Venerable Vello Vaartnou on his life's work VIDEO interview
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Venerable Vello Vaartnou is a Buddhist monk from Estonia. He is the main organizer of the 2012 "Buddhism and Australia" conference. Learn more about his past and present projects in this interview with Buddhistdoor International.
Directed by Andreas Liesenfeld
Produced by Cathy Ziengs
© Buddhistdoor International 2012
Transcript
Chapter 1: Introduction to the speaker
venerable Vello Vaartnou is a Buddhist monk from Estonia he holds a geshe a tibetan buddhist
academic degree today he is living in australia he is the main organizer of the 2012
buddhism and australia conference we are glad to welcome venerable velovarno in our buddhist offices
to learn more about his past and present projects we came here in person today
so what's the conferences the history for conference starts before because uh starts before because uh i
made already five conferences in europe before and it was about buddhist history in
baltic sea region and the main purpose was to gather together you know
sweden finland estonia latvia denmark norway velovarno has openly practiced
Chapter 2: Background and experience
buddhism during the soviet rule when all religious activities were banned
from 1974 to 1987 he studied at the evolga monastery
the only buddhist spiritual center in the former soviet union during this time he gathered and translated many buddhist texts
he has a particular passion for building stupas a skill he had learned from tibetan and mongolian stupor masters
under his guidance four stupas were built velovardno is also a recognized tanker
painter as i mentioned that i started in estonia
Chapter 3: Conferences in Australia
and two years ago i moved to australia and this year was the first conference in
seconds australia it was called buddhism in australia why because i'm a buddhist and i live in australia and it's very nice i'm in australia and
it's very nice to say that it's food in venezuela but it was meant actually to gather together all countries in asia as well
and i live in perth it's industrial city so there's nothing interesting actually as a resource this will it will be very
useful sorry it was very useful to do with i mean conference about buddhism
and then there are a couple of chinese organizations some of them from kombucha laws altogether maybe 12 or certain
organization but not they are not so powerful except arjun brah because
i think that he's a tremendous person actually to do such work in australia he studied you know in cambridge physics
and then he left the university i mean when he started he finished it and he went to australia oh no he came to thailand first
and then after thailand he went to australia and he started an empty place actually and i asked him to write
about his memories and it's very interesting to read because he even described that children you know was throwing stones on
them when they were going around and asking for food there's monks so but and now they are monastery and everything and they think that
ajahn brahm is very powerful person actually very charismatic
Chapter 4: Future goals and philosophy
sand all nine person who has moved to australia with me they all
belong to the same school but my idea was actually in australia maybe i i could categorize them together a little bit more i'm in buddhist to
work together why because until now it seems that all are separated cambodia laws chinese and nobody knows about
others and that was my first goal actually to do conference and to see how many people
would take you know part of it and uh even ajumbra was a
business monks in conference so it came out i think very well next year it will be bigger more people
and four different uh panels first panel will be uh dedicated to buddhist history
and second it's for philosophy and third it's uh buddhist suitors and texts
and commentaries and the fourth finalists are free everybody can not everybody but i mean people who want to take part of it
they can choose subject what they want but this has to be connected to the buddhists that's the extra plan
i've been always interested interested in knowledge and why i'm doing this conference is because
maybe i'm using the people to get more knowledge about buddhism for myself and for others as well
and in my case i am very bad teacher i mean to gather people together
and teach them why because i i read some lectures in italian university and and uh
i wasn't satisfied why because it takes a long time to under to explain to the people and i can't do you know uh work
as you know in university every day going there and reading lectures it's too boring for me i like to read myself
a lot and to organize to do things since winter