Адам Андраде — Книга 2: Логика. Рассеивая тьму, занятие 58

[Speaker 1]
Hi everybody, welcome to Xuanzang's Towers portion of the Bhagavad Gita program. I hope everybody's doing really well and we have one exciting class for you this morning, evening, afternoon with Geshe Michael Roach and that will be with Adam Andrade. He's teaching us a text on logic.

I see Geshe Michael's looking just about ready and Adam, are you here? Yeah, I'm here. Let me just pull up my homework real quick.

Absolutely. Stall him. Yeah, yeah, okay everybody.

Thank you for tuning in to what's going on down below. I hope you're having a snack and a nice break and these are always exciting classes where we're breaking the bounds of our understanding by going deeper into using the tool of logic.

[Speaker 2]
Pretty good damn thing, Nick.

[Speaker 1]
No problem, yeah. Anything else? Any ideas?

Breaking the bounds. Bounds. Is it boundaries?

Going beyond. Anyway, it is fun. All right, Adam looks almost ready.

I could tell. I know that look in his eye. Yeah.

He's about to crest. Almost there. For some reason, there we go.

All right. All right. Thank you, Adam.

These questions look like exciting. They look questiony. Questiony.

They're questionable questions. Yeah, so what relationship, what type of relationship would a perception of a full moon share with our awareness of the perception of a full moon? Mutually dependent.

Perfect. Oscar. Was that Oscar?

That's exactly what we were looking for. Do you have the Tibetan to go along with that? Perfect.

Perfect. It's a good start to the day there, Oscar. All right, so the relationship here is one of mutual dependence, meaning that one cannot exist without the other.

So if we remove one, then the other couldn't exist, right? And you can further think about that by thinking that you can't have the, you can't say, you know, I'm seeing the moon. And if you don't have some parallel kind of awareness of I, so what made the, this type of relationship, the type of relationship highlighted in question one, why, why could that be considered radical?

Because perhaps you're implying that without having an awareness that you're having a perception, you couldn't have any perception at all. That's an interesting thought. You know, no, no, seriously, I like it.

But what about from the perspective of seeds and trees, right? If we think about mutual dependence with regard to seeds and trees, there's one way that relationship would make a lot of sense, right?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
The tree obviously depends upon the seed, but it's a little bit more radical to think or to say that the seed also depends upon the tree, right? Right. Like a teacher depends upon students.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's consider the question from the perspective of seeds and trees. It's easy to see how a tree depends upon a seed, but a deeper understanding of dependence is needed to see that the seed also depends upon a tree. The seed can only be called a seed in relation to the tree.

So therefore the two things share a relationship of mutual dependence. On this last one, I kind of was, I'm going to need some fact checking from Geshe Michael to make sure that I worded this one correctly and that it's 100% correct. I was kind of searching for a homework question here, but it seems like a really, really beautiful kind of word to kind of meditate on.

So I thought it'd be interesting to try to formulate some sort of a homework question on it. Can anybody help me by glossing the term Tradan? That's archetype in a way.

Yeah, in a way, definitely. You know, the thing that really made me give pause and give it some further thought was Geshe-la specifically asked if we could separate the two words, like if we could separate out the elements drop and done and how they would let me ask you a question here. If I was to say that one, what, that either drop or done corresponded to a wrong sentence or a cheat sentence, which one would we say each part corresponds to?

From the perspective of the second school?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Then I would say that refers to the wrong sentence, the drop refers to a cheat sentence from the perspective of the second school. I heard Geshe-la in the background saying that word. Yeah, word in me say that cheat sentence is the drop, wrong sentence is the cheat.

Yeah, that's what I was saying as well. Okay, I had it backwards. I had it backwards.

But this is obviously why I was hoping that I would have some oversight here. So, drop can be translated, I mean, you can treat it in two different ways. One, it could just mean like a literal explanation of any given passage or text, right?

Yeah, that's correct. It could be read two different ways. Yeah.

So, but then we have, you know, draw done can also be used in a slightly more nuanced fashion. So, we could treat it as a word or a term and as meaning. And in this sense, the of a coffee cup would be the term coffee cup and the coffee cup.

So, and these two aspects would appear kind of mixed as one thing. So, draw as the term coffee cup is the appearance of the mental image of a specific coffee cup to an awareness, which is perceiving a coffee cup. And the dun would refer to the opposite of everything, which is not that coffee cup.

So, that's why I was thinking that the dun would be the opposite of everything, which is not, and that that would correspond to the qi zhen. And the draw would correspond to the rong zhen. That was my interpretation.

That's not bad. It's intriguing. So, together, draw would be the element which corresponds to the rong zhen and dun would be the element which corresponds to the qi zhen.

Because from what I understand, the draw or the term relates to the mental image that we hold in our, the mental image of any particular coffee cup that we are perceiving, which is why I thought that the draw would relate to the qi zhen or the rong zhen. Excuse me. Why would it relate to the rong zhen?

I'm getting a little confused here.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
I think it'd be something to think about further. If you're confusing them, you're on the right track. But so, anyways, the main point of my question here was that the term draw dun can be split into two separate terms and that each one corresponds in some way to a mental image, right?

That's correct. And it's a slippery expression. It could mean term and object, but it could mean meaning of the term.

Geshe-la, is there any way maybe we could ask somebody to give a little bit more volume to your mic? I'm having a hard time hearing you. Francisco.

Yeah, he did it. Cool. Thank you.

Now we're talking. Yeah. Okay.

So we have gelche here. Connector? Word says measuring.

Yeah. Yeah. To consider, right?

Yeah. It does have the connotation of also measuring as well, which would be to take measure of or to consider, right? What's the meaning if you change the prefix letter to meet?

Yeah. To meet. And what's the religious meaning of that?

Like an image or an efficacy of Buddha, right? When you go to a temple, you're not supposed to blow it off. You're supposed to gel.

You're supposed to meet each image separately. Say hi. Do a little bow.

I got a head massage when I didn't have my hands over my chest. So I remember gel. I got my head gelmed by a llama's hand.

Okay. So onto the student translation here.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Hey, I'm just going to interrupt for one second. We still can't really hear Geshe-la almost at all. If anybody there in the Sedona studio is able to make any correction, just in case you didn't realize this online, it's almost impossible to hear him.

Okay. Adam, can you read this paragraph? Yes, sir.

All right. Good. Boy, we're waking up everybody.

Hi, Sedona. Hi, Sedona. Who's the little banana?

All right. Let's look at the translation. Furthermore, it's a copycat.

Yeah. That is one substantial thing? Yeah.

If to be a coffee cup is to be the shape and color of a coffee cup.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Is it true that to be a coffee cup is to be the shape and color of a coffee cup?

[Speaker 2]
The jury's still out on that one, I think.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. It's a debate. It's a debate.

You could, for example, touch a coffee cup, and then the coffee cup would be equivalent to the hardness of the coffee, right? Depends on what sense organ you use to gel to meet the coffee cup. Okay.

So there's a big debate about whether coffee cup is the physical form of the coffee cup. What do you think? We had it this morning.

Is coffee cup the same as the tactile sense of the coffee cup? This school, we're always in this school. Yeah.

So don't forget that when we say coffee cup, generally, we're talking about a mental image. By the way, it's almost always the one that you were looking at when your mom taught you to work, which means for me, it's like a 1950s coffee cup, okay? So that's coffee cup quote.

And then the coffee cup or a coffee cup is something physical you can touch, okay? So that's the distinction here. The touch and feel of a coffee cup and the coffee cup.

Now the question is, are they zeychik, which means if you remove one, would the other disappear? Let's go both ways, right? If you remove all coffee cups in the world, does that remove the idea of a coffee cup?

Not really. How about if you removed all the ideas of coffee cups in the world, would all the coffee cups disappear? Yeah, I think we could say that.

So the direction of the relationship is expressed by the don't. When it says here, bumbadung bumbay sook, it means are coffee cups such that they depend on the shape and feel of a coffee cup? And we say, no, you could think of a coffee cup without having any coffee cups in the world, right?

Could you have coffee cups in the world without the idea of a coffee cup? No. Okay, so one way, it's a relationship one way, but not the other way.

Okay, cool. Where's this going, by the way, Adam? I'll give a thousand bucks.

Where's this going? Where's this going in the end? Why are we studying this?

Adam needs the money for his trip to Kyoto. I was thinking, because you asked me to do this for my homework, was to find some way that it relates. And I was thinking, at what point do the eight kind of particulate types of matter, at what point do they transform into a coffee cup?

And I mean, if the coffee cup, it has to be findable among its parts, or it has to be separate from them. And I don't think you can find it. Okay, that's a 500-dollar answer.

Okay, we'll do 500. Okay, but in the end, where are we going? Well, I mean, where are these things coming from?

Do they exist outside of us? Or are they, you know, in some way, are they dependent upon a mental image, right? Yeah, and where's the image come from?

Okay, how does this relate to Middle Way? How is this a door to emptiness, as one great translator's book is called, your book?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
How is that a door to emptiness to talk about coffee cups and pictures of coffee cups? Well, because then you start to understand that things don't exist in the way that they appear. Good.

And that basically, there are pictures coming out of your karmic seeds. That's all. Yeah, that's all.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
900, you're up to 900. Okay. Collect from Rob, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Where Rob's gonna get it, I don't know. Okay. Now we got an expression, Adam, you translated it as the eight types of particulate matter.

And that's a reference to Abhidharma. Okay. So the second school's going to the first school, right?

We belong to the fourth school, or the fifth, which is Diamond Way. But looking backwards, Adam's book is second school. But here's an injection from Abhidharma.

There's a concept coming up from Abhidharma, which is the most crude and wrong concept of all, called atomic theory. Okay?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
We call Hawking's Einstein. They're like below the first Buddhist school. Got it?

Okay. So they say, now do you want to talk about the eight types of, these are the eight little balls that go into stuff. Okay?

If you want to put it in plain English. These are the eight little balls that go into every atom. Protons, neutrons, quarks, quirks.

All right. What are they, Adam? You want to talk about what they are, the eight?

I don't know if I can. Well, that's why I gave you the Abhidharma question translation underneath. Yeah.

I mean. And by the way, I did this translation in a laundromat in 1976. And I wasn't very good yet, which is why I threw it out.

But I found it because it tells you what the eight are. Ready? I was still trying to make it, word, I was still trying to make it, the syllables to work out into a verse.

I gave up. I gave that up. If you notice, the lines are in poetry.

I tried for 10 years to do that. And then I gave it up. It's not possible.

Anyway. What do you think the eight are, Adam? This is a lower school, lowest of the low.

And they say, there's an element, periodic elements table. And there's little balls that make stuff what they are. It's the lowest of the Buddhist schools, which is science.

They say all physical matter has eight balls of stuff minimum. Eight atoms, eight subatomic particles. And they are here.

They're listed here. Again, this is in your document, too, if you wanted the plain bag. Well, let's start with sachimelu, say sachimelu.

Sachimelu. What's that, Adam? It's the four elements.

The building blocks of matter, the half of them, the first four. Sachimelu, which is earth, water, fire, and wind. And then when you first read them, you think it's primitive.

You think, oh, how cute. It's almost Aristotelian. They thought there were little balls of fire, and there were little balls of water, and how primitive they were.

But they're not at all. Sa, for example, represents gravity. Me represents temperature.

They are very sophisticated expressions of the basic physical forces that we also recognize. But they just gave them those names. It's not that they thought there's a little piece of dirt in there, and there's a little piece of water in there, something like that.

They are code names for basic physical forces of matter that are also recognized by science. So they're very sophisticated, sachimelu. So every coffee cup minimum has those four energies in it.

Coffee cup has some temperature. It has some degree of hardness. It also has some degree of fluidity in it, and it has some degree of motion in it, which you could call gravity or something.

Okay? So it has those four qualities. What are the other four?

We need to know that to read this page. What are the other four? Those are form, smell, taste, and touch.

Yeah, form, smell, taste, and touch. Okay? The five senses, right?

Good. Now, in Avidyāna system, one of the senses is missing. The sound.

Which is missing? Sound. Because it's too ephemeral.

It's too passing. Somebody says, don't do that. And you say, huh?

It's gone by the time you hear it. So sound isn't solid enough to be one of the components of physical matter. It's too impermanent.

It's too passing. It's too the famous example. But otherwise, you can say there's something in every atom, which you could see if it was big enough, form.

There's something inside of every atom that you could smell if there was enough of that. There's something inside every atom that you could taste. There's something inside every atom that you could touch.

Therefore, every atom has eight elements, minimum. Every atom of physical matter has eight elements. Okay?

Got it? Is that okay? Now, you can say electron, proton, you know, what's the third one?

Neutron. You can say electron, proton, neutron. You can say that.

But the question remains, is the atom the combination of those three? Yes or no? You see what I mean?

And how, when you touch it, do you touch the electron or the proton or the neutron? When this table responds to my fist and makes a noise, am I hitting electron, neutron, or proton? Or am I hitting the quality of hardness in it, the quality of fluidity in it, the quality of temperature in it, the quality of motion in it?

You know, what's it made of? And are the parts, is the sum of the parts equal to the whole? That's the big question here.

Yeah, that's it. Are the sum of the parts equal to the whole? This is a debate about are the sum of the parts equal to the whole?

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Am I knocking on sound? Am I knocking on temperature? Am I knocking on motion?

Am I not? If not, then it shouldn't be a noise. There shouldn't be any noise.

If so, my hands should get wet.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? Yeah. All right.

Now we can move on past Abhidharma and see what, let's go back to your paragraph. We didn't get through it. Okay.

Now you know what the eight little bits, the eight little pieces are. They are as ridiculous as proton, electron, neutron. They're just older.

Okay. All right. Tse chik du gyur she kye lang de ni.

In this school, the eight types of particulate matter here, I'm going to this translation, exist in a coffee cup, transform into a single transubstantial thing. You can say that. Okay.

The gyur, I wouldn't say transform so much as constitute.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
They constitute, they, the eight forces inside of an atom constitute that atom. They make up that atom. Yeah.

Sorry again. I was just saying, it is an interesting way to think about it in the sense that it transforms, because at what point do, when you put all of the constituents together, does it become a coffee cup? Right?

Like, is there some last atom? Is there a component that it needs in order to be considered a coffee cup? If you want to go there, it would be G-Y-U-R-D.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Past tense.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
If you want to go there, it wouldn't be present tense. Okay. Which is A-U-G-A-D-I-A-D.

Okay. Very subtle.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
G-Y-U-R-D. G-Y-U-R-D. Past tense.

They have become. The atoms have become a molecule. Okay.

G-Y-U-R-D. But when you use the present tense, they are the molecule. Okay.

Now, K-L-N means what? Yeah. When you accept that the eight particles are the atom.

Okay. Which is reasonable according to science. Okay.

K-L-N-B-N-E. Is the physical form of a coffee cup the stuff of a coffee cup? Is the color and shape of a coffee cup the coffee cup?

Is it the stuff of a coffee cup?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Is the color and shape of a coffee cup the stuff that a coffee cup is made of? Yes or no? I would say yes.

Say it again. Is the color and shape of a coffee cup the stuff that a coffee cup is made of? Are the eight particles what an atom is made of?

And from the perspective of this school, definitely. They better be because there's no other atom. Okay.

All right. Is the color and shape of a coffee cup the coffee cup? I mean, normally we would say that.

When I say I see a coffee cup, I don't see a coffee cup. I see the color and shape of a coffee cup. Coffee cup has no colors.

Coffee cup has no shape. Coffee cup is an idea. Coffee cup is a mental picture.

My eye cannot detect cup. Not possible. My eye cannot delineate a cup.

My eye can only see blue and straight. Because the eye, the cells in the retina respond to the color and draw a straight line on the back of my eyeball. And they cannot decide what the object is.

They just call the brain on the phone. And they say, we got a straight and round down here. And when you put your mouth on it, it tastes like coffee.

Then the brain says coffee cup. Seriously. Okay.

All right. So, so is the shape is the straight and round of the coffee cup, the coffee cup? Or not?

That's the question.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Is it the coffee cup or not? Question. If we took all of the, if we, if we canceled all the color and shape, would we also can cancel its tangibility?

Oh, no, because blind people can, can, Stevie Wonder drinks coffee. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. That's easy. All right.

Let's keep going. Ken Long, you're the guys who said that the color and shape of the coffee cup were the, were the mate, were the substance of the coffee cup. You said that.

They, they think that. They think the color and shape of the coffee cup is the substance of the coffee cup. Okay.

Therefore, you cannot say, you would be fool to say that the color and shape of the coffee cup were not substantial, that they were not a real coffee cup or something. You'd be foolish to say that. To say that the color and shape of the coffee cup are not the guts of the coffee cup is as foolish as saying the four elements is not the guts of an atom.

It's equally foolish to say that. Who on earth would say that the color and shape of a coffee cup is not a substantial coffee cup? Who would say that?

The fourth school, the middle school. These guys are directly criticizing us. You idiots, you know, you think the color and shape of the coffee cup is not the substance of the coffee cup?

Well, then what, what the hell is the substance of the coffee cup? Because we say it's, we say the coffee cup does not exist. What do we mean for a hundred dollars, except for work, for a hundred dollars, what do we mean when we say the shape and color of the coffee cup is not the substance of the coffee cup?

[Speaker 3]
You need the idea. Microphone, microphone.

[Speaker 1]
Ronit gets a chance. Good, from his own side. Oh, music to my ears.

A hundred dollars. Yeah. Okay.

Middle way, middle way, if, if Ronit had been there when they wrote this book, she would have cleared everything up, you know, because they just said, you guys think the color and shape of the coffee cup is not the substance of the coffee cup. And Ronit should have been there to answer a thousand years ago, 1,500 years ago. Listen, we didn't say the atoms of the coffee cup were not the coffee cup.

We just said the atoms of the coffee cup are not coming from the coffee cup. They're coming from your mind. That's all we said.

We didn't say the coffee cup didn't have atoms. We agree it has atoms, but that's not what makes it a coffee cup. Those atoms are coming from your, from seeds in your mind.

They are not coming from the coffee cup side because if they were, then a dog would drink coffee. Good. Adam, you got more here?

No, sir. That was it. Yeah.

They're trying to pick on the middle way. The second school's trying to pick on the, they're trying to pick on us. Okay.

Got it. You believe in atoms? Yeah.

You believe they come from, you believe things are made of atoms? Yeah. So things are made of atoms.

No. Why not? Because they're not made of atoms from their own side.

The atoms are coming from our side. Geez, that's like crazy. Well, why do you think we talk about ethics?

That should be the next question. You see, that should be the next thing. You know, they say that the atoms in the coffee cup don't depend on you.

And you say, they certainly do. In fact, they're coming from me. Why?

Because I shared my coffee. And then if the world understood that, it'd be a world of peace. Everyone would want to share their coffee.

Got it? You have to go the extra step to ethics. You have to go the extra step to the paramita of sharing.

Cool. And then reality makes sense. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.

Then you should just kill each other. Whoever's stronger gets a coffee. All right.

Grandpa's got to go to his screen. All right, Mr. Allen. I think it's this one.

Am I right? Yes, that's us. Okay, let's get everybody out of the way.

I'm 488 now. Oh, now we can see the two handsome guys, Nick and Ben. So I inserted that section.

And by the way, that's a transition took me 12 years of the Abhidharmakosha. And I threw it out after I learned to debate. But it's still kind of historically interesting.

Probably YSI is going to make a thumb drive out of it and try to fundraise with it. Then that'll be the only thing that survives. Okay.

Adam, who's going to read? And by the way, I have a whole room full of fools here who are happy to come and sit next to me and read. And you can play the, what do you call that?

When you do an email chain and trick the person, each person has to get applied dollars or else their mother is going to die. What's that called? Chain letter?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
What's it called? A skit. Chain letter.

Chain letter. Yeah. We can do a chain letter here where you choose one of the people in the room and then they can choose the next person.

That sounds like a perfect solution. Let's start with that. I say we start with words.

This is so much trouble. Let's get it out of the way. Come on, handsome.

All his handsome jeans got used up by his daughter. Good morning. Yeah.

And so we're going to ask words and questions. First of all, what's a core? Core means like a load or something you carry.

Not the kind of load when you have to go to the bathroom. It means a load on a donkey or something. Core.

Core means a load on a donkey. I was translating Vinaya on this last month and there's a vow about wearing your ceremonial robe when you're carrying a big core because it would hurt the patches. You see what I mean?

It's illegal. So anyway, core champo means heavy, extra, unnecessary, extra heavy load. And what's the unnecessary, extra heavy load in this case?

He says that would be an unnecessary, heavy, extra load. That's like carrying around your bed or something. The eight types of matter?

Are we talking about? The whole sentence before that. Oh, okay.

That Delwa. What's Delwa? That contradiction.

Yeah. Oh, you poor guy. What?

You're laboring under this heavy load. What? Of an obvious contradiction that you didn't notice.

Okay. Now the question is to ask Dr. Smith, what's the heavy contradiction here? And to give you a clue, you just take the two pieces on either side of dung.

Yeah. So the thing that they're proposing, we accept chi bambur, outer particulate matter. Yeah.

So words can explain the difference in Tibetan between suk and bambur. Oh, okay. Sure.

Suk, G-Z-U-G-S, can be used a couple ways. It could be just visual form, or it can just be form in general. But bambur means something that's made of particles.

And it's usually used in the Abhidharma school, as opposed to like a Buddha, who's not made of particles anymore. Yeah. The appearance of a Buddha, they say it's like a rainbow.

You could put your hand to a Buddha's body, like a rainbow. But a normal human being is made of atoms, bambur. So they're both translatable as physical, as matter.

But one is more matter that blocks your hand, and the other is matter in the sense of stuff you can see. Okay. So we're supposed to, supposedly we have our contradiction here, which is a heavy load.

She's just going to take some. When I had my surgery, they gave me some stuff to... Okay.

What do you call that? Yeah. So there's got to be two sides of a contradiction here.

One is to say that buddhas are cheap bambur. Or outer matter, outer physical matter. So look, you have a basic contradiction in your system.

What? On the one hand, you say that coffee cups are made of atoms of stuff. Now, what's the contradiction?

What's the other side? On the other hand, you're saying that they don't exist at all. There's some kind of idea.

Yeah. You're saying that a coffee cup is an archetype. Okay.

So which way is it? Okay. Which one do you want?

Do you want coffee cups? Do you want cars to be the car? Or do you want cars to be the car?

That's the question here. Is car, are cars car? Or are cars the cars?

Because you cannot have it both ways. If you try to carry both ways, you're going to need a lot of emetics. Okay.

Something to clear it out.

[Speaker 3]
Both.

[Speaker 1]
Both. We need both. Okay.

Adam, we're going to choose somebody else. Oh, okay. Diego.

It's like the shortest sentence. It's the shortest sentence ever written. You can't have a word pretend to be you.

Come on, come on. Get in the hot seat. He warmed it up for you.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Go very slow. Adam, you got to correct Diego syllable by syllable. Okay.

Don't be shy. If he doesn't make any mistakes, correct them anyway. That's what I do.

Okay. Don't look at me. Look at Adam.

Say. Yeah. The S is silent.

Yeah. Nice. The G becomes a D.

Don't ask me why. Good. This is easy.

Ignore the G. Ignore the R and the S. And this is this car.

Ignore the S. Nice. You're free.

Yeah. Okay. Adam, we got to work on this.

What's bumba day?

[Speaker 2]
That coffee cup.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So coffee cup and then several.

[Speaker 2]
The golden coffee cup.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Coffee cup made of gold. Okay.

So coffee cup. And by the way, the original word is kailasha, a vase, water jug. But we're using coffee cup because we're cool.

So bumba, that coffee cup. Serbum. Jason Madrugna.

If a coffee cup is made of gold, is it essentially gold? If coffee cup is made of gold, is it the coffee cup? Madrugna.

You got to cook it. Okay. If coffee cup is gold cup, does that necessarily make it a the cup?

That's the question. I don't know. I mean, once it's made of a metal, doesn't it get more the ish?

No, that's the real question. Because human beings tend to believe that if once it's got stuff in it, it's more real. You know, if I say coffee cup as a concept, and then I say coffee cup as something made of gold metal, then by the way, he chose a heavy, clunky metal to make his point.

I'm not talking about a mental image. I'm talking clunky metal thing. So if you remove one, do you remove the other?

[Speaker 3]
No.

[Speaker 1]
And I'll put let's go both ways. Okay, when you ask this question in philosophy, it has to go both ways. Okay, here's the first way.

If you removed all gold coffee cups in the universe, would coffee cup disappear? If we removed all coffee cup from the universe, would gold coffee cups disappear? Yeah.

So therefore, do gold coffee cups, are gold coffee cups, essentially the coffee cups?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
No, they are. Because if you remove all coffee cups, they would disappear. To be a coffee cup is to be to be a gold coffee cup is to be a coffee cup.

To be a is to be a coffee cup to be a gold cup. No. So the relationship goes what we call it a one way relationship.

Okay, to be a gold coffee cup is to be a coffee cup. And the test of that is if you remove the second one, the first one would have to disappear. Okay, if you remove all coffee cups in the universe, the gold coffee cups would have to disappear.

Okay. Okay, good. So we can say that to be a coffee cup to be a gold coffee cup is to be a coffee cup.

But to be a coffee cup is not necessarily to be a gold cup. Can we say that? Okay, that's the first one.

,GZER BUM DANG ZAD CIG YIN PA'I RGYAL, ,GZER BUM DANG ZAD CIG means to be a coffee cup is to be a gold coffee cup. Is that true? No, that's all.

RGYAL. RGYAL means those two ideas are contradictory.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
,GZER BUM DANG ZAD CIG YIN PA'I RGYAL, Vases can be gold vases. But vases can be coffee, coffee cups can be gold coffee cups. But just because you remove all the gold coffee cups in the world doesn't mean you remove all coffee cups in the world.

I'll say it again. Coffee cups can be gold coffee cups. But that doesn't mean if you remove all the gold coffee cups in the world, you remove all the coffee cups.

Got it? Okay, cool. All right.

And these are not stupid. I mean, I had Gene Smith, the greatest Tibetan scholar who ever lived, thought these books were stupid. And I was like, wow.

Okay. This is the path to nirvana, if you understand it. You see what I mean?

They're not stupid at all. They're not child's talk. All right, Adam, you're going to ask Diego to pick a next victim.

Diego, would you please select our next victim? That's your job. This is how you get popular in this class.

Oh, now we're changing to Brooklyn accent coffee cups. Brooklyn. The city.

We're gonna...

[Speaker 2]
Manhattan, not Brooklyn.

[Speaker 1]
We don't call Brooklyn a city. Oh, Brooklyn. That's just something Brooklyn people do.

The city. We're the third largest city in America. I know, but there's the city and there's Brooklyn.

We got 10 minutes, am I right? This class ends in 10 minutes, and then Adam leads a discussion for 15 minutes of how the hell can you use this stuff in your real life, which sometimes is a challenge. And after that, we get 15 minutes of Mr. Juan Hasson telling us all the news around the organization networks around the world, which is very nice that that exists, because in the old days, nobody knew. The YSI people didn't know what the hell Tim's doing and stuff like that. Okay, now everyone knows and they still don't care. I know, okay.

Okay, so we're gonna go to the Brooklyn here. So, anyway, start thinking of smart things to say about how you can use this in your real life. Quacky cups.

[Speaker 2]
Go.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, wow. Okay. Now, this is a expression in ancient language.

It literally means same stuff, okay? Zay means stuff. By the way, zay comes from za, which means the clay from which pottery was made in ancient times.

And it came to be a word for really substantial. So, anyway, here is zay. Zaychik, to say they are the same substance, which is how many incompetent translators translate it, because it doesn't mean anything.

The question is, when they say zaychik in the ancient philosophy, when they say same stuff, what they mean is, and never forget that, to be this is to be that. You have to say it that way. I can say, gold cup, coffee cup, one substance, and it means nothing to a normal person.

But if I say, to be a gold coffee cup is to be a coffee cup, that makes sense. That's what zaychik means. And you have to say it that way in English, or it doesn't make any sense.

If I just say, gold cup, cup, one substance, it's like, huh? But if I say, to be a gold cup is to be a cup, you say, oh, yeah, well, that makes sense. Is it true to be a cup is to be a gold cup?

No, it only goes one way. Could it ever go both ways? Is to be a coffee cup to be a thing that holds coffee, and is to be a thing that holds coffee to be a coffee cup?

Mostly. Okay, all right. Now he says, zabun chod chen.

Let's take zabun. Now I told you, if you take the S off of zay, it becomes za, which is the original meaning of zay, which means clay. Basically clay.

So zabun chod chen. Let's take a ceramic cup. Let's take a ceramic cup.

Is it the class of gold cups? Is it the same class as gold cups? Does it, now English, we have to bump into the English.

Does it share the same class with gold cups? Yeah, they're both cups. Okay, so can you say that a ceramic cup is of the same class as a gold cup?

Is a ceramic cup the class of a gold cup?

[Speaker 2]
It sits with both coffee cups, yes.

[Speaker 1]
Wait, don't agree so easily. Don't agree so easily. I'll say it again.

I don't agree. Not coffee cup. Does a ceramic cup belong to the same class as a gold cup?

No.

[Speaker 2]
No, they're both cups.

[Speaker 1]
Yes and no. Yeah, it depends what the- No, they're both, they share, they're both members of the same set. We can say it now.

By the way, set theory and this theories are very close. So are ceramic cups and gold cups, do they share the same set sometimes? Are they both cups?

Yeah, they belong to the same family, Kula. Okay, they belong to the same family. Therefore, is to be a ceramic cup to be a gold cup?

No, not necessarily. That's all he's saying here. RZA BU'I MCHOD CAN Let's take ceramic cups.

ZER BU'I NGIS RIGS YIN PA LTAR Oh, they must belong to the class of gold cups. Yes and no. I'll say it again.

Let's consider ceramic coffee cups. Oh, they must belong to the class of gold cups. Well, it's an ambiguity.

It's not clear. It's an ambiguity. It's not clear.

Logically, it's not clear. Do ceramic cups belong to the class of gold cups? No, they don't belong to the class called gold cups, but they belong to the same class as gold cups.

So which one do you mean when you say gold cup class? Gold cup class. Which a good debater says, wait, stop there.

When you say gold cup class, do you mean the class that's above gold cups? That gold cups belong to? Or do you mean the class of all gold cups?

Because gold cup class doesn't make it. Got it? Here he's cheating.

ZER BU'I NGIS RIGS Gold cup. Gold cup class. And then we're like, excuse me, do you mean the class of all gold cups?

Or do you mean the class of which gold cups are a member, which does include ceramic cups also? Okay, it's a trick question. Okay, ZER BU'I NGIS RIGS means it is of the same class as a ceramic cup.

It is of the same class as a gold cup. Can I say? Yeah, but it's not in the gold cup class.

It's just they share a class. Okay, got it? RIGS GCIG YIN We can say, yeah, they're of the same class.

If what you mean by class is cups in general. Okay, NYIN PA'I PHYIR BYED PA'I LTA BA TZUNG means we're getting into the same problems. You have to specify which class you mean when you say gold cup class.

Do you mean the cup, the class of all cups that gold cups belong to? Or do you mean all the classes of gold cups only? Okay, when you say gold cup class.

Okay, guys. That's our question. So, TSE GCIG YIN KYANG DE DANG TSE GCIG YIN DE'I TSE YIN NI DGOS That's a very important phrase.

Does a thing, if a thing is another thing, do they have to be the thing? No. Yeah, gold cups are, gold cups do belong to the class of cups, but gold cups are not the class of all cups.

I'll say it again. Gold cups do belong to the class of cups. But that doesn't mean they are the class of cups, because they don't include ceramic cups, for example.

Okay, guys. TSE GCIG RGYUD TZAN GZHAD ZIN DO RGYUD TZAN GZHAD ZIN DO RGYUD TZAN means reason. GZHAD means to explain.

ZIN, here is a past tense Y word. No, but why is it past tense? ZIN, yeah, ZIN is the present tense.

But there's a better reason here. Terminative particles in Tibetan have to match the suffix of the word before them. Yeah, the period in a Tibetan sentence has to match the last letter of the word before it.

So this should have been ZIN NO. It should have been ZIN NO, but with ZIN DO, and it's not misspelled. Then there was an ancient secondary suffix letter.

It used to be ZIN D. And then that required the use of DO after, okay? And it's very interesting that it's similar to the past tense in English, ED.

You know, like, I don't know, I cook the food. So in Tibetan, if you add a D to a verb, it becomes past tense. So why is ZIN important here?

By the way, word, it has to accompany a certain gesture. I spent the last six months telling you guys ZIN DO, okay? We finished that.

We've already talked about this. We did six months on that. You don't remember?

ZIN DO means, we talked about that a million times, got it? You got to slap your head like Brooklyn. No, what's it talking about?

ZIN DO, ZIN DO means, I told you that already. We already agreed on that, like six months ago. ZIN DO, say ZIN DO.

We talked about that. Okay, got it? All right, nice.

She's actually really good at reading. And the nice thing is she never gets upset when you make fun of her. Okay, Adam, I'm out of here.

I'm going to mark where we are. Thank you so much, Kinla. Thank you, Keshe Michael.

What's the date today? February 8th. All right.

Thanks, Keshe-Ma. Yeah, I'm going to disappear. And then if, can I sit there?

And then anybody wants to come up and talk about how they're going to use this in their real life, good luck. Okay, you know, maybe I could just get the ball rolling here. Love to hear what everybody else, if anyone else has anything that they feel like they can contribute to the discussion.

So we're trying to figure, trying to discern if there's practical ways that we can take what we've learned in today's class and bring them into our day-to-day activities to help us progress along our spiritual evolution, I guess you could say. You know, I, for some reason, whenever we start talking about whether or not things are either one thing or many things, if things are made up of eight types of particulate matter, or are they a singular thing? I always think about that part in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, where Lord Buddha says, you know, grasping to things as one whole solid thing is nominal.

And that common beings do this, you know, just, and he specifically refers to a planet. He says to think of a planet as one whole solid thing is actually just nominal in itself, that it doesn't exist that way. And so anytime I tend to generalize and think of a person like Ben or Nick or Geshe Michael or Venerable Upala as being one thing, then I'm necessarily projecting, right?

I'm creating that thing, that I've created it. So anytime I tend to group things together, like if I think of the United States of America, right? These 50 states that we call a country, that's something that I'm projecting, right?

And anytime I group things all the way up to a planet or a universe or a great world system of 1,000 of 1,000 planets, you know, 1,000 of 1,000 of 1,000 planets, all of these things are things that I'm drawing conceptual lines around and creating and bringing into existence. So how does that help me on a day-to-day basis? Well, I've been dealing with some stuff, just like I bet everybody out there is.

And, you know, in our day-to-day world, we might have a mechanic or, you know, somebody that we're having a difficult time with. And oftentimes I go back to thinking about Lord Buddha saying, well, to think of them as being one whole solid thing, one person from their own side is wrong, that I'm grasping to something that isn't there. Oh, here, I'm getting the infamous GIF here, translators at work, slow down, please.

Sorry. Yeah, so, you know, anytime I'm having a problem with somebody in particular, it's been helpful in bringing my mind back to just realizing that, you know, here's this person and, you know, they have many different parts. And anytime I tend to label them with a name, then they're necessarily something that I've grouped together.

So hopefully maybe that'll get the ball rolling here. But it relates back because I think coffee cups are the same kind of in that regard, right? They have many different, they have eight types of particulate matter.

They're made up of the four great elements and also their colors, their shapes, right? All these different things and we tend to bond them together. We do have a hand raised here from Anastasia Kovalenko.

Yeah, thank you so much for the nice class. I'm also, but like I did the reading for the ACF first and also thought about like how we see ourself. And sometimes I think we see ourself as a golden cup for our surrounding.

We think, oh, it's so like kind of important. Like we like pay attention to ourself and forget that we are kind of one of the cups. Like we have like that everything coming from us and we just like see ourself like our needs are more important.

We take care much more ourself, but yeah, and we all, the cups and we like have the same kind of things, problems and the same needs too. Like we still see the wrong world or something like this. This was my idea.

I like it. So I'm a golden coffee cup. I'm not one of those lowly ceramic coffee cups.

Yeah, I think this, yeah, totally. And we all have a tendency to do that from time to time, I think, right? We put our needs above others.

And yeah, our kind of suffering seems much more prescient than others because we're kind of hopelessly and experiencing it from moment to moment. So it seems ever more present, right? Our suffering, right?

Or our needs, right? So much more important than others. Anybody else?

Do we have anybody in the studio there? Yeah, we have somebody coming out. Is there somebody in my, oh, we do.

[Speaker 3]
Hi.

[Speaker 1]
Hi, good morning. Good morning.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you so much for class. This exercise of investigating the way existence happens in a micro-nuanced way seems to be a great mental training for how to deal with the things when they arise.

[Speaker 1]
So like when that person or that situation that comes up, it's going to agitate me.

[Speaker 2]
And having trained my mind to slow things down and say, is it this or is it that or what's going on here can hopefully in the moment or not, if not soon after, help me dissect what's going on so I can be in a better relationship with my world.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I would agree 100%, yeah. I think that's what we are doing. That's what we should be doing.

That's where our studies are leading us, right? And we're trying to slow in, kind of lengthen that moment between our reaction to something and our ability to bring some kind of reasoned understanding about why things are arising in the way that they are. And that's the key, definitely, because that's the point at which you can begin to wrangle in your own emotions and act in a way that is 100% responsible to a more moral kind of outcome, right?

Yeah, I think, yeah, totally. Just like anything, right? The more you get used to observing your vows, right?

The more you're going to get used to kind of seeing how you're transgressing them as well.

[Speaker 2]
I just want to say one thing about today's subject. I just want to mention one thing, that how important this topic is for us to see emptiness directly.

[Speaker 3]
So this, I know in the DCI, Geshe-la made it real simple. In order to touch the diamond world, you need to do four things. Somebody help me maybe online as well.

[Speaker 2]
What are the four things? To see the emptiness directly.

[Speaker 1]
So they are serving the teachers. Study, meditation, yoga, keeping your book.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, keep the vow. So study specifically Adam's book and specifically about the car, a car, and car with a quotation mark.

[Speaker 2]
So I just want everybody to remember we are dealing with the most important subject in the whole universe.

[Speaker 1]
Connie-la.

[Speaker 3]
Oh, I am not here. I'm in the wrong seat. Yes, Geshe Michael.

[Speaker 1]
I just want to announce that there's a sponsor, a foundation headed by Noor Ibrahim, which is giving grants and they are giving $5,000 grants in conjunction with ACI and the Mixed Nuts translators. And you get a grant by designing a three, a weekend course of maybe three one-hour classes or something like that. You get a grant if you hook up with a translator to design a three-class course over the weekend.

The only small print says you have to be a qualified ACI teacher on the ACI side. And then on the other side, you have to be a Mixed Nuts translator. And the reason I'm mentioning that is that one of the first five grants has gone to Adam.

And... That's the one, yeah. It means if you have to borrow money, borrow it fast from Adam.

No. So the ACI teacher for his program is gonna be Mr. Juan Hasso. And they're together, they are going to give a class in Kyoto and it'll be, and it's gonna be a heavy duty emptiness class based on the very first debate that we do in the Geshe course.

The Geshe course, the first debate, maybe three weeks. The first debate of your whole life is a very deep emptiness debate. And they're gonna teach that.

These are...

[Speaker 2]
I do have something to say. And it's about what Geshe Michael just talked about. Tonight, Vance Greer will be with me on, it'll be for SCIM, the teacher trainees.

We'll give a talk from her text and talk about meditations on emptiness from her text. And then hopefully we'll move that into the weekend thing that Geshe Michael just talked about. So it's happening.

It's wonderful that we have the Mixed Nuts translators and the wisdom that they share. So thank you, Vance.

[Speaker 1]
We still have a couple of minutes. Does anybody else have anything they'd like to share? I can...

Oh, for somebody coming up? Great. Nick.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe Michael just asked me to share that that's the best, Vance Greer's book is the best selling Mixed Nuts text, translated text.

[Speaker 1]
Nick, did you have something you wanted to add? Oh, I was just going to say what I thought was so cool about this section is it's really making me think a lot about Master Shantideva. And it seems in a way like it's preparation for studying Master Shantideva and specifically the part about where he says, you know, we just label what is me.

You know, if you really think about it, what you call me and wanting things for you and not wanting things for you, it's all just based on how you label it. So why not, if you have this understanding, just practice expanding the boundaries of what you call me and, you know, try to just take that boundary and expand it to cover some other people or all other people. And I just thought, you know, that's a cool idea.

And obviously we can do it maybe only in an imaginary way at first. But I have always found that and this text seems to be training you to be able to develop the logic that would help you do that. And I've found that to be a really powerful practice.

So that's all I just wanted to share. It looks like it's time for a fun house. Thanks, man.

It was really beautiful. Thanks everybody for a good class. Everybody in the studio there.

Geshe Michael, Nick, Ben, thank you guys for organizing this. For Apollo for taking the notes and helping us out in the chat, man. You guys are all amazing to hang out with.

It's really, really cool.

[Speaker 2]
Thanks, Adam. And hi, Eva. Everybody in the room says hello.

[Speaker 3]
Okay. Thank you very much, Geshe-la. And we also want to thank Adam for the wonderful job you're doing.

I don't know. Yeah. I hope you are still there.

And soon I'll contact you with more information. He knows what I'm talking about.

[Speaker 1]
So for those of you, let me see. I can see, but can tech table tell me, like, anyways, it's okay. But there is a lot of people who watches these programs every Saturday, every month, every Monday.

We are in the Diamond Cutter Classics series in the Shuangshan Tower program. And you know, the numbers keep going up. And I'm very surprised because maybe like before the Shuangshan Tower, I don't know, 100 people, 200 in a good day.

Now it's like 400. And when Stanley teaches, it's like 700. It's unbelievable.

So just giving the context for the live audience here, this happens every Saturday, every Monday. And for the people who is online, the people is, or the people are? The people is, are, okay.

The people are online. This is the YSI week on the Vagabandita. And it has been a wonderful, wonderful program.

Thank you. I have the honor to be here with one of the directors of YSI, Connie O'Brien. Oh, thank you so much Juan.

Thank you for having us.

[Speaker 3]
I would love to invite.

[Speaker 1]
We have also, yeah, we want to introduce you on screen, the staff member team.

[Speaker 3]
And Gina is, what?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, good. You can see everybody on, yeah, on screen. Here is the entire team.

So you know that YSI's mission as a nonprofit. Oh, do you hear that music? That music is voodoo child.

And it goes with this image. But before I sell this image, YSI's mission is really, it says something strange on our website.

[Speaker 1]
We're talking about preserving the ancient wisdom traditions of Asia. But what it really means, what YSI really does is reteach kindness and teach people how to serve. And it makes me cry, sorry.

And these are the best living examples of how to do that. Plus our wonderful distributors.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Thank you, team. Thank you, everybody online.

Teresa, Sophie, yes, and Chrissy. Thank you all. Thank you.

So what I'm going to do now.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I hear you have like an important, I call it product. I like to call it product. But it's very meaningful.

When I hear first your idea, I felt like I want one. I really want one. But let's see what it is.

Can you tell us? Well, let me explain it from two aspects.

[Speaker 2]
I think I did something weird. From two aspects. First, we will have three of these available for auction.

And it's to support YSI. We are a nonprofit. We need help always.

Because we like to put on the back.

[Speaker 1]
Gosh, Michael's laughing over there. But he knows I'm always asking the Geshe Michael Veronica Foundation for money.

[Speaker 2]
But you can help us. We're going to auction three of these. What's inside this?

First of all, this image is Geshe Michael basically having fun doing duty and duty and fun.

[Speaker 1]
He took a break during a really, really heavy time of teaching and just had a music festival.

[Speaker 2]
And he was playing voodoo child. So he assigned this image for these three.

[Speaker 1]
Inside this, you also have an opportunity to, well, we're going to auction off four of the YSI staff.

[Speaker 3]
You get an hour.

[Speaker 2]
I know we're auctioning ourselves now. We're auctioning off YSI staff. You have an hour with basically Krishna in the chariot.

It's what we're calling it. So you can have Earl Krishna. You can have Benji Krishna.

You can have Teresa Krishna or Connie Krishna. So whichever one you bid and you get that with one of these boxes. And there are only three of these available.

Also inside these is Geshe Michael's most recent flow doc. You have no idea how amazing that is. The information that's on that flow doc, it doesn't go out or it goes out to very few people, usually just archivists.

So you'll get that on this. Plus his old first notes, very dry notes from hardly usable, let's put it that way, when it was first taught to him versus what we're now learning with the Bhagavad Gita and how to apply it in our lives now. So that's what you get on this digital drive, three of them.

But there are some, oh, also including today's meditation, a copy of that.

[Speaker 1]
And what else? Music. Yes, we might.

Thank you very much.

[Speaker 2]
We were hoping to have someone sing the Bhagavad Gita for us on that drive.

[Speaker 3]
Wonderful.

[Speaker 2]
And another big surprise, but we'll tell you what that is later.

[Speaker 1]
Wonderful. Okay, okay. So these are for the action, right?

For the auction. Wonderful. But what if people just wanna get, I don't know, like, I just wanna buy one.

Can I just buy one? Or do I have to be competing with my fellow family members to get it?

[Speaker 2]
That's the best kind of competition. Just keep raising the price. But yes, yes, you can buy it.

It is available for everyone on the buy it now. There you go. You can buy it now, but you don't get the blue ticket.

[Speaker 3]
You don't get Krishna in the chariot. Yeah. You just get the hundred thousand solders.

Yeah. All right. So sometimes competition is good.

Yes, you're right.

[Speaker 1]
Right.

[Speaker 3]
Interesting.

[Speaker 1]
I like it. I'm scared, but I like it. So, okay, there you go.

You can follow the QR code. You can buy one. I really want one.

I really want one. But you can also action it and get the blueprint and the honors, the high honors of winning the auction, right? Yes, you can.

Wonderful. So we'll keep keeping people updated on what's going on. But I really think that what, when I talk to them privately, they told me what is in there, a little bit of what's in there.

I think it's going to be very cool to have that material. I quietly say I want one, but if I show too much interest, then sometimes people try to sell me things more expensive. You know, it's like, pretend you're not that interested.

[Speaker 2]
What this does for us really is it allows us to produce a nice, put Geshe Michael in forefront in a nice way. So it allows us to teach these classes or to have Geshe Michael, I mean, to teach these classes beautifully.

[Speaker 1]
So thank you. Thank you very much for supporting YSI. Do the auction, make one.

Jealous. Yeah, if we sell 10, I get one for free. We'll talk about that later.

We'll see, we'll see.

[Speaker 2]
I have to ask the man. I have to ask Benji.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we'll have to take Benji for breakfast or something. Very welcome. Okay, so this is a little bit of what the Petri World News does.

We try to give space for the organizations. And up to you, you can stay. Maybe it's good if you stay if you want, because the next section actually makes me nervous.

So having you here, it's good. So what happened? Another thing that Petri World News tries to do is to really kind of find out what's going on in town and in world as well.

So some of you may know, like last week, we went through an interesting situation. It's a sensitive topic, but some pictures like leak in when they were allegedly claiming that Rob Haggerty was maybe involving shady businesses and deals. So I couldn't believe it when I hear it.

I think personally, like, he's a very, very good person, but we needed to find out what's going on. So, you know, the Petri World News mission is also find out what's happening. So I collected a team of brave members and we went to see what was going on.

So Gina, please. And I request your audience, like sensitive topic. So discretion is advised.

Let's watch the video, please. So here we are. We are following this guy.

We have been following him. Yeah, I think he's about to do a sneaky thing. So we are in his house so late in Arizona.

Big Sur Junior. Who knows? Only God knows what he's up to.

We're going to confront him right away. What are you doing in an empty parking lot so nighty in Arizona? I don't know.

So this guy run away. Apparently he's scared that we find out what he's up to. We're not going to give up.

Something is fishy here. Gina and Francisco are helping me just in case he gets aggressive. We follow Rob Haggerty after he disappeared and we find out this long line of people.

Then Lindsay shows up and we start questioning where is Rob. She spills the beans. All of a sudden we see another suspicious character showing up.

The place is packed and we have no idea yet of what's going on. All kinds of ideas start rumbling in my mind. What is Rob into?

Clandestine betting perhaps? Maybe cockfighting? Then the unimaginable happens.

We spot in the audience very influential people in different organizations. This is a very unusual situation for the area in the desert that we live in. Luckily Francisco and Gina are in their positions ready to take down whatever threat may come up.

And finally when we were less expecting it.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you for your patience. We are delighted to welcome you to this performance by Grand Theft Ballet.

[Speaker 1]
The performance was amazing. Very beautiful. We were very excited to find out that the Ukrainian Grand Theft Ballet came all the way to Arizona.

At the end we were able to meet with the dancers and the director. It was a great chance to show our gratitude and appreciation. And luckily no one was hurt during this special mission.

It was all false alarm. We had a great time with the Ukrainian Ballet and they say they will come back sometime. We have also Lindsay here with us because she needs to testify as well that Rob is doing well.

No, just kidding. Just come up and she's going to show us. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. You hold my back very much.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

It was dangerous but you know Rob is a very dangerous person. So we need to be careful. Security guard.

Okay, so Lindsay is Rob a good person? No, just kidding. Tell us about what you've been working on these days and why you are looking for volunteers.

Yeah, thanks Juan. So I am helping with the Good Night Book Club which is a practice of each night putting away your electronics, reading a little bit of a paper book before you fall asleep and that's what we're doing. In part it is a fundraiser for Diamond Cutter Classics and as we're growing and more and more people are joining and doing that practice all over the world, we are in need of some more volunteers.

[Speaker 2]
And so those are on the screen right now. But the main one I wanted to talk about today is the one at the top. This is something we really need help with again as we're growing is somebody to help kind of get our data in order.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the other non-profit directors are like laughing in the audience. But essentially we need somebody with experience setting up a system that essentially tells us, okay, this person has signed up for this number of books per year and they need it shipped to them on this date and the ship needs to come from this country and to just help us get a little bit more systematic and working out of a system instead of spreadsheets. So that's what we're looking for help with.

We do have a system, a portal that we can use and most of the data is in it and stuff. But we're looking for someone who has experience in this area and can help us out. So if that's something you have, the email is there, that QR code goes to the same email.

Just email me a little bit, like your resume and some experience you have. And we'd love to have your help with that. And it'd be a huge thing helping hundreds of people around the world to do a Good Night Book Club practice.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So for people that are watching online, I hope you're following also the YSI program, the Bhagavad Gita, because we just learned that basically this practice is like a great gateway for deep realizations during our sleep time, really. Geshe Michael was sharing with us that actually if you practice in this way, it can really help you to start having like lucid dreaming, for example, or a lot of benefits while you have your sleeping time.

[Speaker 3]
So if you want to start having these experiences, maybe helping the Good Night Book Club is a great seat to plan.

[Speaker 1]
So, yeah. Okay. And just to finish super quickly, we will see what programs are coming up because that's also important.

We have Christina Kasica teaching Sanskrit, series one and series two. Coming up at the end of February, you can follow the QR code or just talk to her if you are here in the room. Christina is there.

I hear good things about your course. Wonderful. I went to a few classes, but then I didn't go tomorrow.

No, it's just busy schedule. What else is coming up? We have all the...

Stanley's here? No, but he's planning a trip to the Dunhuang Caves in the desert. It is a Gobi Desert, I think, in China, right?

So, I think that's going to be very exciting as well. You can talk to maybe Chloe. Maybe Chloe knows about that thing.

Then we're going to be going to Diamond Mountain in April. Sunam is here. You can talk to her.

I think it's so successful. No more rooms, but you can camp. And that's fun sometimes.

For many years... Oh my... Okay, commuter only.

Talk to her. But it's very interesting. We're going to start like a new series, a preparation series that's going to lead us eventually to the new Diamond Wake Courses that Geshe Michael is preparing for us.

Thank you very, very much. And then we go to Mexico in July. You can talk to Tim Lowenhaupt.

And he has interesting, maybe potential interesting news about later trips. I don't know. We'll see next time.

Thank you very much. See you in the Petri Cafe. Okay, what's next?

Enjoy cinnamon roll? Yeah. So usually...