Тим Ловенхопт — Книга 1: Совершенство мудрости, занятие 40

[Speaker 1]
Okay, cool. All right. So, hi everybody.

The first part of our class is homework from the previous class, which most of you were not there for. But what I thought, we're reaching a section in this book, basically we're just defining what makes the, how do we define this, the word of a Buddha, what is considered the word of a Buddha. So I thought we would review all the different wrong debates, excuse me, all the wrong ideas.

So we're going to be getting to a section now where we're going to talk about the right ideas. Tell them what your book is. Oh, that's a good idea.

This book is a very long book, probably the rest of my life, unless something weird happens. And it's called The Jewel of Realizations. And it's by, it was written down by Arya Sangha, who, if many of you know this story, he was doing deep retreat, like at Diamond Mountain for 12 years, which is a long time.

And at the end of the 12 years, nothing happened in the retreat, supposedly. And he was like, I hate Diamond Mountain. It's hot.

They probably asked him to fundraise. It's hot. It's uncomfortable.

So yeah, so he left the retreat and he went to Bowie. And kind of imagine, you know, and he came across, there's lots of dogs in Bowie as well. And he came across a dog in Bowie and that dog had been injured.

And he started taking care of this dog. And in that process, he finally had a true moment of compassion. And then the dog wasn't the dog.

The dog was Maitreya. And then Maitreya was like, hey, come with me. I'm going to teach you some cool stuff.

And so he grabbed onto Maitreya. And Maitreya took him to the Peachtree Cafe for a morning, right, and served him cinnamon rolls. And in that morning, Maitreya taught him the five great books of Maitreya.

And Arya Sangha wrote them down. And so at the end of his breakfast with Maitreya at the Peachtree Cafe, when he got home, something weird happened and 50 years had passed. And anyhow, so he wrote these books down.

And one of the books is called The Jewel of Realization. And we're in the beginning of that book, and it's in debate format. So basically, what happens is someone comes up and gives us a slightly wrong idea.

And then we have to figure out what the correct idea is. And so we're in the middle of a section defining what the speech of the Buddha is. It will, in English, it will be about 12 volumes.

Like that. Yeah. So he has to live a long life.

Okay, so go. All right, here we go. So I'm going to go through three of the main.

Oh, wait, something else happened. Something else happened? Yeah.

What happened to Rob? Are you ready? Oh, we're going to do that now.

Yeah, so the reason we can have the translation team is due to our sponsors. And the reason we didn't have a translation team earlier was we didn't have the sponsors. And there's a thing, after you become a translator, you start having kids.

And I don't know what they're doing. They're supposed to be working. It's work.

Right, work? Where's work? Right here.

Yeah. Where's your other two girls? Okay.

So we have a program called Good Night Book Club, which you know about, and I'm not going to tell you about it, but you can sign up. You get a book sent to you as they come out, and you promise not to use your phone and your computer from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. And it's really, really good for you. I can attest to it.

And the big boss, Dalao Ban, of that program is having a birthday. And we're going to sing together. Lindsay, please jump.

The birthday's technically tomorrow, but I won't be here to eat cakes, so we're going to have it today. Okay, Tim's going to lead the coyote. I mean, the singing.

Two, three. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dear Lindsay. Happy birthday to you. What happened to the fire?

Speech? Pretend fire on the cake? Oh, pretend blow out the candles.

Yeah. You got to bring me those two, that one and that one. So, we have a tradition that she picks up a page from this.

This is the Life of Tsongkhapa, very long and beautiful book. It took 15 years to make it, and she's going to pick a page now. There's your book.

And this morning, the German team and Austrian, led by certain people who can come up now, Peter and Eva. Eva did the work. Peter took the credit.

It's called Der König des Darmes, and we'd like to congratulate them and thank them. It took a long time. You want a German prediction?

Okay, you choose and you translate. You choose the page number between 1 and 400. Don't look.

So, this is about, can I say the king, the name of the guy of the King of the Dharma? This is from a scene of Tsongkhapa where he gets secret teachings from Kala Chakra, the Wheel of Time, which will be interpreted by Geshe Michael. You're going to interpret?

Oh, yeah. The meaning of that? There's a, there's this wheel called samsara, right?

And you tend to hurt people, and then you get that karma, and then the karma comes back to you. And you can call that the Wheel of Life, the samsara wheel. You can call it the Wheel of Nice, Crown of Nice, which is Seiji's book.

But there's a deep teaching that, Kala Chakra, that if you learn about emptiness, and if you learn that things are coming from your seeds, you can turn the Wheel of Suffering into the Wheel of the Dharma, which is an eight-spoke wheel, which represents passing knowledge onto the next generation. So that wheel, the reverse wheel, means that you pass wisdom onto each generation in the same way that Lindsay is doing in her life. And congratulations again to Eva, and especially Eva, who did the work, and Peter.

One more time. Go to sleep. Do we have it set up so the people online can speak?

Thank you. So everyone online, you can just yell out the answers if they're not yelled out here in the room. Okay, so we're going to go through the three main wrong ideas, and then when we start the class, we will get our correct idea.

We'll get through it. We'll start going through it. Okay, first one.

Oh, there it is. Okay. Our opponent comes along and starts a new debate, and they say, if something is the word of the Buddha, it must also be a classical commentary.

What do we say? What's wrong with this? What is our counterexample?

How do we disprove this? Just classical commentaries in general. Oh, that's nice.

The opponent said, if something is the word of the Buddha, it must be a classical commentary from ancient India. It's hard to hear what you said. Can you yell it into the microphone?

He said, there's a contradiction between the word of the Buddha and the classical commentary.

[Speaker 2]
A contradiction in the sense that the word of the Buddha is the word of the Buddha, the commentary is the word of the Buddha, and the classical commentary is the word of the Buddha. Someone else said something about that.

[Speaker 1]
Right, and that's pretty much the answer, more or less. Mike said it as well. So basically, if you look at the ALL database, from ancient India, we have 4,600 texts finished, and 990 are spoken by the Buddha, and the rest, 3,700 are written by human beings.

To explain the Buddha. So the actual answer, that was an answer, and a correct one. But basically, they say that the argument is Lord Maitreya composed classical commentaries that are separate from his speech.

That's the first example we gave. This was the second example, meaning he didn't have to speak in order to write. Okay, next question.

Next up, debate. They make the claim that if something is considered the word of the Buddha, it must also be in the mind stream of a Buddha. So if something is the word of a Buddha, it must be in the mind of a Buddha.

Why is that wrong? I would say everything is in the mind stream of a Buddha. Kind of, but that's not the counterexample.

What would be considered? I know. Does everything that's word of the Buddha only exist in the mind stream of a Buddha?

Yeah, so what Ward said is, if it's in Tim's mind, Tim's not a Buddha, it's still the word of a Buddha, and I'm not a Buddha. Well, even, well, not even that. It's that if something's the word of a Buddha, doesn't necessarily only exist in the mind of a Buddha.

No, because the words of the mind, I can have the words of the Buddha in my mind, and I'm not a Buddha. Make sense? Yeah.

Cool. All right. Thirdly, if something is considered the word of the Buddha, and they define it in this debate as speech, which has been permitted by the Buddha, then it must be something that's spoken by a student.

And the example we use is, once I heard that the Buddha said, if you're going, he wants, Buddha said, please write down or relay everything I said, and you're not allowed to change it, except you're allowed to say three words. Well, well, what are the Sanskrit words? Once I heard, right?

So that was permitted by the Buddha to add to the speech of the Buddha. So if it's that, is it something that is, that is necessarily only spoken by a student of the Buddha? No.

[Speaker 2]
Excellent word.

[Speaker 1]
No. Give him the microphone. Let's see if he explains it.

It's all I know. Yeah. I mean, I know it's no, because it's wrong.

It's kachika. But why is it wrong? It's very specific.

The counterexample starts with Ananda, one of the students of the Buddha. Because he repeated the sutras, but he didn't say them himself? Not exactly.

So imagine you're going to say, once I heard, like you heard the words of a Buddha, and you're relaying and say, once I heard these words, do you think about it beforehand? Right. So, so you, yes.

So if you thought about it beforehand and said, once I heard these words and thought of the words in your mind, because typically you think first before you speak. Sometimes. Sometimes.

According to this debate, that's what you do. Then it's not necessarily have to be spoken by a student, because it would be in their mind first before they spoke it. Okay.

Isn't this fun? I think it's really fun. It trains you never to lose it.

You better think it's fun. You got to write it down. 22,000 pages, you said?

It'll be about 10,000 pages. Eight, six volumes. Okay.

Tibetan special vocabulary. All right. First words, ka and nak.

Each. What's the difference between these two words? Honorific and honorific.

Which one is the honorific one, Maria? Ka is the honorific. Correct.

Ka is the honorific for speech. Nak is just general Joe Schmo's speech. Yay.

What'd you say? Where does he send the chick? Next one.

Dike dake topa du du chick. Na. Yeah.

Once I heard. Nice. Okay.

And then last one. Oops, that's not what I meant to do. Wrong Luke.

What's that?

[Speaker 2]
Our system.

[Speaker 1]
View as our position, our system. Yay. Cool.

Okay. Now we're going to go to my beautifully incorrect translation. Okay.

Please read first the Tibetan and then read your translation. Then me and Word will pick on you. Perfect.

Could you throw the box to somebody? Or do you want me to read it? You read it.

[Speaker 2]
I'll read it. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
NUS PA RANG GI LUG LA RANG SONG PA PO'I SANGS RGYAS BAG PAS RDO RJE MI THUN CHOG PO'I PHYIR DU GSUM PA'I NAG SANGS RGYAS KYI SKAD SEMS NI Yeah. So the system of the Geshe course books for a thousand years has been, you don't tell the student the correct thing first. First you try to confuse them.

And so every presentation of a topic, and there may be a hundred topics in these books, each one is presented first, a debater comes and argues something which is slightly wrong. And then we fight with them. And we learn a lot by listening to somebody make mistakes.

And then in the second section, we just present what's correct. And that reads like a modern Western textbook. So a modern Western textbook, they don't have this section at the beginning where somebody presents slightly wrong ideas and gets defeated.

And it's very, very useful. So ever since Lord Buddha's time, there has been this tradition to debate it first. And then you explain it.

So we finished the debate about what is the word of the Buddha. We heard a lot of slightly wrong ideas and we learned a lot. And now we get the RANG LUG.

RANG LUG means here's the party line. Here's the actual correct presentation. After that, there's a very intriguing section called where he gets to come back and attack us.

He gets to come back and attack what we said, which is very democratic in a way. You see, he gets to come back and defend himself again. So we just reached the second section after, I don't know, one year or six months, I don't know.

Two years. Two years. Oh no, the second section of this debate, like six months.

Yeah, so here's RANG LUG. Here is what we believe is the definition of the speech of the Buddha. Okay, and here we go.

NYIS PA RANG, you want to translate? Sure. The NYIS PA RANG GI LUG LA is in the second part of our debate structure.

We'll present our position. Okay. Now, this is so confusing to me.

It's like RANG SONG PA PO'I SANGS RGYAS. It's the Buddha who's the author. Good, the composer of the teaching, the one who created the teaching.

Oh, just the general.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
The one who created the... The RANG means the book's author or the book, the teaching's speaker must be a SANGS RGYAS. Must be a Buddha.

Then why do they say BAG PA? Yeah, they're also an Arya. So when you say all the Aryas in the world, it includes all the Buddhas in the world.

So here he says an Arya, but only one who is a Buddha. So if it's the speech of the Buddha, it has to be spoken by an Arya. Then you say, oh, well, all the Aryas are teaching sutras.

You say, no, no, an Arya who is enlightened. Okay, BAG PA. Then the...

So going to the end, we're saying the definition SEMS NI of the word of the Buddha is speech whose purpose, or the purpose of the speech is to eliminate the student's wrong ideas or wrong views. Good, sorry. Yeah, it means the negative side or the negative side in the student.

So any speech which is spoken by an enlightened being to help a student improve themselves is the definition of Lord Buddha's speech. Two divisions, open and secret. Okay, sutra and tantra.

Okay, good. Okay, CHEN PO'I SEMS NI NGAG There's something here, it has to be NGAG. It has to be spoken.

Yeah, it has to be spoken. They weren't written in the time of the Buddha. They were written down later.

Okay, that's why they said, EVA MA'I ASHUTAM. This is what I heard. Okay, keep going.

Next one, DEVA YENA SHAMES SUMPEKHA Go ahead. JESU NANGWEKHA NANGWEKHA NANGWEKHA JINGGYAPEKHA DANG SUM Translate. Definition is divided into three types.

The direct word spoken by the Buddha, right here, SUMPEKHA. Then JESU NANGWEKHA is speech permitted by the Buddha to be spoken by others as a substitute for the word of the Buddha. Good, you can say that.

That's long.

[Speaker 2]
That's okay.

[Speaker 1]
And JINGGYAPEKHA is speech spoken by others through the power of a blessing by the Buddha. Yeah, good. So you can say the word of the Buddha is three types.

Number one, spoken directly from their own lips. Okay, one. Two, permitted by the Buddha to be added to sutras by non-Buddha, like this I heard once.

And then thirdly, JINGGYAPEKHA means speech of the Buddha which occurs through the blessing or the magic of the Buddha. Sort of like in the heart sutra? We're going to get the examples right now.

Those are the only two I did. Okay, you want to pick someone to pick on?

[Speaker 2]
Sure.

[Speaker 1]
Pick someone to pick on. Who would like to try? Let's see, let's do Aldo.

Let's do Chloe. This is her first time highlighting the ancient language on the computer during our class. Thank you, Chloe.

So thank you, Chloe. She's doing a great job too. Okay, eat the microphone.

Get something, baby. Okay, while they're working to fix that, I just want to make a short announcement that two of the Mixed Nuts went through a teacher training with one of the ancient text organizations and are now officially organization teachers. One was Betz Greer and the other one is Ward Smith.

So thank you for now being official teachers. So go teach people and give them certificates. Yay.

Nice. Is it working now? And pay Betz.

Yay, good job. Okay. Go ahead, Chloe.

Starting with Dangponi. ,ZHES PA DANG, ,SAN CHA DANG, ,GANG RGYUR DANG, ,JES SU YI RANG, ,GYI RTOGS RNAMS BTAG BU YIN, Nice, Chloe. Example of the first one, which is teaching delivered directly from the mouth of the Buddha is DO DUG PA, which is?

A short sutra? It's the short Prajnaparamita Sutra, which we had this morning or yesterday. This morning.

What did they say? All the Buddhas of the universe have traveled the path of the six perfections. Yeah, it was quoted this morning.

So that's a real, came from Buddha's own mouth. That's the first type, example. What was the second word?

Allowed by the Buddha to add to a sutra. Very few things, only by specific permission to be added to the teacher's own words, is SHES RAB SNYING PO. Heart Sutra.

Inside of it, NANG MTSAN DUG GYUR PA'I, is the words? ,DI SKAD DAG GIS, ,DUG PA DUG GCIG, Yeah, so they had a meeting after Lord Buddha passed away and they said, we should write down what he said to make sure we got it right. And they started writing down things and they had three huge meetings and only arhats were allowed to come.

And they would always say, here's what I heard. ,DI SKAD DAG GIS, ,DUG PA DUG GCIG NA, So Buddha said, after I pass away, you're allowed to add just that one sentence. This is what I heard him say.

And then that will be part of the sutra. So it's not spoken by Lord Buddha, but it's permitted to be added to sutras by Lord Buddha and therefore it became the Buddha's word. Cool.

All right, third one. Then he gives examples of, how should we say, blessed speech. Okay, blessed speech, all right.

And he gives some difficulties. ,TSAMS SBYAR, means segways inside of a sutra. Sometimes there's poetry between the major sections of a sutra or something like that.

And those are allowed. Then, ,THUNG RGYUR, ,THUNG RGYUR means Buddha's, suppose you're recording, suppose you're one of those arhats and you say, Lord Buddha said this. And everybody went, wow.

Then is the wow part of the sutra or not? And the answer is yes. And it's called, ,THUNG RGYUR, ,THUNG RGYUR means, sorry, ,THUNG RGYUR means we agree, we like it.

And then, ,JES SU YID RANG, you know from the seven preliminaries, it means rejoice. Yeah, wow, that was cool. So those are allowed to be added to sutras.

The reaction of the audience is allowed to be added to sutras. And so we're very strict about what's allowed. By the way, when we started ALL, we recorded the byte count of every book.

Byte count means, basically a word might have seven or eight bytes. So we recorded the byte count of every sutra we typed in. And you can tell if someone changed a single letter.

Because of the byte count. The byte count will change. So we're very, very strict to have a byte count.

And in the ancient times, they had a bamboo count. And bamboo count is a syllable count. And they had the same check system inside of the book.

So that became also part of the sutra. And they were very, very strict not to allow people to keep adding crap to sutras. Because that's what happens in 2,000 years.

Everyone says, I think I should add a poem. Or, you know, I think I should add something. And it's very nice in Buddhism, we have a byte count.

We have a syllable count. And you're not allowed to add things. Like there's a lot of discussion that the last chapter of the Yoga Sutra is not Patanjali.

It doesn't seem to be his style. And it doesn't follow from the first three chapters. And that's very common in non-Buddhist texts in ancient India.

People will add something. Okay, so we have byte count. And we're strict about it.

So the comments of the, when you say, wow, in a teaching, we add eight bytes to the byte count. And it's okay. It's allowed.

Okay, the audience reaction is allowed during the sutra. Not after the sutra. Okay.

That's a common. That's just research I did to do that. Okay.

All right. Go ahead. How about Christina?

Yeah. Yes, you can do it. You do it in my classes.

You can do it. Forget that you can't do it. Thank you for not throwing it over the tech table.

Yeah, you're right. Are they showing Mike? Okay, let me.

At the top? Let me give you a big curse right here. We're showing my computer actually.

Okay. So if we talk about words which are added to sutras by the permission of the Buddha or allowed, or by the blessing of the Buddha, whatever we call it, these can be divided into three types. Those which are permitted, which are expressed by ku.

By the body? Yeah, physically. Physically, okay.

Then there's exceptions that are expressed through su. Through speech. And then there's thuk.

Mind. Yeah, so either the Buddha has physically, verbally, or mentally approved, or blessed this addition to the sutra. And then he gives examples.

And he says, Tim, who's going to read? How about Sophie? How about Andriana?

So before we move on, she went to a program this year to study this language. And we have a shop here that if you would like to support people going to learn the ancient language, it's available, talk to Rachana and Tracy, and they can help you buy cool stuff. It is cool stuff.

Yes. Like it's real paintings and stuff like that. Good ones.

Sometimes you see fake stuff or weird stuff. It's not like that. It's good stuff.

Okay, so blessed by his physical presence, he says it's similar to the Dode Satyupa. Satyupa means the 10th level. And generally, although there's a debate about it, you can say the 10th bodhisattva level is the level of enlightenment.

Okay, sometimes they say 11th. But the sutra is called the 10th level sutra. If you go looking for it, you will not find it.

It's part of the Avatamsaka, huge collection of miscellaneous sutras. It takes a long time to find it. But anyway, in that sutra, the Buddhists of the universe express their approval of the sutra by showing up.

So like a billion Buddhists cover the sky, and they're like... So that's kind of allowed to be part of the sutra. Their physical blessing is part of the sutra.

Got it? Okay. That's the example of first one, physical speech.

There's a sutra called Trying to Remove the Regret of Ajatashatru. And he's a person who killed... You know there's the five big bad deeds, like killing your mom, killing your dad, trying to kill a Buddha.

He, killing an arhat, and... What is the other one? Oh, trying to draw blood from a Buddha, with evil intent so it doesn't cover blood draws.

So these five. He's famous because he did two of them. He killed his father who was an arhat, and later he regretted it.

By the way, his name is the Enemy Unborn. Ajatashatru, not born, shatru means enemy. And they told his father that if he was born, he would murder his father.

And so they named him the Unborn Enemy. But he was born and he did kill his father. Later he regretted it and they tried to tell him, don't feel so bad.

They tried to clear away his grief by teaching him confession. Teach him about confession. So there's a sutra where there's discussions between people that the Buddha has allowed to be part of the sutra.

People telling him what to do became part of the sutra to remove his grief. His regret. And there's the...

I went and got you the quotations from the sutras themselves. So you don't have to translate them, but the removing the regret is a conversation between two disciples. Is that a sutra or not?

If it's true, yes. Yeah, if the Buddha has... Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, if the Buddha allowed it. If the Buddha allowed the conversation to be part of the sutra, it's part of the sutra.

Okay? All right. Then we haven't covered yet.

So we covered Buddha allowing people physically to be in the sutra. Like a billion other Buddhas show up and say, cool, that's allowed to be part of the sutra. It's allowed to be part of the sutra if there's a conversation between normal humans inside the sutra.

That becomes part of the sutra, even though it wasn't spoken by the Buddha. Got it? And then the third example, which is sutras which were blessed by the mind of the Buddha.

We have more examples. And those are beautiful. So Tim's going to choose somebody to...

How about Tracy? To suffer. Tracy, I don't know what kind of drug you took, but she didn't know any Tibetan.

And then suddenly a week later, she's like really reading well. And all I can think of... Just coming to all your classes, Geshe-la.

Must be Ward Smith's class. And Ward's class is amazing. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know what happened, but God bless. Okay, please read. Tim's going to check.

Okay. Nice. So...

Words that are blessed by the Buddha's mind stream, and they become part of sutras. There are three different divisions. One comes from the DTING NGES RDZAS LA of the Buddha.

From the single-pointed meditation. Yeah, the Buddha goes into deep meditation. People talk because of it.

And that becomes part of the sutra. Secondly, THUGS BRTEN PA'I SGO NAS This is like an act of truth. Yeah, act of truth.

If it's true, I never had a bad thought about somebody. May the Ganges River flow backwards. And it will.

Okay, like that. So the Buddha did acts of truth. And those created changes in people.

And that became part of sutra. Then PHYIN LAS KYI SGO NAS PHYIN LAS I don't know what that is. Yeah, PHYIN LAS means the activity of an enlightened being.

My first teacher was named PHYIN LAS. Tenzin PHYIN LAS. Okay.

All right, SGO NAS CING GIS LAS PA'I DKA' And he's going to give examples and it will be more clear. But first, somebody has to read it. Oh, let's see.

How about Christina? You're holding the microphone already. DANG PO NI ZHES RAB YIN PO THAG Stop, stop there.

I'm going to ask you to cut it in parts, okay? Wherever you are. Yeah, hi.

So, where the Buddha goes into a deep meditation and that causes sutra to be produced. The example is, Tim? The Heart Sutra.

Yeah, Heart Sutra. In the beginning of the Heart Sutra, SANGS RGYAS CHUNG PA DE SANGS RGYAS CHUNG PA DE He goes into deep meditation. And due to his blessing, two of his students have a conversation.

And that's called the Heart Sutra. So that's the first example. Due to the Buddha's blessing, two people talk and that becomes the word of the Buddha.

Okay? Second example. Christina, continue.

Please read. NYE PA NI SANGS RGYAS KHYER DEN PA ZHOG PAS What's that? JUN?

Yeah, JUN. JUN. JUN SHING LUNG GYI KHYO PA LE CHUNG WE CHOG KHYER DONG GYI DONG PAS KHAG NGAG NGAG NGAG THA BU GYI Nice.

When you see a Z-H, there's two SHAs in Tibetan. There's SHA and SHA. So when you see a Z, don't think Z, just think low tone.

SHA, SHI. DONG SHI. So Buddha, DEN PA RGYUD TIM Yeah.

The act of truth. Yeah, the Buddha does an act of truth. And because of that, JUN SHING SHING The trees.

The trees start to KHYO PA. What would you call a tantric deity who doesn't move? MI KHYO PA MI KHYO PA Akshobhya, doesn't move.

But here the trees are moving. That gives you a nice feeling of what Akshobhya means. KHYO PA LE CHUNG BA'I CHOG KHYER DONG GYI CHOG KHYER Something four.

Through the wind blowing the trees, you hear the Buddha teaching the four somethings. Yeah, these are the four. This one doesn't mean DONG PA.

This one means the four principles of Buddhism. DU BYED THAMS CAD MI LTAG PA DU BYED THAMS KYI SDUG BSNGAL BA Like that. I'm sure Ben Kramer can tell us what they are.

Sure. It's all things brought about by causes are going away.

[Speaker 2]
All impure things are suffering.

[Speaker 1]
Everything is empty in the sense of lacking a self. And nirvana is peace. Those are called the four principles of Buddhism.

So Buddha can, without opening his mouth, he can bless the trees to move. And if you're in a good space, especially at Diamond Mountain in retreat, seriously, you will hear the trees talking to you. And they will give you advice.

And don't think you're crazy. Listen, listen carefully. When you're in retreat, you can hear it.

When you're not in retreat, you can't hear it. That's why you come to Diamond Mountain. Today a huge black bird came in front of my window, and huge, and sat there for a long time.

And this is a traditional protector in the ancient teachings. So I was like, wow, this is Diamond Mountain. You can't get that other places.

All right. CHOS KYI STONG ZHIG TU MI RNGA RTAG PA YIN GSOS PA NI SANGS RGYAS KYI PHYIR LAS KYI DBANG GYI I'm sorry, someone's going to read that. Go ahead, GSOS PA NI.

GSOS PA NI, SANGS RGYAS KYI PHYIR LAS KYI DBANG GYI Oh, excuse me. Or a big peacock might show up in your life. Oh, yes.

GSOS PA NI, SANGS RGYAS KYI What is that? SHIN? SHIN LAS KYI DBANG GYI NEL SHIN SOG KYI DOL CHUNG DU RAPE MEI MEI MEPE RIG GAK NAK NAK RIG NAK RGYAB PAR CHEN THA BU YIN Nice.

SANGS RGYAS KYI CHEN LAS KYI DBANG GYI Due to the blessing of the activity of the Buddhas. NUS BYIN Yeah, demon, like a harmful spirit. Like they come like a bill in the mail.

NUS BYIN SOGS KYI THUL BYUNG THUL BYUNG means to blurt out something. And sometimes there's this thing with demons. If you meet a demon, and I've been on lay rooms where I met a demon, and I can say I've met a few.

Like I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it happens. Real demons. And if you follow your sadhana and you say, they asked me for lay room advice, right?

Here you go. And you think you see them, or you don't see them, or you can see them. And then you say, if Buddhism is true, speak something.

And they will say OM MANI DE MI HUNG. Or they will blurt out. THUL BYUNG means they will, by the force of the blessing of your retreat, even a demon will tell you something beautiful.

RIGS NA means mantra. They will tell you a secret. So when you run into a demon, you say, by the blessing of Lord Buddha's activities, may you speak something true.

And then they're like, okay. OM OM SANGS RGYAS BUD DANG GNYIS YIN PA BRAL BA'I RIGS NA YIN PA BRAL BA'I RIGS NA YIN PA BRAL BA'I Okay, okay, enough. Okay, so that's being forced out of them by the Buddha's activity.

And that, is that the word of the Buddha? Yeah, it's the third type of the blessing of the Buddha's mind. Okay, like that, it's the third type.

Cool, and it's a cool trick. You can try it sometime. Sometimes they just hit you on the head.

Okay. I don't want her to shut up. Okay, who's next, Peter?

By the way, we have finished the definition of speech of the Buddha. We're done. Those are all, that's the whole teaching on what is Buddhism.

And isn't it interesting that in a Buddhist book, the first thing they define is, what is Buddhism? And that's so cool, right? And now we're going to get what is it, what is permitted commentary on Buddhism?

What are the classics? What's the definition of the classics? What should we spend our time studying?

Okay, here we go. RANG MTSOMS PA PO SEMS CAN GYI GRUB DA MTHON PA'I SNGAGS DANG BCUG GI TZAM NI Okay, RANG MTSOMS PA PO, Tim? The author, the person who composed this?

Yeah, the person who wrote the book is a... SEMS CAN, a living being, a suffering living being. Yeah, so there's this Buddhist word, SEMS CAN.

Say SEMS CAN. SEMS CAN And it literally means the person who has a SEM. Has a mind.

Has a mind. So it should include Buddhas. But in the definition of SEMS CAN, they say, SDUG BSNGAL, SDUG BSNGAL GYI SEMS DANG BSTAN PA A suffering, has a suffering mind.

Yeah, a living being who is suffering. It is called SEMS CAN. So, any SNGAGS.

Any speech. Any speech of a suffering being, which teaches a GRUB DA. A Siddhanta.

Yeah, a school of thought. Any speech of a person who is still in the world of suffering, which expresses some kind of Buddhist school, is the definition of a Buddhist commentary. An allowed Buddhist commentary.

And again, there's 3,700 of them. In Sanskrit, Shastra. There's 3,700.

And then there's 900. And there's about 1,000 speech of the Buddha. So these are the classical commentaries, the great commentaries.

If you boil those 3,700 down, half of them are Tantra. Half of our canon, half of our holy books are Tantra. The other half, if you boil it down, it's a lot of, it's the five great books that are studied in the Geshe course.

You take 3,700 books, cut out half of them, study them later when you get to Tantric class. Which you're only allowed in the monastery if you finish a Geshe, 20 years, 25 years. Diamond Mountain is a little bit easier.

So the rest of those books, say 2,000 books, the best of them are five. And that's the Geshe course. And that's the ACI courses also.

They treat the five books. All right, who's going to read next? How about Maria in the back?

Maria? Yes, Dela Yena. Yeah, Yena.

Dela Yena Chirope Tenshudang Nangpa Sangyepe Tenshuni. Ni, nice. Okay, cool.

Tim? Nice. There are two divisions of classical commentaries.

Good. The first one is a chiropa. Yeah.

You can say non-Buddhist. Oh, non-Buddhist and then Buddhist. Yeah, Buddhist.

So the Yoga Sutra is a shastra, but it's not a Buddhist shastra, for example. Okay, cool. How about Sunam?

Dela Yena. Next line. Nangpa.

Nangpa Sangyepe Tenshudang Tenshunam Dakni Dönchud. Very nice. Nice.

Next question. Tim? The dung here just means equals.

Oh, okay. So the Buddhist classical commentaries. Yeah, a classical Buddhist commentary and a nangdar commentary.

A pure one? Correct. Correct, okay.

Are the same. Yeah. Buddhist classical commentary and correct classical commentary are synonyms.

That sounds a little sceptic. And that's how he said it. And when I first read this, I just came out of my Christian life, and I was like, yeah, yeah.

Every religion says that. But if you study for a long time and you meditate and you practice, you will agree. Sooner or later, you'll say, okay, that's correct.

But tar tung tekpa chik. All paths lead to the same goal. That's a principle in the Prajnaparamita.

That's a principle in Tim's book. We will have a section called tar tung tekpa chik. In the end, everyone who's trying to be a good person ends up in the same place.

It's very beautiful. And there's a bitter debate about it. And our rung, we take the position that you will.

If you're sincerely trying to practice a spiritual path, you will end up in the same place. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Yeah. But we don't have much time, so ask quick. Quick, the ni in the last section, does it mean of the two?

It's the pure one? Yeah, these two expressions, number one, a Buddhist shastra, number two, a correct shastra, are synonymous. Okay.

Yeah, synonymous. Thank you. Nice question.

I hate to say it, but it's okay. Okay. How about Francisco for the next line?

Yay, Francisco. RANG SOGS PAR SOGS SANGS KYIS KYIS SONG KRIG DUG SONG DE NA KYIS SONG DREL DU GYUR PA DANG PO NA DANG PHYO NANG DAG CI SANG NYID Good. Nice job.

Okay, nice. By the way, on Monday afternoons, Arizona time, so we do Saturday mornings early, mostly for Europe and North and South America. And then on Mondays, we start in the late afternoon to catch the Asian audience.

So it would be, this class would start at 7 a.m. in Beijing, for example. So we're going to, the schedule for today that we usually follow is a one hour class with one translator. Then we'll do a 15 minute discussion of all the students.

And you can just make comments. How did this help you? How were you confused?

What would you like to know about it? You can talk about it. How can you apply this to your real life?

That will be led by the translator, which is Tim in this case. Then we have a 15 minute Peachtree World News, which is, we have 41 organizations in the World View Network around the world. And we tell news from each organization for 15 minutes.

If you would like your news to be put in, ask Quan after the class. If you're here in person, you got to either pee-pee during the first 15 minutes or the second 15 minutes. So personally, I would do the second 15 minutes.

But you're very, very welcome to do that because then we start another hour of translation class. And that's a tough hour. So I would say get everything out before the class.

Okay, let's go. You're going to translate? RANG BSROM PA PO Let's get this sentence done.

Our author. Yeah, the author of that text or the author of that teaching, RANG BSROM PA PO, if it's a SEMS CAN. If it's a, I'm guessing, a suffering living being.

Yeah, meaning a non-Buddha. The author is a non-Buddha and they have written, BSROM PA, or composed something as a BRAL PA. A commentary to the speech of the Buddha.

Good. That's called a Buddhist commentary on the speech of the Buddha. So there's a special word and there's a special definition for a Buddhist commentary.

A commentary by a human being on the speech of the Buddha is called GA'I BSGOM BRAL. And here's the definition of it. And that's a correct commentary which is commenting directly on the speech of the Buddha.

Okay? All right. And I'm going to just do the next two sentences.

That commentary on the speech of the Buddha can either be a commentary on the BSGOM BRAL. True intent. Yeah, what was the Buddha generally trying to say?

You can have Buddhist commentaries on general concepts of Lord Buddha, or you can discuss a particular statement by Lord Buddha. So there's two kinds of Buddhist commentaries. One, a human being talks about what he thought or she thought Lord Buddha meant.

Or in general, or you can say, here's what each line of the Heart Sutra means. You can write a commentary like that. And then he gives an example of the first would be those commentaries on the SEMS DE BDUN, which is the seven great books of...

Yeah, clear thinking. Seven great books on clear thinking, along with their dull word. Yeah.

I gave you the clue on the screen, didn't I? Yeah, TSE MED DO. That sutra in this case is a nickname for the Pramana Sutra.

I'm a bar checker. Don't show it. Dignaga's text, okay?

Seven books by Dharmakirti, and then the root book by his... So here sutra means root book by his teacher, who's not a Buddha in the normal sense. Then Tim's going to lead a discussion.

Grandpa's going to sit down and daydream. And Tim's going to translate these three sentences for next time. Starts with Nibbana.

Okay. Thank you Geshe Michael. All right.

It's weird when you concentrate the whole time and then you're like, now I'm going to talk about it. So, I'll just open it up while I'm processing. What thoughts came to your mind?

Okay, since many of you are going to be going into three days of silent contemplation after today. Is there anything in here that you find relevant? Or it could be about anything else.

Go ahead, Sherry. Near the beginning of the text that we started, one of the things that you were translating was that it had... And I don't exactly remember, but it said it has to be an Arya, but an Arya who is enlightened, which basically means a Buddha.

So, why say it that way? Why say Arya, but who has a pure mind? Rather than just saying a Buddha.

What's the point of that? My microphone went back. Thank you.

That's an interesting question. The first thing that came to mind, which I have no idea if it's accurate or not, is maybe it helps us distinguish between enlightenment on the Hinayana track and enlightenment on the Mahayana track. And it's speaking specifically of Mahayana Buddhas.

Or maybe it's also just to emphasize that they're really cool. I don't know, just giving more... Sometimes you have five different names and you're just giving a Buddha who is an Arya as well, just in case you forgot that they're really cool.

I don't know. Does anyone online or anyone here have anything to add to that to explore what that could be? Hi, everybody.

I was thinking that... I mean, I will not say anything new, but I think this system is really crazy good. I mean, first, in the format of debate, first we review slightly wrong ideas or completely wrong.

Then we review correct ideas. Then they fight back. And then we smash them with correct reasoning.

And I think it would be a great idea to do it in the schools. Because we teach... I mean, I and Bill, we teach.

Or Bill and I. And I think it's great to implement in any kind of education this idea. Because people, they start thinking, especially to children.

I don't know. Maybe somebody will use this idea for schools or kindergartens. I don't know.

So this is what I was thinking. I think that's really cool. Because it is a debate text, is that they're being highly specific.

And so if there is that specificity, maybe it's there for us to think why. Like every word matters. I like that.

Anyone else? Oh, Robert. I like the example of the, by the blessing of Lord Buddha's activity, you may speak something true.

When we're talking about the demon thing. Because I guess I didn't think of it as sort of in a practical sense. Because we're in the business of projects.

Business of what? Projects. Projects.

Right? Or you come up to an obstacle at work professionally. Or whatever.

Customs. Who knows? And just calling on that, you know, just like some extra special sauce that you can use in your everyday life.

You know, quietly in our mind. Like, you know how sometimes we'll be on the subway and we'll do like a tong len, for example. It's just like one more little practical thing we can kind of just use to help us, I think at the end, with our goals of trying to help everybody.

Because we're always going to start running into obstacles is what we've been talking about a little bit. And how Geshe-la said, you know, I don't have much time in my life. I'm not even going to think about it.

So it's like a little arsenal of tools that you can use. So for me, I thought this is brilliant. Maybe just give it a try and see.

I would love that. Yeah. If my boss is yelling at me.

My boss is yelling at me and I just pull out an act of truth in the moment. And force them to say something really cool. Like they're yelling at me and then they're like, oh, Mani Pendehonga.

And I'm like, yes! That would be, no, but I like that, Rob. Like pulling it out of the, you know, into our real life.

Like can we use, like see those things as demons and by the power of our good practice, can we shift or transform that, what's happening right now? Because it's coming from us. So it could shift in a moment where they could be a yelling boss or they could be someone giving you the most secret, cool advices to change your life at the same time.

Depending on what your seats are. That's cool. I like that.

One hustle.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Gisela. Thank you, Tim. Just a question about the language.

You were in the quiz, bringing up the difference between Ka and Ngak. And then in the first verse I saw it says, what's the definition of Sangeki Ka, I think. And I just wonder why it's not in the honorific form.

[Speaker 1]
It is the honorific form.

[Speaker 2]
Ka?

[Speaker 1]
Ka is the honorific.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, and Ngak is the regular.

[Speaker 1]
Correct.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, thank you. I thought it was the other way around. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Cool. Good to clarify. Anyone else?

Yes. Can we toss or gently hand the microphone to Gisela, please? One more comment.

So Ka means it's the high honorific. It's like the exalted speech of the Buddha. And Ngak means speech of anybody.

And then Ka also has the second meaning of the command of a king. So there's some feeling of that. When you say Ka, there's some feeling of it was spoken by a king or a queen.

Cool. What other cool ideas or applications? Does Joe Fulton want to say something?

Yes. Hi. Just because people are going into retreat the next couple of days, I'm not sure the right question to ask, but the idea around in the Heart Sutra, the Buddha going into deep meditation and doing the puppeting thing.

Like why allow that to be like an excuse or a reason for it to be in the Sutra? Why not just have it be here's the Heart Sutra? Like where else does that show up?

Maybe that's a better question. That's an interesting question. So one of the styles of – one of the types of high honorific Ka speech of the Buddha is what Joe was talking about in the Heart Sutra.

So he's kind of asking, one, is it anywhere else? Does that happen anywhere else? So Geshe-la said that's the famous example, but it probably happens elsewhere.

But it's sort of like why? Why didn't the Buddha just – why did the Buddha go into deep meditation and then have two of his students talk versus just say it himself? It seems like a lot of effort.

Why would that be something cool? Like why would that be something that – and what would be the meaning behind it? Like what's the purpose?

Do you want to add? Yeah, sure. The first thing that comes to mind is – and it starts to just open you to the idea that two people having a conversation could be very special.

And I actually really enjoyed learning about all the different things that can be in a sutra, like the audience reaction and everything, and it just helps you be a little bit less rigid or compartmentalizing, like this is holy and that's not. I like that. So maybe focusing on the teaching and not the teacher?

Yeah. I like that. Any other ideas?

I have some ideas.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, cool. Hi, Ella.

[Speaker 1]
I think maybe just like us, we are discussing something here, like in a dialogue that is more interesting and fun, and maybe Geshe-la is sitting aside. Really? He's not in deep meditation, but he just pretends that.

[Speaker 2]
How do you know?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think this is fun. So maybe it's a good teaching to let us discuss while we are teaching us, and then maybe somebody get it recorded and maybe in the future and that become another modern heart sutra.

Nobody knows. Let's sew, let's sew. Just kidding, just kidding.

Sophie, did you have something? Sophie, did you want to? Sophie?

Yeah, sure. Sure. Yes, on the previous question, that sometimes when it allows the students to get the teaching into pieces, which is more digestible.

So when it's a conversation among two people, it's easier like if it's just a statement from one.

[Speaker 2]
When it's a conversation, it allows to like that debrief or that desmenuzarlo, mas, so it gets more easily.

[Speaker 1]
So we can eat it more easily. Just like this cake. Nice.

Cool. Chloe, and this will be the last comment that Juan Hasso is going to come up and give us the weekly entertainment news, what's happening around the world and all of our organizations. Buddha needs to talk through normal human for people has lesser good seed to see an enlightened being.

So in this way, the people who have not have very virtuous seeds are able to receive the teachings through a normal human. It's a compassion for the Buddha to do that. I'd like that.

But the only thing I would say is that if you're a so-so Keiwo like me, and you're able to hear holy speech, I think you probably have some pretty good seats. That's the only thing I would change. I would consider it very special that you're able to.

And then that could then transform into something more beautiful, even more beautiful. Cool. Thank you, Chloe.

Juan, are you ready? Yay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Just checking. It's working.

Okay. Thank you everyone for being in these classes. They are advanced classes.

And I was just listening to some of my friends who are organizing the retreats talking about these classes now are becoming very important part of every of the events all over the world. They are very meaningful, not always necessarily easy, but as Geshe-la like to say, sometimes difficult classes, help us to learn deeper ideas, to help us to grow even more in knowledge and even better when they are fun, like now. So we want to encourage everyone.

You can keep following these classes. They are going to be happening on weekly basis. They happen all over the world.

A few weeks ago, we had some of them in Asia, in Japan. They were wonderful. So here's the QR code for anybody who is live or online who want to sign up for them.

Here you can follow closely what's happening specifically with those classes. Very, very wonderful. So you may wonder where these texts are coming from.

And we want to talk a little bit about ALL because they are having a very cool event. We talked a little bit about this before, but in Taipei, in Taiwan, they are organizing a very cool concert fundraising event for ALL. ALL basically is the organization who looks for lost ancient texts.

They try to digitalize them, preserve them. They send them first to India to be imputed in the computer. Then they send them to Sedona, basically.

And there is where our wonderful team of translators, led by Geshe Michael, do the magic. Oh, wow. Okay.

They are going very fast. So, yeah. A concert is coming up.

It's going to be 4 a.m. Arizona time. You know, Arizona has become a standard time for the world. It's a reference time.

But it's going to be amazing. Apparently, next picture, please. They are going to have a very important Hollywood international film score master, Hans Zimmer, involved or something like that.

Ooh. So, John, Brady, La, if you are watching, we send you best regards. Best success.

It's going to be wonderful. The venue is going to be very, very, very beautiful. It's the next picture.

It's supposed to be like a great acoustics. So elegant. It's going to be a huge, massive event.

So if you don't have the chance to watch it live, probably not. Because I think it's happening tomorrow. No, two days from now.

But at 4 a.m. here. We hope to be able to watch the recording. I think they are preparing like a whole display of, I would say, like a play that has a theme involved with the ancient scriptors.

So thank you, John Brady, for all your work. There is a QR code if you want to sign up for that. And I think our next, yes, they are also, here is Sophie.

Where is she? Where? Well, she's organizing a very cool event in June with John Brady as well.

They are going to be teaching about the Heart Sutra. If you are around or you're curious, you can also follow the QR code. I wanted to just, but I don't see her.

But if you are here, you can stand up. And people, if you're interested, talk to her. I don't see her, but she's around.

And, yeah, okay, next thing. As you may know, we just came back from, this one is a very close, it's not quite Kyoto, but very close to Kyoto. It's just like a few hour drive.

That's why I wanted her to stand up, but I don't see her. Okay, so we were in Kyoto, and I would like to invite Xiaoping to come with us. It was a wonderful event.

We just want to share a little bit of what happened. And I want to say, Xiaoping, thank you so much, because the production was amazing, unbelievable. The place was amazing.

But what I want to thank you the most is your kindness and the friendship and how nicely you treat us all. Thank you so much. Be just ready whenever you want.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so as you may know that Diamond Silk Entrepreneur University was founded in 2022. And our goal is to build a full university in the long run. So we start with business school.

And our strategy is start with MBA and EMBA, and then build a business school. And then the next step is to build bachelor degree. And we are building two campuses, one in Sedona, Arizona.

The other one is in Kyoto. So we are in the middle of our first MBA, EMBA program. It's like 10 months now.

And so this video is only a short video, but it can give us a taste of what our program looks like. It's like a four-day event. While MBA, EMBA is like 20-month event.

Yeah, so I'd like to share with you this short video.

[Speaker 2]
Can you team help us with the lights? Yes, it looks better. Thank you.

As you can see, it's very cool. Just kidding. Yeah, right?

You have to come. No, it's about to... It's running but not running.

But it was beautiful. I promise. Rob was there.

Tim was there. Stanley was there. They can all testify it's true.

And well, in the meantime... Yeah, Geshe-la was there. Of course.

In the meantime, you were about to share with us a little bit of what's the next you have planned. Maybe now we can do that first. What do you have in your mind?

[Speaker 1]
Yes. Once we finish the first MBA, EMBA and upgrade it, we are going to start our second MBA, EMBA in March 2025. And so very soon we are going...

Our textbook writer, Professor Geshe Michael, he's our guiding father. And we will soon be designing our bachelor degree. Now, I'm very happy to share with you that we have already chosen our first major, which is called entrepreneurship.

Yeah. And then once we start the bachelor degree program, it will be a four-year full program. So today we would like to share this video.

I just want to share with you the progress we have made and invite you to pay if you are interested to follow us. So if your children, maybe you are interested, your children or your nephew or your granddaughter, they can attend. Yeah, because it's a very long project.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So question for you, is anyone welcome to come? How can you qualify to be able to attend this program?

[Speaker 1]
For our next program... Okay, the video is ready now. Thank you.

[Speaker 2]
Better the video first so people get excited.

[Speaker 1]
When you are keeping your ethics, or you are studying more about keeping your ethics, keep your heart as relaxed, just to talk about ethics, just to talk about stopping the things that you do. Stop those things that cause you pain. Listen how you get stopped.

When you feel joyful, you are on the right path. Good morning.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you so much. It was wonderful. Really, really fun.

Beautiful. Super professional. Amazing.

I really impressed both of you. Geshe-la, congratulations. Amazing.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you.

[Speaker 2]
So then, okay, what's next? How can people be part of this?

[Speaker 1]
You can pay attention, just follow us. We have our website, and there's a QR code. And meanwhile, during this retreat, if you are interested and want to get to know more about the progress of university, you can talk to my colleagues, Stanley Chen and Dinara.

Yes. Particularly, we are building, our goal is to build a two beautiful physical campus. So it's a hundred years of vision, and it won't happen because many of your support and people who are online, but we need your continuous support.

Yeah, that's all.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Thank you very much. So just before we start with our next class that we have here with us, Ward, amazing teacher, amazing friend.

That is good. We just want to celebrate a little bit, a very other special friend that we have here. He's had his birthday, and I would like to invite Rob to come with us very quickly and share a little bit of what was your experience?

Because there you go. We created that poster for you. He has like many hidden talents.

He's like a lacrosse star player, Macchiato if you ever want to give him a present. And nowadays you may know he's Geshe Michael personal fixer. He does basically all that needs to be fixed.

So happy birthday. 43, right? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Fixer Junior. Jigme is Fixer Senior.

[Speaker 2]
All right. You got to pay respect. Okay.

Yeah, of course. It's a good Irish guy. Now, this is the thing.

We have cake for you. Wonderful. So I would like to ask you, how was your experience?

Because we just came from a tour. I had the chance to be part of the first half of the tour, but you did all of it. If you can share with us a little bit of how it was for you.

And we have a few pictures to share while you talk. How was this trip? Look at that, man.

They do know how to like welcome you. Well, I have to admit they're very good. That guy.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know. I sent that. I do clean up well.

It was amazing. I think these guys are just great producers of events. They're a great example to see.

Because I've watched people do events for almost 30 years. And to watch each generation just get better and better and better. And the students' hearts opening up more and more and more.

It's just incredible. There I am in the middle. Next to Connie.

Shanghai was remarkable. Kyoto was remarkable. You know, really, at the end of the day, it's just I was thinking today, I was talking to Xiao Ping yesterday.

And just so nice to have all these really good friends that you were able to do these programs with.

[Speaker 2]
Is, you know, to have these bond with these people that we travel around the world with and then be able to help in any way.

[Speaker 1]
President Obama said, if you want to get noticed, just learn how to get things done.

[Speaker 2]
And it's such a great piece of advice. And you're around a lot of people who know how to make things happen. And you can't help, but it rub off on you.

You know, like you just hang out with them and you travel with them and you just, they just rub off on you.

[Speaker 1]
And you always pick up a little skill from like Stanley, from Xiao Ping, from you. Yeah, of course. You're so.

I think he's an amazing, amazing. This Peachtree News is remarkable. And I've watched him blossom into this incredible sort of presenter, basically.

[Speaker 2]
And I think you're going to turn into this very handsome gray haired Mexican beautiful man who will just be like, ah, back in the day. I remember the beginning when I had no money, but now look at me. Let me tell you how this works.

The four steps. It's funny. It's funny that you connect the great hair with beautiful.

And I don't know if I'm going to have any left. We have a bag of hair. We can actually be in Shanghai.

Someone dressed as Geshe Michael, so we could give you the wig. Oh, Kyoto. Yeah.

It was amazing. Yeah. The whole trip was just remarkable.

I would encourage anyone really, if you can get involved in any project, anywhere you are in the world, reach out to either an organizer or a friend or someone who's involved. And there's always something for you to do.

[Speaker 1]
You know, when I first started, I think they asked if I could help with music or not music, but electronic device, which I have zero skill in, but I just said yes a lot.

[Speaker 2]
You know, like I always said my for personally, I always said yes. So if an opportunity came, you just never know which direction it's going to take you. And so personally, I think you should just jump in, give it your all.

Don't worry about, you know, if you're overwhelmed, it's going to happen.

[Speaker 1]
You're going to grow like constantly. And personally, I'm always like, ah, this is an opportunity to grow. Like yes.

So a schedule, for example, I did not see that coming. And it's like unbelievable. I, I met Mr. Aragawa's assistant and we sat in the hotel, in the lobby speaking to each other.

[Speaker 2]
And she showed me Mr. Aragawa's schedule. And I was like, hold on. And I pulled out guest list schedule.

And I was like, can I zoom call you and talk about like tricks of the trade or, you know, but we're so lucky. We really are to be part of any of these things. And, and I think when you leave here, it becomes evident when you go home, people smell it, they pick up on it.

They know something's going on. And then it's going to be your responsibility to, to pass this on to your colleague, your family member, the person at the gas station, but you know, the coffee shop, whatever. So, yeah, just grateful.

No, thank you very much because I really admire the job you do. And I really admire this fact that you are always thinking about how you could serve better your personal teachers, but also the community in general. And you have helped me a lot.

You have welcomed me very much since I came back to Arizona. Thank you so much for all the help you do to Geshe Michael and to the whole community. Very happy birthday.

Thank you so much. Okay. Now we have Ward Smith and Shubna.