Vanja Palmers
Founder and President of the Foundation
Vanja Palmers comes from an Austrian industrial family and was born in Vienna in 1948. As a small child, he moved with his family to Switzerland, where, after studying economics in Zurich and setting up a promising new business, a career as a successful businessman seemed to have been mapped out for him. The 1968 movement, however, left its mark on Vanja: An LSD experience during this time answered the question of what was really important in life in a completely unexpected way. He gave up his previous life and, like many others of his generation, went in search of the deeper meaning of our presence here.
After an initial interest in yoga and macrobiotics, Vanja encountered Zen Buddhism in 1972, which fascinated him deeply. He spent ten years at Tassajara Zen Monastery in California, where he received formal training as a priest. During this time, he met the two people with whom he has since been connected by a special inner vibrancy and who were to become his teachers, mentors and friends: the Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB and the Zen master Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi.
Back in Europe, Vanja and Brother David founded the “House of Silence” Puregg in 1989 in the Austrian Dienten am Hochkönig as an ecumenical meeting place and center of spiritual practice and reflection. A decade later, the two created Felsentor in Switzerland, a counterpart to the interreligious dialogue, which is dedicated more specifically to the protection of animals and the peaceful, respectful coexistence of all living beings.
Vanja’s continuing commitment to animal welfare is just as essential as his passionate enjoyment of being a farmer; an agriculture that produces healthy, high-quality food in harmony with nature. The organic farm Frohmatte below the Felsentor and the Zendo on the river in the city of Lucerne, which was opened in 2018 in combination with a vegan restaurant, are an expression of this commitment to a peaceful and healthy diet for our planet in the long term. At the same time, Vanja is particularly concerned with the rehabilitation of those substances that have given his life a fundamentally new, expanded perspective, within the framework of scientific or therapeutic application.
