Ole Nydahl, an influential but controversial Karma Kagyu teacher known to devotees as Lama Ole, died on May 18, 2026 at the Europe Center. International Diamond Way Buddhist Center), founded in Immenstadt im Allgau, Germany, in the Bavarian Alps. At the time of his death, aged 85, Nydahl had spent more than forty years traveling the world, teaching and establishing outposts of Diamond Way Buddhism, a distinctive trademark of the Karma Kagyu teachings for lay practitioners. A protégé of the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, Nydahl gained a reputation as a charismatic teacher with a large and loyal following, but for disaffected students he was the head of a personality cult.
Lama Ole and his first wife, Hannah Nydahl, founded the Buddhism of the Diamond Way in 1972 at the request of the Karmapa. Based on the Karma Kagyu tradition, it is designed to bring Tibetan Buddhist teachings to Western lay practitioners. By the time of his death, Lama Ole had established more than 650 Diamond Way centers in some sixty-five countries in Europe, South America, Asia, and the United States, and had established the Diamond Way Buddhism Foundation to support humanitarian projects. Until 2017, when health issues curtailed his schedule, Lama Ole spent almost every day traveling between centers giving lectures, teachings and empowerments.
He did teach phew (conscious dying), guru yoga, the garden (the preliminary practices), and Chenrezi (Bodhisattva of Compassion) meditation, Lama Ole’s main focus was on the Mahamudra, or Great Seal, teachings on the nature of the mind. Determined to liberate the Diamond Way of Tibetan customs and traditional hierarchy and make the Vajrayana teachings widely available, he taught the practices in English, with the exception of certain sacred texts. Most of the texts were translated by Hannah Nydahl, who died in 2007. (Lama Ole subsequently married twice and had a partner for a few years. Depending on the source, he had two or three children.)
Lama Ole’s widespread popularity has never been disputed. Estimates of his followers worldwide range from 15,000 to 70,000 or more. Bee Scherer, professor of Buddhism and gender studies at Canterbury Christ Church University in the United Kingdom, called the Diamond Way “arguably the largest converted Buddhist movement in Central and Eastern Europe.” The fourteenth Shamar Rinpoche, known as Shamarpa – the second highest lama in the Karma Kagyu hierarchy – went so far as to write in his biography of the Sixteenth Karmapa that “It was Lama Ole who made the name of the Karmapa famous”, adding that Lama Ole’s work was “the result of Gywa Karma’s activity”. In Ole’s home country of Denmark, he has been hailed as “the most enduring influence on Buddhist practice” and “an icon of living Buddhism.”
Despite Lama Ole’s autobiography, not everyone was so generous. In the late 1960s, Ole and Hannah honeymooned in the Himalayas (“because it was good for them,” Ole later said), studied with their first teacher, Drukpa Kagyu Master Lopon Cechu Rinpoche, and sought refuge with the sixteenth Karmapa. They also studied with venerable teachers such as Jamgon Kongtrul the Third, Mipham Chokyi Lodro, Kalu Rinpoche, and Phowa Master Ayang Rinpoche, and received teachings and empowerments from other senior lamas, including Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Bokar Rinpoche, and even the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. When they returned to Europe in 1972, Ole and Hanna were asked by the sixteenth Karmapa to establish meditation centers and begin teaching Buddhism. From then on, Ole Nydahl called himself Lama Ole, despite critics saying he was unfit to do so as he did not meet all the requirements of being a Vajrayana lama, such as failing the traditional three-year meditation retreat. However, according to Ole, he and Hannah were recognized as Lamas by the Sixteenth Karmapa “from his previous life”, and years later, the Fourteenth Lama Shamarpa was declared by Ole to be a “Buddhist Master”, saying it was “entirely appropriate” that he should hold the title of Lama.
Despite this, Lama Ole’s critics were not silenced. Some in the Karma Kagyu hierarchy questioned Ole’s unorthodox methods and what they considered an oversimplification of the teachings. Others were more generous, finding precedent in the “mad wisdom” and lay yogis of Tibetan history. When his authority was questioned, Lama Ole usually said that he only taught what the Sixteenth Karmapa asked him to do, and that it was “always based on the guru yoga of the Karmapas.”
For some, the controversy surrounding Lama Ole is a useful distraction from the more serious disputes that arose in 1992 after the sixteenth Karmapa died and the search for his successor found not one but two claimants, causing a serious rift in the Karma Kagyus. One of the candidates for the role of the seventeenth Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was supported by the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government and Karma Kagyu Master Tai Situ, while the other, Trinley Thaye Dorje, was supported by Shamar Rinpoche, i.e. Lama Ole. The schism was fueled by a break with the Karma Kagyu tradition, according to which the Shamarpa is responsible for identifying the next Karmapa.
Ole Nydahl was no stranger to controversy, thanks in part to his unusual background. He was born near Copenhagen in 1941, during World War II, when Denmark was under German occupation. His parents were members of the Danish resistance. In his youth, Nydahl later said, “My brothers and I spent all our time fighting other kids, and we got really good at it.” He lived fast, he liked motorbikes and racing cars. After a short tour in the Danish army, he graduated (with highest honors) from the University of Copenhagen. During his journey, he traveled to Nepal several times, financing his travels – as he wrote in his autobiography – by smuggling and selling drugs. Lama Ole described these activities and his arrest for smuggling as “youthful folly” and claimed that he spent time meditating and reading Walter Evans-Wentz in a Danish prison. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. In his later years, Lama Ole and his leadership of Diamond Path Buddhism were criticized for his right-wing political views, authoritarian leadership, respect for women’s and LGBT rights, and his very public and vitriolic condemnation of Islam.
The Lama managed to maintain the loyalty of his devout followers throughout, and at the time of his death received high praise from the Seventeenth Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje, who wrote that “all who met him will remember Lama Ole’s deeply human qualities: his honesty, directness, courage, humor, and his ability to inspire and motivate others.” Presumably, these qualities also defined Lama Ole’s books in English, German or Danish. Widely translated, among others The Way of Things: A Living Approach to Buddhism (1997); Buddhism and Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships (2012); Entering the Diamond Road: Tibetan Buddhism Meets the West (2012); Death Without Fear: Buddhist Wisdom on the Art of Dying (2013); Practical Buddhism: The Kagyu Path (2023); and Teachings about the nature of mind (2023).
