Ground-Breaking Ceremony for Berlin’s new Buddhist Centre

The FWBO’s Berlin Buddhist Centre is moving to new and larger premises. They have a substantial building project ahead of them, during the course of which they plan five rituals marking the various stages of the work.

Amogharatna, the Centre’s Chairman, writes with a report of their first ritual.  He says -

“On Sunday, 17th January 2010 around 35 members of the Berlin Buddhist Sangha celebrated our very first event in our new premises in Berlin-Kreuzberg. This was a “building site ritual”, “Erster Spatenstich” in German - which would be translated as “The Ground-Breaking Ceremony”.

“We dedicated the event to the Buddha Ratnasambhava, the yellow Buddha of the South, whose element is earth. The event lasted three hours and included walking meditation, mantra-chanting and making offerings to three shrines (check the video here!) , as well as chanting the Ratana Sutta and making offerings to the spirits of this 120-year-old historic site.

“The ceremony concluded with a seven fold puja and finally we had the traditional hot chocolate and cake in a coffee shop nearby. There will be more videos available soon.

“We are still fundraising. If you would like to support our New Buddhist Gate Berlin project, please find more information about the fundraising and on the progress of our project on our fundraising website www.buddha-berlin.de, now also available in English!

“For online-donations, you can go to (UK) www.justgiving.com/buddhistgateberlin- or if you live in Germany go to www.spendenportal.de

“With metta,Amogharatna