Happy New Year from the London Diamond Way Buddhist Centre!

Everyone at the London Diamond Way Buddhist Centre would like to wish all our subscribers, friends, fellow meditators – and everyone everywhere – a fearless, joyful, and compassionate 2016!

Do Buddhists even celebrate New Year? Well, different Buddhist countries have their own calendar of special events. For example, Tibetans celebrate Losar, Tibetan New Year, which in 2016 will be in February 8th. Although Diamond Way Buddhism is part of a Tibetan Buddhist lineage, we practice the teachings in a Western cultural context.

So the end of one year and the start of another one is a perfect time to reflect on what is most important. For Buddhists, the most important thing is our values, our basic attitude to life. Therefore, every New Year, Diamond Way Buddhists around the world take what’s called the Bodhisattva Promise together. This is the promise to get enlightened, and to dedicate all the good qualities and possibilities we accumulate on the way to helping others.

On New Year’s Eve, just before midnight European time, at a meditation course in the Czech Republic, Lama Ole Nydahl, the main teacher of Diamond Way Buddhism, gave a speech, during which he encouraged everyone:

The only benefit of any activity is human growth, to be learned from and enjoyed by all. Our goal is to get wiser and not just older every day.

Then several thousand people at the course renewed their Bodhisattva Promise together. At the same time, many practitioners (of those who hadn’t gone on the course) had gathered in the London Diamond Way Buddhist Centre to follow along.

May we all get not only older but also wiser! Happy New Year!

Participants at the New Year’s meditation course in Prague, 2015

Taking the Bodhisattva Promise in London, New Year 2015