50 years of Diamond Way Buddhism

1967 – 1981: Entering the Path

At the height of the psychedelic era, two young hippies from Copenhagen, Ole and Hannah Nydahl, took their honeymoon in an unusual place – the Himalayas – fulfilling a deep wish that had appeared upon seeing beautiful lights and unusual clouds over these mountains from a plane the year before.

In Nepal, they met and were very much impressed by the renowned Buddhist master Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche. Through him, they met the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, the King of the Yogis – the great 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje: “We looked up, and suddenly he became huge like the whole sky, incredibly vast, golden, and luminous… we knew that such perfection one could never forget. The power of Karmapa had entered our lives.”

Having awakened deep former connections, Ole and Hannah devoted themselves completely to Karmapa and to working for the good of all beings. They completed the Ngöndro practice and received countless teachings and empowerments from Karmapa, Kalu Rinpoche, Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche, and other high lamas.

Though they imagined they would stay in the East (even trying to give Karmapa their passports), he instead sent them to start Buddhist centres in the West in his name, promising that this work would bring the same development as meditating in long retreats. Through his words and actions, Karmapa expressed confidence in his new Western students. One day, on the steep, high steps down from Swayambhu stupa, Karmapa unexpectedly jumped onto Ole’s back, laughing, and Ole just managed to carry him down safely. Karmapa also often called Ole “lama” (later, Shamar Rinpoche would confirm this title in writing).

Hannah and Lama Ole travelled constantly across Europe and around the world, teaching and starting centres wherever there was interest, even in countries behind the Iron Curtain that were neglected by other teachers due to difficult political and financial conditions.

To support the new students, traditional meditation texts were translated into local languages, and in 1979, Lama Ole’s book Entering the Diamond Way was published.

Hannah and Lama Ole helped with tours of the West for Karmapa and the high lamas, interpreting, driving, and organising. On the last of Karmapa’s tours, he told them to bring their friends to Rumtek monastery in a year’s time, on 1st November, 1981.

“On 7 October 1972 we landed in Copenhagen. We had spent three years in the Himalayas, and now H.H. Gyalwa Karmapa, the first consciously reborn lama of Tibet, had sent us home with a task large enough to fill several lifetimes: to make the deep wisdom of Tibet accessible to our part of the world and open the minds of the extroverted West to things as unfamiliar as mantras and meditation.”

“One cannot really transmit anything, except what one has directly experienced, and the reason many of you will be able to identify with what happened to us is that deep within we are so very much alike.”

1982 – 1994: In Marpa’s Steps

Beginning at the cremation ceremony of the 16th Karmapa in November 1981, disagreements between the four highest lamas of the Karma Kagyu lineage appeared. Situ Rinpoche produced a prediction letter from the 16th Karmapa with details of his 17th rebirth, and Gyaltsab Rinpoche supported him. Shamar Rinpoche, however, doubted its authenticity, demanding forensic testing. Soon after, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, who had supported Shamar Rinpoche, met an untimely death in a car accident. In the end, almost all Karma Kagyu lamas, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and even the atheist government of China (sic) supported Situpa’s candidate.

Hannah and Lama Ole, almost alone, supported and encouraged Shamar Rinpoche. They advised their students to use their critical intelligence as well as devotion, and to focus on practice. They themselves travelled to more countries to teach, translated more meditation texts, and published the book Riding the Tiger.

As centres and friendships the world over split along political lines, and other Karma Kagyu organisations focussed on their own teachers, Lama Ole and Hannah continued to open centres in Karmapa’s name. With humour and skill, they taught what they had received from him, worked with the Tibetan lamas he had connected with them, and thus joyfully fulfilled his wishes.

Almost a thousand years before, the hero Marpa had carried the Vajrayana teachings to Tibet from northern India, where their survival was threatened, mastered them himself, and translated them for a new set of students. Similarly, Hannah and Lama Ole brought the Karma Kagyu transmission to the West from the Himalayas, where Buddhism had been weakened by the invasion of Tibet. They translated and spread – and lived – the teachings, and over the coming decades would carefully strip away what was merely cultural, leaving only the diamond of the Dharma.

In the East, after a great deal of intrigue and danger, and with help from Lama Ole’s students and other friends, the genuine 17th Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje, secretly left occupied Tibet for free India. He was met by Shamar Rinpoche and Hannah, and made his first public appearance in the Karmapa International Buddhist Institute in New Delhi, India, in 1994.

1995 – 2007: Everything Grows

The Shamarpa is the highest-ranking of the Karma Kagyu lamas after Karmapa, and the one who had throughout history most often been responsible for recognising the reincarnations of Karmapa . On the recognition of the 17th Karmapa, Shamar Rinpoche said, “The process is beyond what people can perceive with their normal senses. So I myself, being a Shamarpa, I am the proof of the authority to recognize Karmapa according to the traditions of the Karma Kagyu lineage.” And so he did, enthroning His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Thaye Dorje – and securing the nine-hundred-year-old Karma Kagyu lineage – in Bodh Gaya in 1996.

Hannah spent many months each year supporting Shamar Rinpoche and other high lamas, travelling and interpreting for them. Lama Ole continued travelling, translated more meditations, and gave meditation courses, including the rare and precious Phowa, or Conscious Dying. Diamond Way centres were established in more than 40 countries around the world. Thousands of students came each year to the International Summer Course in Kassel, Germany.

In the year 2000, the 17th Karmapa came to Europe for the first time, and was welcomed by six thousand Diamond Way students in Dusseldorf. Hannah and Lama Ole had, through their confidence and strength, held and protected vast numbers of Karmapa’s students and centres for him during the difficult decades since the passing of the 16th Karmapa.

The first teacher of Lama Ole and Hannah, Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche, of whom the 16th Karmapa said, “If I was the Buddha, he would be Ananda [the Buddha’s favourite student],”  accompanied the 17th Karmapa on this visit. Rinpoche had been visiting the West for many years already, and managed to build many stupas in Europe, including the largest stupa in the West, in Benalmadena, Spain, before he died in 2003.

In 2007, Hannah Nydahl, Ole’s beloved wife, passed away in Copenhagen. She was known as the Mother of Buddhism in the West, and as the 17th Karmapa said, “She kept her promise to spread Dharma in the West. For that we are all deeply appreciative and grateful.” One of Hannah’s final acts in this life was to sign documents needed for the purchase of a beautiful house with land in Bavaria, south Germany, now known as the Europe Center.

2008 – 2022: Joyful Effort Continues

After mourning the loss of his wife, which he described as being “like an amputation,” Lama Ole continued with his teaching activities around the world.

The International Summer Course moved from Kassel and was held for the first time in the new Europe Center in 2008. The course became more intentionally international, and special invitations, events, and groups were started to enable different countries to work and learn together. As the 17th Karmapa said: “What I’m really impressed and touched by is your bond, is your friendship, your honesty. What brought all this wonderful development, this growth, is all based on that.”

In 2014, Shamar Rinpoche passed away. For the lineage, and especially for those who had been fortunate enough to receive teachings and empowerments from him, this was a sad loss.

In the same year, the movie Hannah: Buddhism’s Untold Story was released. It won several awards at film festivals and is now shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime (North America).

Diamond Way Buddhism became more organised during this time. The 600+ Buddhist centres around the world have their own country or regional organisations, but the Dharma teachings and meditation methods are the same everywhere. The practical principles, too, are shared: all work is voluntary, and based on idealism, generosity and friendship. Today the Diamond Way Buddhishm can be met in more th 50 countries around the world in 600+ centers all based on voluntary work, idealism, generosity and friendship and offering the same teachings and meditation methods to the world wide Sangha.

Lama Ole has up to now published seven books, still invites Tibetan teachers to the West, and continues to teach in person and online himself, constantly advising and inspiring his students.

"I want to see you tough, kind, compassionate, courageous with no fear, helping people to avoid pain, and aware that everything is so beautiful. That's what I did my whole life."

Lama Ole passed away on 18 May 2026, remaining for several days in thukdam, a state of deep meditation after death that highly accomplished Tibetan Buddhist masters can enter at the time of death.

Following his passing, over ten thousand students from around the world travelled to the Europe Center to pay their respects, express their gratitude, and receive blessings. In the presence of Thaye Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, high lamas of the Karma Kagyu lineage performed traditional pujas and ceremonies, while students meditated together.

For over five decades, Lama Ole shared Buddhist teachings throughout the West serving as a bridge between the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and the modern world. In doing so, he fulfilled the wishes of his teacher, the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje.

Quotes

Hannah Nydahl

“16th Karmapa is the source of everything. If we had not met him then you would probably also not have met him through us and our practices and our lives would have been so much different. We can thank him for everything.”

"Everything that has happened in the West is all through him. We just followed completely what he asked us to do. He was clear about what we should do in our countries in the West, how we should practice, what our activities should be."

"One time in England he called us in and he gave us a money note and said that if you completely keep the motivation pure and no self-interest, then you will never be in lack of anything."

"If you always have the right motivation, if you keep your bonds then you can’t go wrong. And whatever happens will have meaning and will be right. This is quality of everything and the 16th Karmapa illustrated it so strongly."

"Again and again 16th Karmapa would emphasise the importance of not mixing the activity with politics."

"If your motivation is not just to help others, if you have your own interest in it, and then you start to accommodate and manipulate things instead of for the best interest of everybody then things become political."

"In our school the guarantee for that what we are doing, that it is authentic, is that the transmission is intact. We know that methods we are using bring results and that they have been given from teacher to disciple, from teacher to disciple, all the way through the centuries. They are not just good ideas that can change from week to week. They are really well tested methods. That’s our guarantee."

Lama Ole Nydahl

"We actually started from zero. In 1972 we had nothing. There was Hannah and me and some old Tibetan tangkas and this was all we had."

"The great locomotive that gave power to our work, that pushed it all is the 16th Karmapa. That’s also our main meditation."

"The growth that people feel is because of the 16th Karmapa. That’s the big machine that started rolling it, is still rolling it, pushing, still growing. It really does transform our consciousness, our view, our behaviour. And it does bring a lot of joy out."

"There are only three real emotions - fearlessness, spontaneous joy and active compassion. They are real because they have one cause that never changes. Fearlessness is recognising your mind is an indestructible space, joy is experiencing the free play of that space from an invulnerable place and compassion is noticing the others, how much they want happiness and then helping them. All other feelings are conditioned, appearing from causes, changing and disappearing again."

"I formulate many wishes for the growth of Diamond Way, which is the goal of my life."

"I see you as very exciting and full of potential."

"What is important is not the things happening in the mind but knowing mind itself. Finding out what is looking through my eyes, listening through my ears, what is being conscious right now."

"Radiance of the mirror is always there. It is all-pervading."

"The only reason we can think of Enlightenment outside is that it is inherently inside us."

“Everybody has Buddha nature, All thoughts are wisdom, All sounds are mantras.”

"Nothing benefits our inner growth like a few good laughs at anything stilted, self-important, illogical, puritanical or sentimental.”

“There are different types of initiations, one of them is when Lama says something or does something that in one moment the concepts cannot follow. In that moment of naked awareness your mind and his mind are the same. And that’s the initiation into Great Seal.”

Living transmission

“For the Vajrayana, the Diamond Way, the direct way of identifying with one’s Buddha nature beyond intellect and concepts through direct very effective psychological methods, we need a living transmission. If just a book is there, that’s not enough. There has to be somebody there who has received the blessing, who worked with it, who is carrying it in him or herself, and who is then capable of passing it on as a seed of living experience. There has to be an unbroken transmission of energy. If that is broken the Vajrayana is lost. The books may be there, the explanations may be there, but the zap is not there anymore.”

Saving Tibetans

"And that is why it is so important and wonderful that a lot of Tibetans were able to come out, and we were able to save them to the West. To make them give initiations, and do different things which means that today so many of us are also carriers of the energy. So many of us received the initiations, and the blessing and the empowerments, that it has actually begun to grow in us, and it will develop through us to other beings, who will become attracted and who will again learn and develop like that."

Identification

"Because without that living bond, without that living energy these things are just books, they are nothing else, they are not really alive. And this feeling of identification is the most important, richest feeling one can think of. The feeling that it is intensely important, that one’s hair stands up, one can’t take one’s eye off the teacher or the object or whatever, what does it mean? It means that the hat fits, that we are looking in the mirror which actually shows us our own potential”

“The reason I travel everywhere trying to establish energy fields and centres is because I honestly think if there will be Buddhism in 50 years, it will be the way we do it. Organisation built on friendship and idealism, no hierarchy.”

‘Highest truth is the highest joy, is the highest level of functioning.’

“The traditional practices are good if they are translated. They must be translated. If you practice in your own language, you know the language and you will get results. Everything with meaning has to be translated. The reason that Buddhism became dominant in Tibet is that right from the beginning Marpa translated the teachings and then people knew what they were doing. We are doing the same now translating from Tibetan into our Western languages. We are supposed to make it for modern people who can choose, decide, handle their lives, so we cannot be too exotic.”

Mantras

(paraphrased from a longer quote)

"We kept the mantras - the living transmission from the Buddha till today, spoken exactly as passed by the teachers. The most important vibration is in the mantras, don’t change it. They have power when they are living transmission. We can use mantras to change our awareness from personal to beyond personal levels."