Paul Van hooydonck
Paul Van Hooydonck spent twelve years in Buddhist monasteries in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and England. He worked as a meditation teacher in a Tibetan center in Nepal (Ganden Yiga Chözin), in the Nilambe meditation center in Sri Lanka and at the Peradeniya University, the largest university in Sri Lanka. In 2007 he was ordained as a monk (Bhante Vayama) in the tradition of Theravada Buddhism (the old school). Back in Belgium, he founded Ehipassiko. From his experience, he talks about various aspects of Buddhism and about meditation.
Godwin Samararatne, Paul's teacherHe was one of the most known and respected meditation teacher in Sri Lanka.
I have known him for five years and worked for him in the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Center near Kandy, before he died in March 2000. From our first meeting his calm and non-judgmental listening struck me. He was a man of a few words, but listened with attention and interest. It often seemed to me that there was no one homed his body. There was no one with a fixed opinion about things, a fixed point of view, an agenda. Only emptiness, an "empty availability". Godwin was a selfless person. There was no one to be profiled, manifested, defended, confirmed or recognized. His inner stillness and calm were almost physically tangible. Godwin stood for the "gentle way of Buddhist meditation", a low-threshold approach that is accessible to everyone. The Dhamma was for him a path of inner transformation of which he was himself the prime example. He was and remains for me a true "Kalyana mitra" (spiritual friend) and a source of inspiration. |
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