at the Polytechnics of Gdansk and English literature at the University of Poznan, Poland. In the early eighties, he became active in the students’ Solidarity movement in the then communist Poland. In 1983, during martial law in Poland, Tomek met Lama Ole Nydahl, took Buddhist refuge and became Lama Ole’s student. In the following years he met and received teachings from the main Karma Kagyu lamas. He began traveling with Lama Ole in 1987. Together with Ole’s wife Hannah Nydahl and Caty Hartung he organized for twenty years Lama Ole’s dharma activity and helped start Diamond Way Buddhist centers in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Europe. Tomek translated for Lama Ole at lectures in Poland and Latin America for more than ten years. Tomek Lehnert is the author of ‘Rogues in Robes’, Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1998, a chronicle of a controversy over the recognition of HH the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.