Dance of the Song of the Vajra Part I at Dejamling, France

by Marija Bajic-Jovanovic
July 1st to 7th, 2019

First of all I would like to thank all the people that are invested into the well functioning of this place and all the activities going on here. I am myself organizing events in the town where I live and it has been many years that I’m going to Dejamling, but being a course manager made me realize all the things that had to be done before, while and after a course. It has been an exceptional experience. Thanks again to all the people that invested themselves for all these events to take place in Dejamling.

It was only my third course with Stoffy (I know her since I’m a little girl) and I forgot… what a pleasure !!! Everything is brought with so much humor, and she uses her teaching skills and patience for everything and everyone. Stoffelina really tries her best to innovate her way of teaching, her observations are very profound and sincere.

I can’t describe with words my personal experience towards Vajra Dance, but I would really like to talk about the great atmosphere during this course. Of course it depends on the persons that are present: the instructor, the participants… But every each one of them sensed that we were really getting along, the organization between all of us went very smoothly. The famous “wall of charts” wasn’t of any use because each one of us stuck to a chart from the beginning until the end of the course, according to their will and capacity. Later on, we understood why we got along so well; the answer resides in the sky.

Thanks to Lar’s explanation and the Tibetan astrology, we understood ourselves and one another much better, moreover we understood we were meant to work in harmony!

Of course there had been some tension, some misunderstandings here and there, but it didn’t last long and we continued laughing with Stoffelina, singing THE Song and dancing THE Dance … and cooking very good meals.

We were lucky to have among us Small Cloud from the Morning, who was our kitchen referee during this course. Thanks to her, and her incredible devotion for making us extraordinarily presented meals, we ate very well. Her kitchen staff, that was eager to evolve in this area, was very happy to learn so much and a lot of new recipes were added to the project “recipes from Dejamling”.

Small Cloud preparing momos with her kitchen staff

It has been a while since I wanted to teach some of the regulars of Dejamling the basics of Bagchen. An incredible thing happened: even if none of them knew the game, all of them were eager to learn how to play (6 + me), and we played till one in the morning! The day after we continued to play, and one brilliant Chinese woman jumped us twice at the end: “bravo” ! With a little bit of time and practice, we could be able to play with some of the experts like Stoffelina, fingers crossed.