Ole Nydahl

Ole Nydahl (Copenhagen, 1941 - Immenstadt, Germany, 2026) was a Danish Buddhist teacher in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is remembered for bringing this tradition to Europe and beyond, founding a network of meditation centers designed for practitioners who speak Western languages.

Born north of Copenhagen into an academic family, he grew up during the Second World War. According to available accounts, his parents took part in the Danish resistance, helping transport Jews to neutral Sweden. In the early 1960s he served briefly in the Danish Army and then studied philosophy, English and German at the University of Copenhagen. He began a doctoral thesis on Aldous Huxley but never finished it. He travelled overland from Denmark to Nepal several times and, as he recounts in his autobiography, partly financed these trips through smuggling.

In 1968 he and his wife Hannah travelled to Nepal, where they met their first teacher, Lopon Tsechu Rinpoche. In December 1969 they met the 16th Karmapa, and they are counted among his earliest Western students. At the Karmapa's request, they began teaching and founding centers, first in Denmark and later in Germany and other countries. The Diamond Way Buddhism organization, established in the early 1990s, grew to hundreds of centers, run by volunteers without paid staff.

His style was direct and often controversial. He presented himself as a lay lama and yogi. According to the professor Bee Scherer, his title of lama became established in the years after his initial training, with formal recognition from Shamar Rinpoche in 1983. His remarks on Islam and politics drew criticism, and in 2019 the German branch of his organization left the German Buddhist Union. His teaching centered on ngöndro, mahamudra and phowa.

His legacy is mainly organizational and literary. He wrote many books in English and German, several of them translated, and the scholar Jørn Borup calls him one of the most lasting influences on Buddhist practice in Denmark.