Speakers

Ayya Agganyani is a buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition. She is head of the Theravada-Workshop in the German Buddhist Union and spiritual teacher of the Abhidhamma-Förderverein e.V. She has completed a diploma-graduated study of Buddha-Dhamma in Myanmar. Her longtime teacher is Sayadaw Dr. Nandamala from Myanmar; in his cloisters and centers she is continuing her study and practice on an annual basis. Specialized in Abhidhamma and Vipassanā she is translating, writing and teaching, in Germany and the neighboring countries.

Friederike Boissevain, MD, is a Soto-Zen priest in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki. Her teachers are Sojun Mel Weitsman and Hozan Alan Senauke from Berkeley Zen Center, CA. 

She has been practicing monastically in the US for several years and now guides a Sangha in Northern Germany. Friederike is a trained haemato-oncologist/ palliative care specialist and works in a teaching hospital in her state capital. She also founded a local non- profit hospice organization.

Kirsten DeLeo, MA, is a senior educator for Rigpa’s Spiritual Care Programme, an international outreach programme that offers contemplative-based care and education inspired by “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying”. Drawing from many years of experience accompanying terminally people and their loved ones, Kirsten offers seminars, online-courses and retreats for healthcare professionals and the public. Since 2003, she is on the faculty of “Contemplative End-of-Life Care”, a professional certificate that the Spiritual Care Programme developed in partnership with Naropa University, Colorado. Kirsten is one of the main trainers for the Sukhavati Academy (Bad Saarow). She is trained in Hakomi body-centered psychotherapy and has, under the guidance of Tibetan meditation master Sogyal Rinpoche, completed a three-year meditation retreat.

„Der Weg zur mitfühlenden Präsenz: die Tonglen-Praxis“ In: Anderssen-Reuster/ Meibert/ Meck (2013): Psychotherapie und buddhistisches Geistestraining. Stuttgart: Schattauer

„Being a Compassionate Presence: The Contemplative Approach to End-Of-Life Care” In: Giles/ Miller (2012): The Arts of Contemplative Care. Boston: Wisdom Publications

„Der Knochen am Herzen. Kontemplative Sterbebegleitung” In:
Praxis PalliativeCare, Ausgabe 28, September 2015

(in English: „The Bone at the Heart – Care for the Dying” In: Wise Brain Bulletin/ Wellspring-Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, April 2015.
Link: www.wisebrain.org/wisebrainbulletin/WBB9.2.pdf

„Die Wolken verlieren – den Himmel gewinnen. Der kontemplative Ansatz in der Begleitung von Trauernden” Kirsten DeLeo und Beate Dirkschnieder, In: Leidfaden, Fachmagazin für Krisen, Leid und Trauer, Januar 2016

„More Than Just a Medical Event. The Practice of Essential Phowa” In: Ellison/Weingast (2016): Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Boston: Wisdom Publications

Beate Dirkschnieder, Dipl.-Päd., is a long-time social worker in a residential hospice. Beate has specialized in professional education on the topics such as supporting the bereaved, end-of-life care and ethical questions in healthcare. She teaches palliative care at the FH Bielefeld and is trainer at the Sukhavati Academy (Bad Sparrow). She has been studying with the Tibetan meditation master Sogyal Rinpoche for many years, and is a senior educator for Rigpa’s Spiritual Care Programme and the Sukhavati Academy (Bad Saarow).

Beate Dirkschnieder
Der kontemplative Ansatz in der Begleitung Sterbender – Spirituelle Gastfreundschaft
Praxis Palliative Care Nr.: 24 /2014

Beate Dirkschnieder/ Kirsten DeLeo
und wie halten Sie das aus? Reflexion zu einer berechtigen Frage
Praxis Palliativ Care Nr.: 31 /2016

Kirsten DeLeo/ Beate Dirkschnieder
Die Wolken verlieren – den Himmel gewinnen
Der kontemplative Ansatz in der Begleitung von Trauernden
Leitfaden, Fachmagazin für Krisen, Leid und Trauer, Januar 2016

Ji Kwang Dae Poep Sa Nim is the founder and Supreme Matriarch of the Yun Hwa Denomination of World Social Buddhism. Since 1983 she has been teaching the Dharma in in many European countries. That is why most of her students are European. In 1993, the Lotus Buddhist Monastery was established in Hawaii. From there, the Supreme Matriarch teaches in many ways.

Dae Poep Sa Nim’s teaching is based on the Lotus Sutra, which states that all living beings have Buddha-Nature and all phenomena always wear the aspect of stillness and extinction in itself.

Dae Poep Sa Nim perceive deaths as true as people living and and is capable of dissolving the karma of the deceased in the form of ancestral ceremonies.

Miriam Pokora is a palliative care specialist and practicing Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition. For the past 10 years she and Michaela Draeger have co-directed the Buddhism-inspired hospice of Bodhicharya Deutschland e.V., Hospizdienst Horizont. She also teaches continuing education classes in palliative care, Buddhism, and end-of-life care. In addition to her work, she studies cultural and social anthropology at Freie Universitaet Berlin.

Jürgen Manshardt is author, interpreter for Tibetan as well as translator and editor of mainly buddhist books and texts. Furthermore he is working as a seminar tutor, Gestalt-therapist, associate professor for study and pilgrim voyages, teacher for meditation and scientific advisor. He was a monk in the Tibetan tradition for seven years and spend several years in Asia. In the recent years he also directed a Child Care-Project in India, and he is foremost responsible for generating the documents for the Systematisches Studium des Buddhismus in the Tibetisches Zentrum Hamburg, where he is also teaching.

• Jürgen Manshardt: Die Dakini aus der geheimen Höhle, Das Leben der tibetischen Yogini Drikung Khandro, Mit einem Geleitwort von Lho Ontul Rinpotsche, Drikung Kagyü Verlag, Aachen, 2007
• Khunu Lama/Jürgen Manshardt: Allen Freund sein – Poesie des Erleuchtungsgeistes, Diamant Verlag, München, 2004
• Jürgen Manshardt: Offene Weite – freier Geist? Die nicht-sektiererische Rime-Bewegung im tibetischen Buddhismus, Dharmata-Verlag, Berlin, 2007, (zurzeit vergriffen)
• Kongpo Lama Jesche Tsöndrü / Jürgen Manshardt (Hg.): Die Elixiere der Erleuchtung – Der Stufenweg zur Erleuchtung, Dharmata-Verlag, 2. überarbeitete Auflage, Berlin, 2007

Dr. Wilfried Reuter is a Buddhist teacher and the spiritual leader of Lotos-Vihara in Berlin and Dharma-Chakra in Meissen.

The son of a farmer, he grew up in the northern part of the state of Hesse. He was touched by a deep spiritual longing at an early age, and the German Buddhist nun Ayya Khema became his most influential teacher. She changed his life in such a fundamental way that he still feels a deep connection with her.

He has also been influenced by the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi and the Tibetan master Tarab Tulku. Wilfried Reuter is particularly interested in an inclusive transmission of the Buddha’s teaching, in which the views of Theravada Buddhism have their place alongside the views of Mahayana Buddhism. His teachings are also influenced by 30 years of experience working as a gynecologist, obstetrician, hospice worker, and emergency doctor.

• „Der Tod ist ganz ungefährlich. Buddhistische Hilfen im Umgang mit Alter Krankheit, Tod“,  Jhana – Verlag 2013
• „Buddhas Geschenk der Geborgenheit. Wie wir tiefes Vertrauen erfahren“, Verlag: Kailash 2013
• „Zusammen Aufwachen: Buddhistische Weisheit für glückliche Beziehungen“, edition steinrich 2012
• „Die Medizin des Buddha: Was Heilung bedeutet“, edition steinrich 2011
• „Weck den Buddha in dir. Wege zu innerer Stärke“,  edition steinrich 2010 

Sogyal Rinpoche is a world-renowned Buddhist teacher from Tibet and the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

He is the founder and spiritual director of Rigpa, an international network of over 130 Buddhist centres and groups in 30 countries around the world. He has been teaching for over 40 years and continues to travel widely in Europe, America, Australia and Asia.

• The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Harper (1994)
• Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on Living and Dying (1995)

Zentatsu Richard Baker is the Founder and Head Teacher of the Dharma Sangha centers in the United States and Europe. In the United States he lives at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center in Colorado; and in Germany, at the Zen Zentrum Johanneshof-Quellenweg in the Black Forest. He has been teaching Zen-Buddhism for 45 years. From January through May, he lives and teaches in the USA, and from May through December he lives and teaches in Europe.

He is the Dharma Successor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the first Zen Master to establish residential and monastic practice for laypeople and monks in the West. Suzuki Roshi is also the author of Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind. In 1966, with and for Suzuki Roshi, Baker Roshi co-founded the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California, the first traditional Zen monastery outside of Asia.

From 1968 to 1971, he studied in Japan at Antaiji, Eiheiji, and Daitokuji Zen monasteries. He became Suzuki Roshi’s Dharma Heir in 1969 and was installed by Suzuki Roshi as the second Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in 1971.

Baker Roshi subsequently founded the Green Gulch Zen Practice Community and Farm in Marin County, California in 1972. During the ’70s, he pioneered a number of businesses related to Zen practice. In 1983, he founded the Dharma Sangha.

Lama Yeshe Sangmo (Ilse Pohlan) met her teacher Gendün Rinpoche in 1985. From 1991 to 1997, she completed under his guidance two traditional three year retreats and received the transmission of the Karma Kagyü School of Tibetan Buddhism. Subsequently, in the cloister community of Dhagpo Kündröl Ling in the Auvergne/ France, she spend another year in solitary retreat.

Besides of transmitting the traditional content of the Karma Kagyü School, in her teaching activity for adults she focusses on the subjects of: Death and dying, mindfulness and compassion, the handling of thoughts and emotions in every day life, and the Seven Point Mind Training (Lojong). Together with others she developed a seminary program for children and youths. By her joyous style of teaching Lama Yeshe Sangmo reaches the people directly, and she discusses in talks on what people have experienced, how the mind works, and why one meditates at all.

Since 2005, Lama Yeshe Sangmo is guiding the buddhist study and meditation center Dharmazentrum Möhra in Thuringia/Germany. She is chairwoman of the association Karma Kündrol Püntsok Ling e.V. und of the Karmapa-Foundation Möhra.

For more than 30 years Michael Schmidt is engaged in the theory and practice of Buddhism, especially in the Theravada tradition. In numerous retreats (among others, with Ayya Khema, Bhanta Sujiva, Sr. Mudita, Ayya Aganyani) he arrived in deepening his knowledge. He is member of the managing board of the „Buddhistischer Bund Hannover”, was member of the council of the „Deutsche Buddhistische Union”, he is writing and giving talks on buddhist subjects, is engaged in the Theravada-AG of the DBU, and is the author of a compendium on Ceremonies and Rituals for buddhists in Germany’s Theravada tradition. In Myanmar (Burma) and Sri Lanka he ventured in buddhist studies. In the district of Schaumburg (near Hanover) he is guiding a group of practitioners.

Since her youth, Karola Schneider has been practicing Buddhism. With meditation experience spanning more than 35 years, she also learned the practice of conscious dying, the so-called Phowa, which Is taught in Tibetan Buddhism as a preparation for the moment of death. According to the wish of her teacher Lama Ole Nydahl, she teaches in the tradition of the Karma Kagyu lineage, giving teachings on meditation and Diamondway-Buddhism. Her lectures took her around the globe, through Europe, Russia, USA and Latin America. Karola Schneider emphasizes an adequatly contemporary form of transmission of the teachings for a modern everyday life, like she does in her profession as an alternative practitioner and lecturer on  Chinese medicine. In her book „Power soups according to the Chinese art of healing“ (1999, Joy Verlag), she adapts traditional recipes to the setting of European cuisine. Together with her partner, she lives in a Buddhist retreat center in Schwarzenberg, Allgäu. She is a member of the board of directors to the Karma Kagyü Schule (KKS) e.V., which maintains this center. In the European Buddhist Union (EBU), an umbrella organisation of European Buddhist organisations and national Buddhist Associations, she is a member of the advisory board.

Power soups according to the Chinese art of healing; Joy Verlag, 1999

Dagmar Doko Waskönig, Zen-Master in the succession of Gudo W. Nishijima Roshi, is guiding the Zen Dojo Shobogendo in Hannover und is teaching meditation und the Buddha’s teachings in the whole of Germany. She is the author of some books and of many contributions to periodicals.

Uller Gscheidel is a certified educationist and after many years of a consultative and executive position, he started a company that offers funeral services in 2002.
In the past steady rituals and procedures when someone dies used to be of great help. Today for many people they appear hollow and meaningless. Uller Gscheidel gives new impulses for dealing with death. His special concern is to grant space. The dead are very good teachers in that respect!
Since 35 years he is a student of Tenga Rinpoche and since 25 years, he takes part in the Tara Rokpa process of Akong Rinpoche.

Maren Repenning is working for memento mori, a funeral parlor in Hamburg. This experience and her long standing occupation in ambulant care support her talks on the topics of dying, death and spiritual care. She is a student of Sogyal Rinpoche, author of the “Tibetan Book of living and dying”, and an experienced course instructor and coordinator for the spiritual care program of Rigpa e.V.

Lisa Freund is active in the hospice movement since 1990 as well as a Buddhist, writer, supervisor and seminar manager. She has studied politics and German, and she taught for a long time for the university diploma entrance trainings of continuation education. She attempts to link eastern wisdom and western knowledge in a practical and true-to-life way for the matters of dying and death. She follows teachers of different Buddhist traditions.

• Das Unverwundbare (2011)
• Geborgen im Grenzenlosen (2012), O.W. Barth-Verlag
• sterben können (TB 2014)
• Die Mantrabox, together with Anna Trökes (2013)

Since more than 25 years Yesche U. Regel teachestonglen meditation in courses and on retreats. He met Buddhism in 1977 as a 20 year old and was an ordained monk in the Karma-Kagyü-Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism from 1980-1997. During this time he was involved in the foundation of the Kamalashila Institute in the German region of the Eifel and the Retreat-Center in Halscheid. In Halscheid he took part in a traditional three year retreat under the guidance of Lama Gendün Rinpoche. Since over 20 years he is a freelance meditation teacher teaching in German speaking areas as is the leader of the meditation centre PARAMITA in Bonn.

His book „Tonglen-Praxis“ with Audio-CD in German) has been published this summer at Nymphenburger Edition.

Robert Jandaka is remedial teacher, a musician and studies and practises since 1982 in the Shangpa-Kagyü- and in the Gelugpa-traditions of Buddhism. For 13 years he studied and meditated as an ordained monk under the guidance of Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche, since 1985 under the guidance of his favorite master, L.S. Dagyab Rinpoche. He is running courses and retreats on sutra and tantra in the Tibethaus e.V. in Frankfurt, Germany and in the Buddha Space in Erlangen: www.erleuchtung-erlangen.de. His main subject is the mediacy of Lam Rim matters, mindtraining, the teachings on Prajnaparamita and Vajra-poetics. Especially a day-to-day-approach with respect for all authentic religious traditions is his deepest heart wish.

Alain Beauregard is a physicist by training, high-tech entrepreneur and a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism.  At age 46, his life changed with the discovery of an advanced stage 4 metastatic bladder cancer, incurable according to medicine.  With the help of the powerful healing practices of Tibetan Buddhism, a complete healing of the primary tumor and metastases was achieved in four months, against all odds.  Alain’s story inspired the French-language radio series “Vivre Autrement” on Radio-Canada as well as an article in the German newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. 

From 1991 to 2003 Lama Dawa was enrolled as a student at the famous Shri Nalanda Shedra, where he aquired the academic title of an Archarya. Subsequently Acharya Lama Drime Dawa absolved the traditional 3-Year-Retreat under the spiritual guidance of Bokar Rinpoche in Mirik/India. Still within retreat and also during the following years Lama Dawa received numerous teachings and initiations from HH the 17th Karmapa Orgyen Trinle Dorje as well as from all great Kagyu-Masters.

After retreat he worked for three years at the Tsurphu Labrang (HH Karmapa’s Office Administration), Dharma Chakra Centre, Sikkim/India. Finally in 2009 Lama Dawa was sent by His Holiness to Hamburg/Germany, where he since then works as a Resident-Lama to Thegsum Tashi Chöling-Centre TTC.

Attracting especially practitioners, the TTC grew under his guidance more and more.