Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. If that house is the Dalai Lama's cultural center in America, All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 This is episode 283. Thank you. Kay.
Speaker 4 00:01:14 Hello everybody. How are you? And I'm particularly talking to everyone in our orbit and, uh, I'm going to do, I'm doing it. I'm going to do a podcast with myself. I'm doing it with myself because I can't find, um, taking out Han in the Bardo and he even may not be in the Bardo. I don't know, dear Ty, if I could call him that I was not a close familiar of his, but I was a friend and I loved him a lot and I loved his work. And, um, I wanted to, um, in this talk, I'm hoping to talk about him and what are extreme, amazing person he was and how important he has been in our American sort of Buddhist history. What a great figure. You know, I really think he and the Dalai Lama among the foreign Buddhist teachers and maybe Suki and Sasaki among the Zen teachers, uh, have been extraordinary, had an extraordinary impact in America.
Speaker 4 00:02:26 And I could perhaps include the Ikeda Kai with sort of some ups and downs about him and about that. He also entered sort of various communities and he had a, he had a good effect on some people and there was some, some, a shadow side about that organization, but, uh, in Japan anyway, but anyway, he did some good things here. So, um, uh, two Nikon has just now passed. I won't say, and I don't say that I'm sad that he passed because I was sad when he got sick and I saw him quite a bit. And when he first goes out to in San Francisco, after your head is his stroke and they were working on trying to rehabilitate his speech and other things I'd use CSF and have a wonderful clinic, or they were doing their best. And then in the process of that, which was not too successful, they also discovered that he also had had, um, serious cancer.
Speaker 4 00:03:24 And, um, so then, then his people, he himself very much wanted to go back to if he had numb. And I think they went back there for a while, but then I've kind of lost touch. My friend, there is poplin and also sister, sister, you know, my name I'm 81 years of age, myself and my, my, my memory is a little bit difficult of names particularly, but I vividly remember taking that home with the greatest of luck pieces, every step, one of the classic books, I think in Buddhism and the tremendously helpful to me personally.
Speaker 4 00:04:02 And then I'm kind of raised and indoctrinated and talks a lot of sippy at a stress junkie, even though I'm a Buddhist cited scholar and practitioner of a sword that lazy one that I do I am. And his sort of be in the moment and salute the red light when you were caught at it. And don't pick up the phone on the first ring. There's wonderful pieces, every step and every time in the moment. Oh, it has to really great. And also I loved his bride clouds, whatever his life of the Buddha. I thought he did a beautiful life of the Buddha. Uh, talking about the little, the little, the guy who brought to put up his Pasha grass seat to sit in from when he attended light made of woven Kusha grass, the cush grass cutter kid, really wonderful then became friends with a Buddhist son.
Speaker 4 00:04:55 I mean, he was such a sweet man actually. And of course for my generation of Americans, he also is Vietnamese and he suffered badly through all the horrible bombing and the complete lunacy of the Vietnam war, which, um, was there completely unnecessary, 100% unnecessary war. It was a completely wrong war. Um, I was, um, later, you know, after it, of course had started. And even when it was nearly over, I was at Harvard as a graduate student and I met, uh, I studied with, uh, Fairbank's, the famous, uh, China's scholar and Edmund rice shower, or the famous Chapin scholar at one point a famous ambassador. And they told me that they clearly told McNamara and, uh, uh, uh, others, the Kennedy is not to say that the domino theory about Vietnam, that you had to save the Vietnam from communism, or, you know, it was like a theory they had already lost China.
Speaker 4 00:05:59 They're all worried because they lost China to communism and not morals on laws. Sure. Not their giant of shank was that great, but saleable is all laws. And, um, certainly it was a loss for Buddhism and Tibet and China to lose their country to China. And so that was completely wrong because the Vietnamese were not really ready to communism and travel. They just wanted the independence from friends and they never would want to be dominated by China because they have a whole multi, many century has not a millennium long history of resisting China. I don't know, trying to avoid being, uh, uh, controlled by China. They absolutely do not want to do that. And so they would have on their own resistance, they would have sought our help, you know, and then ho Chi Minh tried to be quoted Thomas Jefferson and things like that about independence for long before we got him too much involved in the war.
Speaker 4 00:06:55 And the war was really American insanity. Typical like the Iraq invasion, if you had not more likely like the Afghani occupation actually D they have gone it's tempt to stop, to tell a bomb, which was really a leftover from the previous thing was, was, um, perhaps justified, but not the occupation of Afghanistan, the country that was really insane. So somehow we American, as far as the government goes, have not woken up to our proper place in the world. And we've been doing these things. And so taken out Han was from there and he would deeply resented as a young man. There are, are incredible abuse and war crimes, really bombing villages and napalming and agent orange in the jungle and planting mines. I mean, really, he completely had every right to hate our guts sexually, and yet he came over and he was like non violence oriented, like Martin Luther king.
Speaker 4 00:07:55 He tried to approach us on the spiritual level. He, he, I think he didn't a hundred percent forgive us when he first arrived. He wanted to help us change and amend our ways. But I think by the end, he had actually forgiven us for our stupidities and what our senses, and he was genuinely at the enlightened bodhisattva and Buddha level of loving, even those who had been enemies. And those who were already committed atrocities had so on. I think he, uh, he really reached that. And actually he was not in all in favor of the north Vietnamese communist government himself. And, uh, uh, and, uh, I noticed that in the time that I knew him from early on, when he early had came, I didn't know him at the very beginning when he was at union theological seminary, because I wasn't at Columbia yet at that time.
Speaker 4 00:08:47 And I knew him. I met him in Amaris, had places, laptop, put them out. I really loved the guy. And I learned from him as soon as I could. I didn't get a chance to be on retreats with him, unfortunately, because of my excessive work thing. Uh, his holiness, the Dalai Lama wrote a lovely letter for him that I saw online this morning about what a great person he was and how we can best honor him in his death by continuing his activism for peace and his nonviolence and his sort of idea of how to save the world by saving yourself, by being in, by loving the world and by loving mother earth. And by appreciating her and living in a peaceful nonviolent way, you know, the same, very similar to his holiness, his slogan of world, peace through inner peace, you know, and, um, and they didn't work together.
Speaker 4 00:09:39 I read deal by because they are dealing with so many people, each one of them. And, um, I think taking on Han had an even bigger impact in America because, uh, he didn't, um, he did travel to India, laid off later on. He went back to Vietnam even later on his hold on. This has never gone back to a, to bed, but he, um, he knew he was not sort of involved in the genocide issue that his holiness has been involved in for seven years. You know, I've heard, China's now even doubling down and trying to destroy Tibetan culture and destroy the Tibetan. People not allow the children to learn the dominion language, for example, this kind of thing. So, so their roles or their situations were different, but I think they're the two great giant. So most of think of the, of the Buddhist world reaching out to the rest of the world, he wrote his wonderful book, living Buddha, living Christ, which was our wonderful, um, ecumenical and, uh, trying to find the spirit of between Buddhism and Christianity.
Speaker 4 00:10:39 But she again was hard for a Vietnamese who are seriously emission arrives by the French, and actually do all of the problems that that Buddhas had with the south Vietnamese government was because that two regime and DM and those guys were Catholics and they didn't lie. They were mad at their Buddhists. I remember Mrs. This is too, I think it was the one who said she wasn't going to be influenced by that Buddhist barbecue and the great tea tree, quantum duke, the great self emulating Vietnamese mark turned the tide in the war, in my opinion, by hitting the conscience of the, of, of me, of many people. I was a Buddhist monk at that time. And he really hit me as well. Although in my case, I felt I couldn't, you know, w w it wouldn't have helped if I did that. Uh, David, I wasn't ended up not saying it among.
Speaker 4 00:11:26 So, so in a way I wanted to just say, I wanted to tell a story today for people who love taking out home, because I think lot of people were saying things about taking out how much they loved him. I hope that the internet is full of it, and I hope they collected, but I wanted to say one wonderful story that I really liked. And one of the reasons I especially liked taking on Han is that, uh, years ago there was a time magazine article around the time that there were several movies about Tibet and the, the religion editor of time at the time, I think he loved having a little more front space front page space. And there was a picture of Brad Pitt on the cover wearing a Tibetan layman's jacket as if he was a Buddhist, which I don't think broad has become that it will go, all actors are knowledgeable about identity transformation, because they're actors, you know, the great actors like Brad Pitt and tub, and they were going all about Buddhism comes and conquers American kind of thing.
Speaker 4 00:12:23 And I was one of the people they interviewed as, um, scholar or practitioner. And, um, then they later told me in their article, the Jeremiah of American Buddhism, because I said, I said, well, in a way, what does it mean is learning? People are learning about Buddhism in America. And Buddhism is helping America with its education system and its way of learning about your own mom, helping you learn about your own mind and things, which our education system ignores. Even if you're a psychologist, you ignore that you learn about soccer, dropping, jogs, ran out. And I said, but actually, I don't really consider. Not only has Buddhism, not conquered America, but Buddhism isn't even reached to America, America fully. So that the expression of American Buddhism is not really accurate expression. I said, that's why they throw us out. I was, did you hurt Baya?
Speaker 4 00:13:17 And then they said, well, why you say that? Then? I said, well, people are meditating. And then there are ethnic communities of immigrants who have come from Buddhist countries and they have their Buddhist temples and their Buddhist splay people. They put us monks and that's fine. And that is maybe you could call that an American Buddhism. They have become American by naturalization. It's true, but that's not what the American Buddhists so-called American was mean by Northern Buddhism. The point is in Buddhist history, Buddhism is not present in a country until it, the monastic Sangha that is the monks and nuns are there and they have institutions and monasteries and America is a Protestant, a country where you have to work to prove your worth, to be kept alive. And then you have no free lunch in normals. Whereas Buddhist monasteries I'd put as monks and nuns, men Dickens, they depend on free lunch or really free brunch because they're supposed to really regionally, technically eat before noon.
Speaker 4 00:14:18 So without a free lunch, you can't really have them. Uh, you know, you can't say that Buddha system, Buddha Sangha is there. And if the Buddha Sangha is not there, you're gonna have put his late people, but that's not the complete songs that the Sanga requires. Lay men, lay women, mailmen Dickens and female men Dickens, and, um, and their own monasteries, the lay people support them in their monsters with a free lunch basically, and that's not happening. So that's not there. And then the second thing is that Buddhism is not possible as a system of self-transformation a system of social transformation, a system of self-transcendence and attainment of good or hood, or not just as alignment of the arhat Saint or the hermit Buddha, but full Buddhahood. And you were kind of possibly to do is add without taking multiple lives or then some super esoteric things.
Speaker 4 00:15:12 Maybe you could pack the activity of multiple logs into a single life or one or two lives, or otherwise. The boat is haka who thousands to become a Buddha. And my Buddhism, it's going to take a billion lifetimes to become a Buddha. And so, and a majority of the American Buddhists have not focused on the common sense, scientific theory of evolutionary karma, karmic evolution of the individual, not just the collective, but with the genes and so on, but the individual, not just the species, uh, to, um, uh, beginning of this past lives and endless food future lives, that makes it sensible to seek, to become a perfect Buddha and to develop the ability you identify with all life, not just humans. And, uh, that's because you've been one yourself, according to a Buddhist science, not end up Western people, and even some Buddhists who are sort of a little bit against that, they think that's an old fashioned.
Speaker 4 00:16:09 They don't want to do that. They think that the existence or the belief in the form of future lives is just a kind of chosen line faith belief, because there's no evidence for it. And that's incorrect. There is scientific evidence for former life in the memories of many people of their previous lives, which can be variable, which haven't been verified at documented in many, many thousands and thousands of cases, not to mention in their own tradition cases, but in even Western documented cases. And, um, so that's the evidence for previous lives. And, um, the greatest evidence is actually scientific in the sense of there's the law is something like the law of conservation of energy. You know, the, the, the physical law of the conservation of energy is, is that no energy can never be destroyed. It just changes form. And there was no way that some flow of energy can become a nothing, and nothing is not a place you can go.
Speaker 4 00:17:08 It's not a destination. It's not a cause it's a condition. It cannot interact with the relativity chain of causation. And therefore, why is the causal process of, of consciousness of mind, which has a, which fruit has its own plane of causation? Uh, why should that be the one that either doesn't exist at any time? It's just an illusory product of the brain or two it's never has existed. Nobody has a mind already, or why should it be that that's the one flow of energy that becomes nothing when energy can't become nothing. And so think that through, and that's really, you know, and, uh, that doesn't mean that some Buddhist teachers, as a sort of tactic, to help Americans gain look and study and develop their minds might not sort of cater to the American materialism. The idea that you only live this one life, I've only had one life to live, eat, drink, and be Merry for tomorrow.
Speaker 4 00:18:08 You die, you know, that's kind of American slogan to cater to that. They might say, well, we don't think it's important to believe in it, but actually that's because you don't have to believe in something that's obvious common sense. Like the window in my room I'm sitting in is still there. I not believing it. And I see it. And Buddhist, Buddhist scientist see former and future lives. They see the former ones by memory. I remember remembering them, even someone who doesn't normally remember that, but it's not hard for them really to cultivate the kind of concentration and meditation where they can easily begin to remember that it's really not that different. What's considered a highly difficult to attainment. So, um, so I said that, so there's no, it's not a common sense view among American Buddhists about the form of future lives. So they don't expect to have future lives.
Speaker 4 00:18:59 So then that's really not possible to be Buddhist in the sense of to become a Buddha. It's really not possible just now are unsavable beings from suffering test is impossible, and maybe you're going to become our hat. And that could be individual vehicle Buddhism of Sri Lanka and so on where you leave the world to go to Nirvana. And I, their idea that they have that Nirvana is a different place at then some Saara. And yet it is the final ultimate reality, which has in fact, doesn't make sense if it's a place, but nevermind, I don't want to have your philosophy. So anyway, all I'm saying is taking that Hahn was a conventional, traditional Buddhists. He knew about form of spiritual life. He struggled with people who didn't know about that. He'd taught them with great kindness and I just love him. I knew anyway, well, yeah, the reason I'm telling the story, I'm sorry, I got sidetracked.
Speaker 4 00:19:51 I'm telling you that story because, uh, one day I was at home in my home office, two blocks from my office at Columbia. And, um, I was chair of the department that time in my office was in a complex of rooms with the secretary of the department and a immediate all small rooms. And the secretary of the department called me even I kind of panic. And she said, professor Terman, for whatever, you must come, you must come. There's a Buddhist monk here. And he has with him many among said nuns. And he wants to see you. And there's like many of them. And she was like for hanging out. So I ran over there for a block four or five blocks, and there was taken out Hahn and with all sorts of monks and nuns, I would say 45, possibly 50 people. And they were all completely jammed like in a subway, just, you know, cheek to no toe to toe in a, in a small room, which was the secretaries, uh, reception room sort of, and where her desk was completely.
Speaker 4 00:20:57 And she was very being very generous and nice about she wasn't holding her territory. So they were even behind her desk standing next to her, she was sitting, she was so relieved to see me. And then I saw it taken out and I said, oh, hi. So I assumed that then. And then I unlocked my office door and even the meeting room door, because there were these two other rooms, oh, I can't get to that room. Well, they were both small. And, um, ah, I said, come in, come in and thinking that he and a couple of, of the monks or not. And so I, and him, and they'd come in and sit down in my office. I had maybe three or four chairs besides my own chair. And instead they all poured into my office and it was a crammed to them. You were going to breed.
Speaker 4 00:21:43 I opened a window and everything. And um, but then they sat her down. It was a bit relieved. So then I said, well, well, uh, uh, Tai, why don't you, some of you all sit over in the other meeting room, you know, or maybe we should go outside on the lawn. It was not our cold weather because this had fit in here. And then he said, Nope. He said, we're all here because you translated to female security, Sutra. And Vimalakirti's house was such that it had a big room in, there were thousands of people that go because he had the magic of shunyata emptiness. And so I want you to make this tiny office big enough for all of my people. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. I just turned the book again, not a tie. I don't have that magical ability. I don't, my emptiness is not that good.
Speaker 4 00:22:34 And then they all laughed like mad and they started to, some of them did a little bit more say it in the hall and the other players that they rented the other room where there were many chairs, but it was in a way less floor space because it was a big, huge meeting table and that other room. So then he sort of launched it and he said, well, I just wanted to come and visit you to congratulate you. He said about what you said about how we need to have the monastic Sangha. He said, because you were an ex monk. I know because I had met him before at Amherst and stuff. And I know you're a, you were a monk and you're not a monk. And yet you uphold the need for the Monash 600 God that that's a very important profession and a vocation, a calling for many people.
Speaker 4 00:23:22 And even, you know, you told me once, which is true, that you were a little bit, you love your family, of course, but you a little bit regretted that you couldn't stay alive for a month because it's very efficient way to study at meditated. And, um, you know, diminish the Samsara by becoming a good mendicant. He said. So anyway, I wanted to congratulate you for calling for the need and necessity of the, of the monastic song. That's one thing he said. And the second thing is I wanted you to see, I thought it would cheer you up and you would love to see, as you said, and I apparently had said in that interview that in a Buddhist tradition, being a celebrate mendicant, either monk or nun was a one considered a privilege and was considered to be like on a fast track to a good life and made people happy.
Speaker 4 00:24:17 And they didn't feel deprived because they considered the household involves a lot of work, a lot of drudgery, a lot of disappointment when those conflicts within families, as there inevitably are and so on, and that therefore to be supple and then you have to work or for livelihood, they don't show up to support the family. And whereas to be supported by society to, to develop your own enlightenment and also to help them like a person, but not for that purpose, they just do it because they feel the individuals that lied Meadows or highest value that society can achieve, put a society is therefore truly individualistic. And so I said, you know, actually did the whole thing about the professional of being a monk or nun is to be very, very happy his head. And I ha I really loved that. You said that his head and I wanted to, to see all my happy monks and nuns, and they were very happy even crammed into this little space.
Speaker 4 00:25:11 And they were enjoying so much the joke that taken out how it was playing on me by referring to the Vimalakirti Sutra, which it is true that in the beam of here at T he's, like doctor who, you know, he's like his house is like a targets. You know, it's a little, um, spaceship time ship that that doctor who has, which is looks on the outside, like a London police phone box booth, like very tiny thing. But when you open the door, it's a huge space within, with many rooms. It's a huge mansion, as well as the main control room of the thing, which itself has a big room, much bigger than the exterior. And then there's many adjoining rooms. So it's like an endless, mystical, magical mansion. And in the case of familiarities house, hundreds of monks, and eventually thousands of voted south does gods dragons, all kinds of creatures come into the house and the one room where there's no furniture.
Speaker 4 00:26:08 So they all sat there and it seems to always encompass them. And then even on top of that in the one place where everyone hears you teachers, the, the flower, the equivalent of the flower, ornament Sutra, a little drop it's called from the inconceivable liberation Sutra, uh, which is the magical thing about, you could put the plan if you know, the inconceivable liberation with the planet and a mustard seed without the most, your seed bigger without making the planet smaller. That's like the co-op and of the flower ornament, the holographic universe, you know, the whole universe is in each atom of the universe. And the idea Chatham does its job in the middle of the, of concentrated the universe. So like a hologram. So that's, uh, so that's, uh, and then at one point, people like her tea brings chairs that are thousands of miles tall, and the people have to make their bodies thousands of miles.
Speaker 4 00:26:59 So to see them and all the thousands of people in the one room and the one house on the street, and by challis, they all managed to do that by packing dimension, but then dimension because people like your tea is an emanation of a particular Buddha who has that kind of inconceivable liberation space on time, warping dementia, and working ability and what you might think of as magic. And, um, so I love that practical joke, and I thought it was fun to tell that joke. And then, and then he invited me and I read to this day, he invited me to join them in a walking meditation that they were doing around their Columbia neighborhood, which was great for him because he, he was a graduate student at union theological seminary or a visiting scholar there. That's where he got to know Martin Luther king.
Speaker 4 00:27:48 And I think even he learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German guy who protested about the Nazis and Hitler eventually executed by Hitler. And he knew him as a theologian. And, um, he was really great with Christian theologian signal and he was really marvelous. So, you know, he was his old neighborhood as a student and he as a newcomer to America and he loved the neighborhood and then I superly had a deadline and was writing something. So I, I declined, I couldn't go with them. I kind of went dead. So I showed them out, but they had left after a while. We had quite a long talk, even standing there. And so in that sense, we had a conversation and although he was on the care team and I, well, I was the manager. I wasn't either where I was showered up maybe. And, um, and the conversation that we had, and then I saw them out, you know, and then they wandered off across the campus.
Speaker 4 00:28:41 And I returned to my, my drudgery, my stress and my stressful, right. He, should've gone for a walk with him, so sorry, but a next life, a tie and a tie if you're hearing this, uh, I I'm, uh, reading the book of the dead for you. I think I'll do it tonight. Again, I'm having your clouds in Costa Rica. And, um, I, um, uh, on the electrical Vondra yoga, which is like Buddhist, Hindu, yoga, Acumanica Lieutenant Buddhist, yoga, okay. Medical with Hinduism and, um, uh, you know, not making these differentiations here, ODS differentiations. And, um, I think we all took, but many of my students also are your followers and they're touched by your life and read your book. I think your sway and the benefit you have driven for beings is measurable. And maybe we'll read you, not that you need as probably I'm sure you're navigating the, between state, the Bardo state very effectively.
Speaker 4 00:29:44 If you are even meditating or you may just be in your dharmakaya Buddha, I don't know for sure. I'm not sure what level of, but it's up to you. Or you could be one of those boats that builds who's already been a Buddha now is manifesting as opposed to sad thought. That's like, like Manjushri or Kevin or someone. So I don't know that, but anyway, it's just as well to hedge our bets and to act like we are, we could help you by reading some aspects of the book of the dead, which we will do. And I always do it at sheroes, you know, because, uh, you know, to share, especially to reassure the departed person, that's where they are, is a wonderful place for quantum leap in evolutionary trajectory, because hidden, and you have certainly a dreamlike subtle body in that state. And by changing your mind, you learn to completely change your body and change your attraction to the next embodiment.
Speaker 4 00:30:43 In case you want to be reborn as a human or go to a good, a better planet or to a Buddha land. If you're wanting to do that, you know, like one of the magical , uh, you know, are you a credit? You could do whatever you want, you know, a new prize, I'd say you're probably already did it. And you're probably fine because you were way more enlightened than me. But anyway, we will, I'll do that with my class because to give them an example of that saying, it would be very instructive for them. And then those who love you, they will be happy to do that. Okay. And, um, so I don't know what they're doing with your body and everything, but I know you would like to, and I think I hope they really will, um, permission from the Vietnamese government. I think maybe if you cremate a body, uh, you separate the ashes and some, you keep it plugged village in, in France, probably I'm sure some maybe will, they are cast in the Ganges or take the book Gaia, you know, maybe we might, you might for your white cloud, you know, uh, a wonderful life book.
Speaker 4 00:31:54 And, um, I know you want some to go to Vietnam and there should be a Memorial for you in Vietnam, really of the, sort of you representing the kindness and the wisdom and the sophisticated high culture of the Vietnamese put his people and, uh, lovingly remembered and unforgettably memorialized in your Homeland, which after all is presently a new grip of a Western materialist philosophical theology. So that your type of Buddhism is not supported that well by the mass population as it should be. But perhaps your Memorial will be at the beginning of turning that point, turning that direction. Actually, I have a man named min, M I N H, who is a Vietnamese from city, previously, Saigon, who is also an MIT graduate and lives in California. And he loves you. And he is, he went to some retreats of yours. And he's now studying here with me sort of a wide open type of, uh, of, um, free Buddhism.
Speaker 4 00:33:02 Let's call it freedom oriented Buddhism. And, um, and so have take, will enjoy memorializing you this evening, which we will do. Okay. We'll be doing our own little post-death funerary arrangement for you. Okay. So thank you so much for your wonderful life that you did to benefit us all. And the wonderful light you brought for us, a light of freedom, a light of common sense and enlightenment, a lot of poetry and a lot of forgiveness for the national atrocity that our country wrongly ignorantly inflicted on your beautiful country. I, by the way I went to your country, can we use your girl finally? And I wasn't in the army. I worked cause I lost my eye at 20 years of age. So I was four F I would have been a draft card burner on death. Otherwise I have some aspect for, I do like America, but definitely not this violent, horrible aspects.
Speaker 4 00:34:08 And, um, what a beautiful country. You, you have no wonder you love it. And so your people are so blessed there and you bless that land the way you would take care of it. And I was so struck because apparently there were only 27,000 Vietnamese by the end of the war. And now there are 93,000. I know when I went there too, a couple of years ago was maybe three years ago, there were 93,000. So two thirds of them, or maybe more higher percentage of them didn't know the atrocities of that war, but they don't bother grandparents and parents that were happening to them. And yet they were, nobody was seemingly very resentful about me and the other Americans who were traveling there. When we were done, we went up on a boat on the may call. We went to Hawaiian Saigon and, uh, and so rest, well there, I'm sure now you were floating around and over the country and I hope you have, if you wish to emanate a new rebirth air, I hope it is a wonderful life.
Speaker 4 00:35:03 And I hope I have the good fortune before I go to meet you again. And some of your younger disciples, I hope they will find you and meet you again. I know you don't have that tradition in Vietnamese Buddhism, but informally it can still happen. So that's what I hope. And thank you. Take that hand towards your chair. Great. Calm now. See that means great mercy. Great compassion is a way of saying thank you to your, take that home for your exemplary wisdom, producing an intelligent and kind and wonderful life. And, um, maybe, uh, maybe it always is able to receive your blessing and whatever future place you go. And may you yourself see blessings of all Buddhas and go to south does and have more and more wonderful lives on more and more planets as more and more countries. Okay. All the best. Okay. How can we, I dedicate the merit of praying with you and for you to becoming a put out myself for the sake of every single B and, uh, so that they all become Buddhists too. Just like you, you were born in Santa Barbara. I take not how dear Thai, dear Thai pieces, every step may peace be every death. Thank you.
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