Lama Ole Nydahl talks drugs, meditation and losing his soul mate
The Danish lama, who founded Diamond Way Buddhism in 1972 with his wife Hannah, remembers her a decade after her death and talks about why they quit drugs and embraced meditation
BORN UNDER THE THIRD REICH I was born in 1941, north of Copenhagen. Denmark was conquered by Germany at that time. My parents were intellectuals and members of the resistance – they did beautiful things fighting for freedom. They were really my gods. My brother and I spent the whole time fighting (with other children) and we became very good at it. I still am today. I’m 75 and I can still handle a few people at the same time. If something happens, I can always promise: I will protect you.
SOUL MATES I met Hannah when I was 10 and she was five, in a wood north of Copenhagen. She was walking around alone and I made a little house for her out of twigs and branches. We met again when I’d just come out of the army. I’d made a lot of trouble for the officers – I didn’t like people telling me what to do! Then we went to the University of Copenhagen, and some German universities.
We came into the stream that appeared at that time, the psychedelic stream – LSD, mescaline, psilocybin. I took everything. We had incredible experiences of real transference, of seeing things from the outside of the body. Then our friends started having trouble: people who didn’t have good impressions on the inside to bring out. We thought, “There must be something better than chemicals.” We began to look into meditation.
EASTERN PROMISES We went to Nepal in 1968 on honeymoon because they had some good hash. But also because we felt like we knew it somehow. At that time, we weren’t thinking of former lives or subconscious memories. We met our first teacher, Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche. He used to come to places in the high mountains of Nepal, and he would simply make rain for the people. Of course, Denmark has enough rain – it’s not so exciting. But the methods for working with the mind were impressive.
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We said, “It’s not enough just to see it, we should learn it. We have to make our lives better, more understandable, more useful for others.” We made the most important contact of our life: the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje.
