The Copenhagen Victory Stupa, which was inaugurated in July 2019, has been in the making for a long time, at least for those in the local sangha for twenty-five years or more. For decades, sangha members have been wondering why the “Mother Center” didn’t have a stupa. The center certainly provided an ideal environment for such a Buddhist monument.
The wish for a stupa did not come out of the blue since stupas started to be built at a few Diamond Way centers in Europe beginning in the nineties and later in other parts of the world as well. However, Lama Ole never seemed to support the idea for Copenhagen. Eventually, the sangha got used to the fact that some centers had a stupa, and others, including Copenhagen, did not.
For this reason, it came as a surprise when, during a visit to the Copenhagen center in June 2017, somebody suggested that it was time to build a stupa, and Lama Ole simply agreed. It took a few moments to digest the fact that, yes, actually, the Mother Center was finally going to get its own stupa!
But why now? The explanation was just as simple, “Formerly, the male and female energies of the sangha were not in balance. Now they are, so go ahead.” This gave immense energy to the sangha. What a joy, a stupa in the garden here in Copenhagen.
The next day, Lama Ole decided that the stupa should be placed in the garden on the central line of the main building. His advice was to “build as high as you can.” Later, he gave instructions to make the stupa around five meters in height. With the finest white granite imported from Norway, we made it 5.7 meters tall, including the base.
But before that, we also had to decide on the direction, funding, and, most importantly, what kind of stupa.
Complete Victory for Lama Ole
Out of the eight kinds of stupas that are usually built in the Tibetan tradition, the Enlightenment Stupa, the second kind, is the most common, as well as the most significant. Each of the eight stupas refers to important events in the life of the historical Buddha, and the Enlightenment Stupa is the prototype for the rest.
It was a natural choice that it came to be a Stupa of Complete Victory, the seventh kind. Lama Ole mentioned it a month after the visit when he advised building the stupa. Only a few of us knew about this kind of stupa, but we soon found out that its purpose would be to support the long life of Lama Ole.
During the first months of planning, the stupa was still just an idea, a beautiful vision. This changed with the finding and cutting of the Life Tree.
During an interview, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, who supervised the stupa construction, explained the significance of the Life Tree:
There is a saying that the most profound part of the stupa is the Life Tree. The Kutagara Sutra says, ”even if one has such a tiny stupa the size of an arura sprout, one still needs to fill it with a Life Tree, even if it is the size of a needle, because it was taught by the Buddha that the Life Tree in the stupa is very important.
North of Copenhagen, on a ridge overlooking Lyngby Åmose, in a small wooded marsh where Lama Ole and Hannah met as children in the early fifties, the sangha found three tall larch trees. During a visit in April 2018, Lama Ole chose one and cut it down. Counting the growth rings, we found that the tree was 111 years old. That was a good sign and a good beginning for a monument meant to last for centuries.
Later in the process, it had to be decided what kind of statue should be placed in the gate of the bumpa (the dome-shaped part of stupa). Rinpoche chose Namgyalma, a beautiful eight-armed female buddha of long life, and we acquired a statue of her from a statue maker in Kathmandu.
A Stupa for All
During his stay at the Copenhagen Center in July 2019, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche explained, “Now, Lama Ole is 78 years old, so the main purpose [of building this stupa] is to eliminate and pacify the obstacles to his lifespan so that he can live a long life.” Rinpoche continued, “Also, this stupa has been built so that all the great teachers, and especially Gyalwa Karmapa, may have a long life and good health, and also in order to eliminate the obstacles to the long life of the whole sangha, ourselves.”
The process of planning and building a stupa is a long and complex endeavor, with a lot of blessing and purification. Looking back now, the two years it took from idea to realization seem to have gone by very quickly. There were many times when it looked like we would not be able to make it before the deadline. But we did. We had a really impressive inauguration, with 2,800 people from all over the world, a milestone in the modern history of the Copenhagen Center.
Thanks to Rinpoche, and of course to Lama Ole himself, as well as to many, many sangha members, including international sangha members, we now have a manifestation of enormous blessing: the long life stupa of Lama Ole and everybody within the Karma Kagyu lineage. May it last for centuries and be a source of blessing for all beings.
