Голоса трёхлетнего ретрита B, гостевой спикер: Скотт Вачек — стенограмма

[Speaker 1]
I just want to say that you guys got to try this. If you could just see what I'm looking at, it's like a point of view camera up here. It's really cool.

You got to see it. I'm really glad you're here. It's a privilege.

I'm the first, I'm the lead off batter. Last year, in April, what am I saying, in April, Rob Rusinger was the lead off speaker and his speech is pretty much impossible to be. So if you guys don't mind, I'm just going to read that again.

Okay. Okay. But seriously, folks, it's an honor and a privilege.

It's an incredible privilege to sit here. Oh my God, what did I do to deserve this? To be able to see you guys like this and have your attention, I'll try to make it worthwhile.

It's customary to recognize our lineage. And so, you know, I have to say thank you so much to my uncle for having the vision to cause this place to happen. And so much has happened because of this place.

So much is happening because of this place. And it's because of your vision. And it's had such an impact on my life.

I, you know, I just, I can't, I can't possibly express how grateful I am for that. And he's the hardest working man in show business. And I just never see him stop working.

And I aspire to that kind of ethic and that kind of meaningful life. And I'm trying to do something like that because you made it possible, Keshalon. I also want to thank my amazing and beautiful partner and wife, Orit, for her endless support.

And, you know, without her, I wouldn't be sitting up here. And she gave me, she's extremely helpful with the organization of this talk. She helped me cram three hours into one.

And so you could say that it's both of us sitting up here giving the talk. And, you know, it's a privilege. And you guys are a tough act to follow.

You may remember in the last QRT, we saw some amazing people from the inside, Mr. John Brady, Karen Becker, Venable Gelse, Ben and Kendra. And of course, from the outside, Rob Ruesinger, Mercedes and Alejandro. And of course, who could forget the final capper of each evening, Geshe Michael.

And then this weekend, you're going to hear from Lama Devorah coming up right after me and John Vilma and Earl. And from the outside, we're going to see Christine. Lady Ruth Lauer has blessed us with her presence here.

And we're really looking forward to that. Nicole's going to be giving a talk tomorrow on the new student center and the new DMU. And then of course, Venable Jigme is going to be following it up with a big talk on the coming out plans and other cool stuff.

And so I've got an hour. I want to make it good. I hope I can say something meaningful to you.

And so let's go. The QRTs are about the inside and the outside. And so I want to talk about what's happened for me inside Diamond Mountain.

And what's happening for me on the outside. What's happening to the world on the outside as a result of Diamond Mountain. And there's a lot happening.

First of all, for some of you that I don't know, I'm Scott, I'm the Secretary of the Board of Directors. I got here about seven years ago. I grew up outside of Chicago and started working in television in 1980.

I worked for ABC, did a lot of work for CNN. And then I went to work for a wonderful agency based in Detroit and had a really good gig. It was a good life, I thought.

And I had all the trappings that you're supposed to have that technically are supposed to make you a happy person. And it was hard to beat. I worked and I'm still great friends with an incredible group of happy, creative, hardworking, fun people.

And we traveled all over the world, had an expense account, stayed in five-star hotels, did all these fun theatrical projects, mainly to introduce cars and things like that because we were based in Detroit. And it was a good gig. And I could tell something wasn't quite right, but I just kind of covered it up with keep traveling, keep having the big dinners, stay in the hotels and everything will be fine.

But I could tell something was missing. I know you guys can pretty much all relate to that story. Everybody tells the same story.

And I'm kind of a type A personality. I'm an extreme personality. And especially back in the day, I was a skydiver for 20 years and I did it a lot.

And I was involved in a lot of big things. And luckily, if you want to look at it that way, I saw a lot of people die in horrible ways firsthand. And it had a major impact on me.

And it made me ask some pretty deep questions, the same kind of questions you guys have had. And I'm wondering what it's all about. And the job seems really good, but you're noticing the old guys retiring off and going to die somewhere.

And that something just doesn't seem quite right. So I was asking questions and just trying to ask if somebody's out there listening, could you please help me out here? And apparently somebody was because interesting things started to happen.

I'd been working for this agency for 11 years when a man named Roger took it over and gave me part of the company. And he was my first real mentor and real, I don't know, real teacher as far as leadership. He taught me what leadership is about.

And I'm a type A personality. So I was promoted into management because maybe I sort of inspired people, but I mainly, I think I just throttled them into getting work done. So I was productive in management like that.

But Roger taught me that leadership was about taking care of people. He spent easily, no kidding, half of his time in the company, going around the company to every person, meeting with them, asking them about their projects, finding out if they were okay, if they were getting enough rest, if they're happy and trying to make adjustments. Do you have the right Aeron chair that'll make it more comfortable in your office?

He was very, very attentive to people and that had a huge impact on me. And so Roger became my mentor, my first mentor. And then I had a bad accident.

I had a really bad skydiving accident on New Year's Eve of the year 2000. Luckily, 30 minutes from a brand new trauma center. And so they screwed me all back together in surgery the next morning.

And my X-rays looked like a bad erector set and I had to learn to walk again. And Roger suggested I start doing yoga to rehabilitate from that. And I thought it was a little bit girly, to put on tights and stretch for an hour and a half.

But then I found out there's some beautiful people in the yoga studio, it wasn't such a bad thing. And they were asking the same questions I was asking and very intelligently and getting answers. And it really struck me and really turned me on.

And then other interesting things started to happen. Roger introduced me to a friend of his in Los Angeles who's a psychic and she's a really cool and sweet lady. And I felt really comfortable with her.

And this was about 2001, 2002. And she put out some tarot cards on the table in front of me and said, you're gonna meet a man and a woman and the man's gonna be older than you and they're gonna want you to do stuff for them. I kid you not, this is practically verbatim.

I'm not making this up. And she said, you're gonna move to the Southwest, probably Tucson or someplace East. And you're gonna be spending a lot of time in Asia.

I kid you not. And I'm like, yeah, right. I'm in Detroit.

I got a great gig. I have no intention of going anywhere. And so I thought she was a little nuts, but lo and behold, in another story, because of my yoga friends, I met Meera Shani in Detroit and through a very, very bizarre and interesting story.

In late, early 2004, I found myself, found my way into, basically stumbled into a bookstore in Berkeley, Michigan and met Kesha Michael Roach. And that started, that changed everything. And so a number of us in Detroit got really turned on and started an ACI group and we're meeting every week and doing this thing.

And it was blowing my mind. And Roger was always checking in with me. Hey, how's it going?

And he wanted to know what I'm learning. And so we started doing all the ACI courses. And then Kesha talks a lot in his courses about how it's a little crazy that these Americans work 50 weeks a year for to get two weeks to do what they wanna do.

And maybe you wanna think about adjusting that a little bit. And so I had a really, I want a latitude in my work life. And I had this, and I was, and they were paying me way too much money.

I didn't need it. And I thought, wow, I got to have an opportunity. It'd be silly to pass it up.

I can do this. I can actually, maybe I'll take two months off. You know, they gave me a month a year.

I never even took it. I was such a fanatical workaholic and so obsessed about outperforming everybody else. I was billing 100%, 150% hours on anybody else in the company.

And, but I had this idea. I'll take two months off a year and go check out these study terms. So I wanna say in late March of 2007, Roger and I were having lunch at the In Season Cafe in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I remember it crystal clear. And I was ready to pop the question. You know, I was like, you know, he's like, so how's it going with this whole Buddhist thing?

And I'm like, you know, it's really something. Something's happening. And I said, you know, and I'm like waiting for a moment.

I said, I think I wanna maybe take a couple of months off a year and go check out these terms I've been hearing about at Diamond Mountain. I don't think he even looked up from his plate and he says, no, it's time for you to go. You should just get out of here.

You know, we need you, but I see this as important and I'm gonna make sure you have some money. It's time for you to get out. And so after 21 years of that company, I went back to work that afternoon and gave my two weeks notice.

And about six weeks later, I was in a big yellow rider truck with all my furniture loaded up into it from my now empty house from West Bloomfield, Michigan, driving to throw myself on the mercy of Alistair Holmes in Tucson, Arizona. And I started hanging around Diamond Mountain and just kind of attached myself to anybody that wouldn't shoo me away and just try to learn anything I could. And I had a lot of experience traveling and I have a lot of experience in media and event production.

So I figured, you know, I'll try to get in with the cool kids and maybe I can do some good if I follow Geshe Michael around on these world tours and just do whatever I can. And so I did. And one time we went to do events in Israel and lo and behold, I met this girl in a yoga studio in Kfar Sava.

Found out that she was as obsessed about trying to study this stuff and live it as I am. And somehow, so weirdly, I was able to persuade her to come live in a tent with me here for like two months. And I got her to marry me.

And here we are. I think she still thinks it's a good idea. We'll see.

And the retreat was staring us in the face, you know? And so it seemed like, okay, seems like a good idea. We'll become caretakers and we'll stay there for three years.

We still feel that way, by the way. And so we signed on as full-time caretakers and Aretha registered nurse, so that's helpful too. And she figured she could help to be a medical coordinator and I can drive a truck or whatever they want me to do.

And so we've been really fortunate as caretakers go because we've been very, very privileged to travel with Geshe Michael from time to time on different events around the world, mainly with the DCI, the Dharmakara Institute. And so, you know, that's been an incredible experience I'm gonna talk about. And also the other caretakers here have been incredibly beautiful to us and supportive and indulgent and understanding at times when we have gone away.

You know, it's not unusual. If there's a note that's really important that Aretha needs to see or I need to see, somebody here will scan it, you know, in the times we've been gone and we'll get an email and we'll be sitting up in a hotel room at two o'clock in the morning in Guangzhou, China talking to the Safeway Pharmacy in Wilcox to try to figure out why somebody didn't get their prescription or, you know, ordering something from Well Health Warehouse online and talking to somebody back here.

So we're really, really grateful to all the caretakers here and it's been a great privilege and learning experience to work with all of them too. And so I don't know if you all really know who they are and I wanna talk about that a little bit. Who really makes this thing go?

You hear about this retreat happening, but who really knows about it? So there's this guy, whoopsie, yeah, wait, there he ducked out. Rob Ruesinger, the president of the board, ladies and gentlemen of Diamond Mountain.

Rob is one of those rare people with extraordinary leadership qualities. Like my old boss, Roger, he knows how to take care of people and not get mad. And that's been an incredible teaching.

Rob has been maddeningly unwilling to make judgments without facts and deep consideration. And I admire that a lot. And being the president of the board is not a black limousine position.

It's not like, you know, you get to, somebody's bringing you your chocolates on your pillow. He drives that truck, he does the shopping, he does the books, he does pretty much anything anybody needs happily without even blinking. And he's an inspiration.

And Diamond Mountain's incredibly fortunate to have him. And to be, in my opinion, this retreat has been successful largely because of the efforts of Rob. And Nicole Davis, ladies and gentlemen, the vice president of the board, who is equally strong as a leader and an incredibly hard worker, can tell you the unit cost of any mechanical part within 200 miles of Diamond Mountain.

And it has been just incredibly patient, incredibly hardworking, and has taken to heart the needs of all the people here as her own. She's really made it her work to make sure that everybody's comfortable and she doesn't sleep to make it happen. And then this group of people just gravitates to this place.

Tahiya has become the big mama of the commissary. Joe Perzo, for some reason, wants to spend time here, even though he retired in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Brian McMillan has actually come to live here now as Nicole's husband, Brian, and he's actually staying here with us.

And Brian's been incredibly helpful as a caretaker. Lama Chuky's been heading up and helping at the commissary. And then this group of people just, you know, seems like this has cohered here.

It's just like, has just created this core. I bet you thought I was forgetting about somebody. Let's not forget Chuk.

Yes, indeed. So, you know, what does that mean? They live in the campground.

You know, you see somebody carrying a box once in a while. So I put together a little something to show you what the heck goes on here. Every couple of weeks, a truck shows up here from Tucson.

Johnny, you got some sound for me on that? And it's usually driven by Rob Rusinger. It's then carrying all of the goodies from all of the things that Rob and Donna have been doing for the last week or so.

The caretakers unload them at the commissary and bring them in, get them sorted out so that they're ready to go into the various food bins. They take a look at the order sheets that came from the last delivery cycle and make sure everybody's getting what they need. They begin to pull the individual products to go into bins to make sure they're ready to pack into the individual orders.

And then they actually go into the bins. Anybody want to see what John got for his delivery this week? And John Dutchman, ladies and gentlemen, the king of the cooler is the produce man.

And he makes sure that everything is accounted for and ready to go into the produce bags. Those propane tanks, all of which Chuk filled, go in and then the bins come into the truck. Once everything's loaded up, it gets driven up the hill, three or four runs per pickup load.

And then when they come back down the hill, the orders get put back into a spreadsheet so that we know what to get in the next two weeks. And there's an unsung hero here. You might not recognize this mild-mannered looking home in Tucson, Arizona, the Ruesinger residence.

If I could have drawn some clouds of dust into that courtyard there, I would have because every week and a half or so, Donna and Rob kick into Overdrive with a little band of merry shoppers in Tucson. And they bring all the food here and get it ready. And a truck pulls up and then it pulls away.

And his wife, Donna, has basically headed up that whole operation. So these people are heroes. And I think we should give them all a big round of applause.

So it's been a ride. It's been a wild, wild ride. It's been anything but what I expected and incredibly beautiful.

And I would do it again. And I highly recommend that if you ever have the chance to do something like this, you do it. Because things will happen that you absolutely do not expect.

And it's just hard to even, hard to describe. I don't have enough time here to tell all the stories. I'll save that for the movie, by the way.

I don't know who's going to play John Brady. I'm thinking Ed Harris, maybe. I'm not sure.

But somebody's got to make a couple of movies and books out of this. But I think a picture tells a thousand, oh, that slide's still on the screen. A picture says a thousand words.

And Rob Ruesinger put this picture up on the wall of the commissary in the first month. And I still think it applies. Monks on a roller coaster.

Kind of says it all. But being a caretaker is a very special thing. We have a very special bond with you guys.

And I think we're all inextricably stuck together forever, whether you like it or not. Yeah, okay. I like it.

They're like virtual friends. You know they're there, but you can't see them. You get notes from them.

You get a note from somebody and they're sick, and you can't, you know, and then they don't write back, and you don't know what's going on. And you can't just walk over and say, hey, how you doing? He's like, can I get you anything?

And that's kind of disconcerting. And it bothers us. We think about you guys all the time.

You know, we really feel for these guys that it takes them so long to get what they need. You know, if you're a caretaker, excuse me, if you're a retreater, and you get a delivery every two weeks, and you think of something you want the day after a delivery, guess what? You're not gonna get it for a month.

Think about that in a world that's habituated to instant gratification. I can turn this thing on right now and order something, you know, go bid on eBay for a rubber wrap from China and have it here in like a few days, or go, you know, buy anything I want and have it here tomorrow. And these guys have to be incredibly patient with the things that it takes forever to get or they don't get.

You know, sure, we make special deliveries, and actually the logistics here are quite efficient, but they have to be incredibly patient. And I admire that, and I don't really know how you do it. And so we feel responsible.

We think about you guys all the time. We feel responsible, and we know that you depend on us, and we don't take it lightly. There are five or six people down here that carry an emergency telephone.

We set up a system so that they can take this, pick up this telephone, which won't do anything. They can't order a pizza or anything, but they can, all it will do, it automatically dials a number, which dials a pager, which rings like five or six phones. And they can only dial one or two codes, either medical emergency or a fire.

And at any time, if that phone, if that emergency pager goes off, there are about six people down here who jump straight up in the air and are beside themselves. And we're all talking to each other, like, what's going on? I'll go up now.

Okay, we're going up the hill. And in that five, six, 10, eight minutes, whatever, between now, between when you get it and when you get up to the on-and-go, but to find out what's going on, your heart is like pounding. You don't know what's going on.

Is somebody hurt? Does somebody need something? And there have been a few cuts and scrapes.

Some people have broken like a wrist or something like that. And the time in between when we get it and when we go up there is a difficult time, because we take it seriously. We want to make sure you guys are okay.

I am the only driver of the trucks. There are only about, I don't know, five or six of us that drive trucks. I'm the only one that never made it all the way on the runs in the delivery day.

Because interestingly, surprisingly, of all the Wednesdays since December 30th, 2010, there's never been one delivery day Wednesday when the weather's been so bad that we couldn't get up there except for one. There had been a heavy snow the night before, and Rita and I, we were doing the delivery run back to the back 40 back there, where 43, 44, and 45 are. And if any of you have been here, you've been back on that land, the last two hills you go up, it's like a major rollercoaster.

The last hill, it takes your breath away. The first time you drive it, you feel like you're just driving straight up in the car. And even on dry pavement, it's something to see.

And so this day, there'd been a lot of snow the night before, and there's heavy snow on the ground. And Rita and I, we're looking at the hill, and it's covered with snow, and we took a run at it and got about halfway up and four low in the red Toyota truck, which are extremely capable vehicles, by the way. And all four wheels started turning and spinning, and the cars are jumping around, and we started going sideways on the hill, which is, you're pointed straight up anyway.

And Rita's looking at me like, are you really gonna do this? And I found out later, Tamra was watching us from the other hill, and she's like, oh my God, I thought you guys were gonna die. And so I backed down the hill, because I was determined not to let anybody see me not do this, and I tried it two more times, and Rita was like, just closing her eyes.

And we finally had to make the call that we couldn't get up the hill, because even if the white truck could've made it up, we were afraid that it was so slippery that coming back down, you could've lost control, and somebody could've gotten hurt. So we had to go back to the Onigompa and unload all of your things, and it was horrible. And I hiked back about a mile, it's about a mile, I don't know, maybe three quarters of a mile in the wash, back to those cabins to let you guys know that we weren't gonna make it, and it felt horrible.

And then they had to come out for all these things they'd been waiting for for two weeks and hike about a mile out and carry like 45-pound bottles of propane all the way through the wash to their house and several trips, and we don't take that lightly. I'll never forget that, I'm so sorry. But this experience, it makes me wonder about my own love.

My mom, she gave me everything, and it makes me wonder if I can do that. Can I really love people that way? You know, I can do all the technical things to get you what you want, but can I really do it right?

Can I keep my heart in the right place? And that has been possibly one of the biggest educations of being a caretaker here. Can you really take care of people?

Can you really put somebody else first, honestly? That's a big deal. And I think that's a big selling point for being a caretaker.

Maybe if you hang around a place like this long enough and you just keep plugging away, maybe sooner or later you might start to think about yourself a little less and about other people a little bit more. And you might start to expand your capacity because I found out about all these things I thought I didn't know I could do. And that's useful because you can take it out into the world and use it.

And that's what I want to talk about. You know, what's happening out in the world as a result of Diamond Mountain, as a result of what you're doing, as a result of the foundation we have here, what's happening? Diamond Mountain is a launch pad.

It's a place that things are blasting off from. Things are happening in the world because this place exists, because Geshe Michael had the vision to see it happen and because of the thousands of people that have come through these doors in the last 10 years and because of what's going to explode out of here on April 4th, maybe explode's the wrong word to use. You get the idea.

So what's happening in the world as a result of this place? It's phenomenal, really. Many of you know about the Diamond Cutter Institute, a company we founded in 2010.

Geshe Michael founded, I should say, and I was standing around watching really and wanted to help. And it's a company formed for companies so that we can relate to them as a business and go out and train them and any executives or individuals or groups along the way that want to be a part of it. And we train them in a worldview, in a strictly business regimen, in strictly business vernacular, strictly business language.

We've stripped out all religiosity from it. It's all about what you get is what you give and that we translated it into a business format because we want the executives to learn, we want the executives to live happier lives and be able to be happier in their offices with their employees. And if you happen to inject worldview into a large corporation that touches a lot of people, guess what?

You might be able to change the world a little bit, maybe a little bit faster than I'm doing maybe personally just by myself. So it gives us reach into these large organizations. And so over the last three, four years, this community has sprung up around the world.

This group of people in the world, these organizers in about 25 countries last time I counted, that have become this network of event organizers that are our family now. And we talk to them almost every day or every other day or sometimes several times a day. And it's an incredible feeling.

And now I see myself looking down at the earth, I sound familiar, looking at all the continents and I see these people standing on the continents and I see Blago standing on Sofia, Bulgaria. I see Igor on Kiev. I see Anton in Moscow.

I see Alison in Guangzhou and Roy on Singapore and so forth. And these people are our family. And the world's gotten really small.

And so we've been traveling a lot to do these events. We've developed a number of services that we supply to them. Anybody that wants it.

Success principles are the basic foundation. We do corporate training for companies. We do strategic planning.

If companies want us to help them to understand how to grow. We do individual executive coaching. Public and private lectures are really the bread and butter, I guess you might go began naturally as the keynote speaker and we've been trying to learn to be teachers from his tutelage.