VISITING BUDDHIST CENTER KARMA KAGYU

There are many ways to find happiness and they are as diverse as there are people. For me, happiness today is linked to peace, to inner serenity. I know that I will not enjoy anything I can obtain if I do not feel at peace. That is why my link with Buddhism has been very important. Buddhist philosophy and practice is linked to a way of thinking and a way of life that helps you on your way to inner peace through various forms of meditation. For almost a decade I have been linked to the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, through a Buddhist center in Caracas and now the Buddhist centers in Spain, where I currently reside.

Last Sunday I met a Venezuelan Buddhist friend of mine to visit KARMA GUEN, a huge Buddhist retreat center located in the middle of the mountains near Velez-Malaga. I was really impressed. The Buddhist centers I knew so far were small centers where usually between 10 and 15 people gather to meditate, to talk about Buddhism. Karma Guen has a gompa (meditation hall) that receives between 2,000 and 3,000 people who meditate together when there are courses. Wao. There are rooms for lodging, a huge industrial kitchen, and large esplanades where people can stay in tents.

Although one can practice meditation alone, when you want to deepen in Buddhist philosophy and meditation practices, it is best to go to a meditation center, where you can find teachers who can guide you, as Pedro Gomez, who built with his wife Dorrit, the Buddhist center KARMA GUEN and has many years of practice and study. On the other hand, Buddhist practice is not linked to a dogma, it is a spiritual path that is linked to experience: if you feel good meditating and this helps you grow as a person, excellent, this will also contribute to a better relationship with those around you, which is what happened to me and many other people around the world; but if you feel better with another type of philosophy or practice, it is also very good.

When you meet with other people in one of these Buddhist centers your experience is enhanced. On Sunday there were only 10 people. When you meditate with other people or listen to a talk about this philosophy, you feel like you are filled with good energy. I felt spectacular. I felt so much peace there. I had had a stressful week, an argument with my partner and I was in low spirits. Because even when you meditate often, sometimes you are still affected by the negative things that happen to you. After the visit to KARMA GUEN Daniel also felt more serene, even though he does not meditate and is not a Buddhist. The goal of Buddha's teachings is the full development of the innate potential of body, speech and mind.

The KARMA GUEN Buddhist Center was built and is run by the Spanish Buddhist master Pedro Gomez, with the support of his wife Dorrit, a Danish Buddhist. They met in Denmark, where Pedro was initiated in Buddhist practice with Lama Ole and Hannah Nydahl, two Danish Buddhists who came into contact with Buddhist practice during their honeymoon in Nepal, and after several years of study the XVI Karmapa gave them the mission to spread Karma Kagyu Buddhism in the West. Both supported the creation of more than 600 Buddhist centers around the world, among them KARMA GUEN and the Buddhist center of Caracas, where I was initiated in Buddhist practice. The KARMA GUEN Buddhist Center started its activities in 1987 and has been growing and transforming. Only the paintings that decorate the meditation room, made by Tibetan artists, took 7 years to be made.

During my visit to KARMA GUEN I saw a Buddhist stupa for the first time. A stupa is a physical, architectural representation of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the great goal of every Buddhist, to manifest our greatest potential as human beings, which allows you to fully understand the nature of the mind and stop suffering. You manifest a great wisdom in which past, present and future come together, and you are in the here and now to the fullest, every experience enriches you. The stupa represents the enlightened mind. The KARMA GUEN stupa was the first stupa built in Europe in 1994, under the guidance of the Tibetan Buddhist master Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche, who settled in Spain the following year.

All the images you see were taken with my cell phone camera.