When Lama Ole and Hannah first started coming, they didn’t give very many teachings. They met a lot of people, including new friends living on the Gold Coast, where they went each year for their annual holiday. It was important for them to restore and recharge—eating well, resting, enjoying the beach and relaxing with friends. They also had mountains of time to work on the many postcards, articles, and of course books, which were soon to be published everywhere. With two trips around the world every year and lectures every night, having a working holiday was essential.
Lama Ole and Hannah gave the first retreat on the east coast of Australia in the Blue Mountains in 1989, with about five people in attendance. The first Sydney lectures were in 1991, and they visited Canberra for the first time soon after at the invitation of Venerable Thich Quang Ba at the Shakyamuni Buddhist Centre. This lecture was the source for the booklet Teachings on the Nature of Mind, republished in December 2022.
The first Ngöndro11 retreat was at Wat Buddha Dharma in December 1992, with approximately fifteen people, and the first Phowa2 was in 1993 in the Blue Mountains at a Zen center with about twenty-two people attending. In November 1994, they gave another Phowa course and went to the West Coast for the first time.
Hannah arrived in Perth first as she was flying to India to translate for some Tibetan Rinpoches. Lama Ole arrived with his dear friend Tomek the next day. Lama Ole, Hannah, and Tomek stayed together with many friends in a small apartment. Eleven people slept on the floor, and it was almost 40 degrees Celsius. There were two lectures in Fremantle, each about two hours long, followed by questions, refuge, and blessings. The halls were completely full—at least one hundred people each night. Many, many people took refuge. Lama Ole also talked about death and rebirth. Then, when he left, Lama said, “Excellent, we will come again, and next year we will give a Phowa.” We didn’t know what Phowa was, but it sounded good. We also wanted to start a group in Perth, and Lama Ole gave the center the name Ocean of Jewels.
In 1996, Hannah and Ole returned to Perth for the first Phowa course in Western Australia, which took place in a big Christian chapel. At eleven o’clock every morning, at the hottest time of the day, they would go to swim. They also went for a swim between sessions. It was fantastic. Ole and Hannah loved coming. It was relaxed and so good for everyone.
In early 1997, after giving a well-attended Phowa course in Singapore, Lama Ole and Hannah traveled with the wonderful Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche for Rinpoche’s first visit to Australia, arriving in Perth, where he gave a Loving Eyes (Tib. Chenrezig, Skt. Avalokiteshvara) empowerment and got over jet lag at the beach. In February, Tsechu Rinpoche gave the Thousand Arm Loving Eyes Empowerment at Lama Trijam’s house in North Sydney to about thirty friends on a very hot summer day. Hannah translated, and Lama Ole sat with us on the floor in the tiny living room, passing around plates of fruit, with all the windows and doors open and a light sea breeze drifting through.
After Sydney, Tsechu Rinpoche gave the Medicine Buddha empowerment in Kangaroo Valley. He wrote the Medicine Buddha meditation text there and gave it directly to Lama Ole and Hannah. This is the text now found in the Medicine Buddha meditation booklet used all over the world in Diamond Way Buddhist centers. He also gave a Diamond Dagger (Skt. Vajra Kilaya) empowerment around this time.
The Perth and Sydney Diamond Way Buddhist groups really began at this time, hosting regular meditations in friends’ houses, in the same way that other Diamond Way groups had started all over the world, built on inspiration, trust, and deep friendship. Many early practitioners traveled to courses overseas and returned completely inspired.
The Canberra Centre began in 1997 in a fibrous board house serving as student digs. It was so cold in the winter that the water would freeze in the taps, and in the summer, it was infested by swarms of mosquitoes that would feast on Lama Ole’s bare legs when he and Hannah came to visit. Canberra friends often held BBQs in the backyard there. After Lama Ole’s lectures, everyone would stroll over to the local student watering hole to connect with friends around wooden picnic tables on balmy evenings or drive for a few minutes for a quick visit to Black Mountain in the middle of the city for kangaroo spotting. We were always so close.
It was around this time that six of Lama Ole’s lectures were filmed in Sydney. They are now on the internet and show the timeless truths that are still so relevant today. From that time on, Diamond Way Buddhism mushroomed in Australia. It was such an exciting period of growth and great inspiration, as was happening all over the world.
The 1997 Phowa course took place on the West Coast, followed by a visit to Rottnest Island. Lama Ole and Hannah fell in love with the place. Hannah always insisted that if possible, they should go to Rottnest every year because it was good for Lama Ole’s health. They would wake up, swim, breakfast, swim again and then go back to work until the early hours. It became a tradition. Every year, there would be a course in Perth followed by a retreat in Rottnest Island. It was a holiday combined with concentrated work, giving them the space they didn’t have in Europe to get so much done. Then, every night we would have a BBQ at the beach with all our friends. Everyone was always included. It was amazing. Many of the long-term members of the Australian sangha have been around since that time. Many people who clearly had strong connections from previous lives to Hannah and Ole, to Karmapa, and to the Kagyu lineage appeared at this time; including some very long-term practitioners, many of whom are Traveling Teachers3 today.
In 1997 the first Travel Teacher to visit Australia arrived on the east coast. In 1999, the Melbourne Center started with a lecture at Melbourne Town Hall, right in the center of the city, with about a hundred people attending. A new tradition started at this time where Lama Ole would travel through Australia with a group of friends from Europe, the Americas, and all over the world. The travel groups were often the majority of the people in the audience at that time, and strong international bonds were formed. That’s why Lama Ole always wanted us to travel—to connect, to share inspiration, and to learn from each other.
In 2001, the Perth group moved to a rented space in Fremantle, while Stewart Jarvis went to teach English to Karmapa. It was a big, vibrant center with lots of people coming. Around that time, a friend spotted a local newspaper article about an abandoned and rundown building in Canberra, which we later purchased at auction for $75,000. It was the first Diamond Way Buddhist property owned in Australia. The renovation happened with many hands. Many local and international sangha came and helped, and even some total strangers wandered in off the street and offered their help. This fixer-upper eventually became Mahamudra House, which Lama Ole inaugurated in 2002.
Fifteen years later, we finally bought a place on the West Coast, again with many friends from all over the world contributing in whatever way they could. The 2019 course in our new Perth Center was the last time Lama came to Australia.
Lama Ole and Lamini Hannah always came in the summer, either on their way to or from South America or Russia. Over the next few years, they started coming twice a year— in November to the East Coast for about three weeks and then both East and West Coast every February to March. We were so very lucky to have so much close time with them. We were small groups organizing and running the courses, eating together, sharing stories and jokes, meditating together for many hours, followed by more food and swimming in the luxurious oceans. We would take Hannah for a haircut or fix her computer, and of course, they always wanted to go to the army disposal store in every town to stock up on shampoo, winter socks, and boots for our Russian friends. They loved it here. We were so very fortunate.
In many ways, we were spoiled to have so much time with them in such small groups and so lucky that they came twice a year. Being so far away from everywhere else, we also understood that we had to practice and learn to produce the dharma ourselves, not just consume it and wait for the next visit. We had to use what they taught us; perhaps that is what they saw and why they came. We didn’t have the luxury of traveling to courses and other centers every weekend like in Europe. Everywhere is so far away from Australia, and most centers here are at least 1000 km away from each other. So, we had to do the work, meditate, build the centers, and keep up the inspiration between their visits. We learned to hold their energy as best we could and recognize our own qualities and activity to follow their wishes in whatever way possible. It wasn’t always easy, but Lama Ole once said, “… Here today, you are the tip of the arrow. With the hard work that you do, everything else will follow.”
Based on a series of interviews and recollections shared by the early Australian Diamond Way Buddhist sangha.
- Ngöndro is a series of preliminary meditation practices used by Diamond Way Buddhist practitioners. ↩︎
- Phowa refers to one of the six yogas of Naropa and is a meditation on conscious dying. ↩︎
- Traveling Teachers are people who Lama Ole has asked to travel to Diamond Way Centers and teach on his behalf. ↩︎
