Everyone. Welcome. Hello. Good evening. Good day.
Whether you are in the world, thank you for. For zooming in.
So we revised the existing online format and I'm super happy that we have such a wonderful speaker opening this term of wonderful talks.
And we welcome Dr. Christina Kilby, who is a associate professor of religion at the James Madison University, a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism.
She has published several articles in Tibetan epistolary literature and on the gift of fearlessness as a political ethic.
She's now writing a book on displacement in Buddhist tradition and consulting for the International Committee of the Red Cross Initiative.
And so today, she's going to invite us to her journey and gives us some insights into this upcoming book in her talk called Displacement.
Tibetan Buddhist Contributions to the International Humanitarian Field.
Christina, welcome. Thank you so much.
I'm the junior in the group. I can tell. So I will.
I will eagerly look forward to comments and questions from each of you.
But I'm thankful to be with you today. And what I'd like to share is some of my current research, but I'd also like to offer it to you as a model.
One model for how we can bring scholarly work in very specialised fields like Tibetan studies to the humanitarian sector.
So I thought we could open by reflecting on a question together.
Why are you doing the research you were doing? What difference do you hope that your research will make in the world?
If you would like to enter your answer on the chat box, I would love to see the variety of answers.
Take a moment and think about that question. Why are you doing the research you're doing?
What difference do you hope it could make in the world? Feel free to keep uploading your responses if you'd like and you are not tied to these.
They may change throughout your career. Don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid of attachment to them. So we're all going to have different answers to this question.
I believe that we have to have some kind of answer to this question.
I think we must believe that our pursuit or preservation or dissemination of knowledge will matter for the world.
And so some folks will answer this question by thinking about Buddhism and its its ability to serve the world,
you know, spreading the Dharma or spreading wisdom from Tibetan traditions.
Some of you are talking about cultural memory, preserving knowledge and history,
which we know is an important part of human meaning and well-being, especially for the communities who produce this knowledge.
Decolonising and cross-cultural discussions.
You know, some of you are thinking about bridging cultures and perhaps building some kind of global community that's peaceful and productive.
It can be difficult in the context of graduate school with our very narrow focus on particular texts and time periods and lineages and teachings,
sometimes to ground ourselves in a larger vision of why we're doing what we're doing and how it could make a difference.
But I really invite you to take the privilege of thinking about this in your wonderful careers.
They're each engaged in. So for my dissertation at the University of Virginia, I was studying letter writing practises,
epistolary manuals, and I was deeply formed as a scholar by that, by those studies.
So I'm seven years out of graduate school now. I just got tenure in the spring.
So I've been sort of, I guess, graduated from being a junior scholar to someone who has no excuse if I'm not doing a good job.
So here I am. But I was formed as a scholar by being very committed to this set of epistolary texts,
and I learnt about translation and literary analysis and archival research and analytical bibliography.
You know, the documentary analysis of, of a text.
I published a few articles in this area and then, you know, a few years ago I was well, I was at my current university, James Madison University.
In my current role, I saw an announcement for a conference that was happening in Dambulla,
Sri Lanka, hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
And the conference was entitled Reducing Suffering during Armed Conflict.
The Interface between Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law.
I didn't know anything about international humanitarian law, but I knew a little bit about Buddhism,
and I knew that I had some experience with Buddhist texts and teachings that approached
some of the same types of suffering that are addressed by humanitarian organisations.
And so that conference was my first exposure to the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross,
the ICRC in its work I'm now deeply invested in.
I'd like to thank you for all of your contributions to my question.
I really appreciate that.
And I'd like to share my screen, if that's okay and not overburden you with slides, but take a little time to look at some images together.
Thanks to Danielle and company for the nice flyer.
It's. If we go.
So let me introduce you a little bit to this organisation.
I don't know about the you know, if you all are based in the U.K.,
the British Red Cross might have certain duties that it's most commonly known for in the United States, where I'm based.
We think of the Red Cross as being a blood donation and kind of disaster relief organisation.
So people go do blood drives and if there's a flood or a hurricane, the Red Cross shows up with with supplies.
People needed food. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the umbrella organisation that brings
together all of the national societies and it has a slightly different mission and mandate,
as you can see from the mission statement. The ICRC, if you don't mind, using an acronym here, is an impartial, neutral, independent organisation.
What that means is the ICRC commits not to taking a side on political issues and in conflict.
So that can actually be quite difficult.
But but, you know, Buddhist traditions do, I think, offer some help in achieving a robust and humane kind of neutrality.
We have concepts like equanimity and so forth, universalising concepts that can help actually implement this kind of ethic.
And their humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.
So the ICRC is only operative at scope.
Its mandate is only operative in war zones or or zones of conflicts that may not be classified as war, but involve armed violence.
So the mission of the ICRC is to protect people who are affected by armed conflict and to assist them.
But also they have a secondary mission, which is to promote and strengthen humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.
And what this part of their mission refers to is upholding the Geneva Conventions and their
additional protocols and statutes that extended the Geneva Conventions after they were ratified.
So if the Geneva Conventions are, I think, should be compulsory reading in our education system,
I mean, this these documents have been universally ratified.
They have been ratified by 192 states.
And I cannot think of any other text or legal tradition that has been so universally accepted in our global community,
which is itself kind of miraculous.
But the Geneva Conventions focus on first they focussed on protecting prisoners of war and enemy combatants, treatment of enemy combatants,
as well as soldiers and others who were shipwrecked or injured or lost,
as well as providing for their ability to write letters and connect to their families while they're interned.
And then later, the Geneva Conventions were extended to include protections for civilians affected by conflict, because increasingly over time,
there's been a shift from war happening kind of out in battlefields to war happening in places where civilians live in villages.
And now urban areas are actually major theatre for war, as we're seeing with some current conflicts happening across the world.
So the ICRC has a really particular kind of context in which it's in which its work occurs,
a very particular mandate and its scope is limited somewhat.
As I mentioned, the impartiality of the ICRC means that their role is not to take a side when there's a conflict,
even if from a human rights perspective, there might be a really obvious kind of good guy and bad guy.
The RC is dedicated to helping victims of conflict regardless of their affiliation, as long as they fall under their mandate.
So this mission of the organisation appealed to me a lot. The ICRC has actually been involved with work with religious groups for some time.
You know, it was an organisation founded by Europeans long ago using kind of Christian inspiration.
But the organisation has for a long time been secular in nature that secularity has not precluded the importance of religious engagement.
Though I wanted to point out this website, this there's a blog here for the work with religion and humanitarian principles.
The ICRC has been collaborating with religious leaders, lay practitioners, scholars of these religious traditions,
you know, as well as military chaplains and military personnel who were affiliated with these kinds of traditions,
to think about how religion can help support or challenge maybe or improve the ICRC work in protecting and assisting victims of conflict,
and also promoting the understanding and implementation of international humanitarian law.
So I became involved with the work with Buddhist circles.
We're having a second conference coming up soon in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
and there'll be a whole new host of papers and publications coming out of that.
The the first conference I was part of and Don Belo, Sri Lanka, we published our papers in contemporary Buddhism.
They came out this past summer and I commend that.
Those volumes to you. If you're interested in these issues, I can perhaps share a link.
If, if if others are interested, maybe Daniel can pass it on for me.
Why would the RC engage with religion? You know, there are a few answers to that question.
So one is that. You know, this is supposedly a universal set of humanitarian law and, you know, a universal set of humanitarian principles.
But that universality, which many would be sceptical of this idea of a universal human value or human principle,
that universality actually needs to be developed and explored.
So what does it mean for a body of law that's created and in Europe in a certain
time in history influenced by people from a certain religious tradition?
What is what relevance does that kind of body of law have for people of diverse cultures, religions and worldviews?
So the project of making IHS Universal is an ongoing project, and it's about recognising that actually,
you know, the creators of IHS didn't didn't invent these principles.
They've been embedded in many of our traditions, religious and otherwise, for many, many hundreds of years.
So part of this project is about helping people across the globe recognise their own values and traditions in IHS,
and therefore to empower people to claim this as their own tradition and to have a stake in improving it and upholding it.
Another reason that ICRC is engaging with religious actors is that it makes a difference effectively in their operations.
Any time there's a situation of armed conflict, religious actors, religious charities or clergy.
Right. Or local leaders are typically the first ones on the ground at the site of a disaster.
They're usually the first ones there before the ICRC gets there.
They're usually the last ones to leave. They stay longer than other organisations are able to stay.
They have denser networks. They have access to places that international organisations are not given access to and they have immense influence.
So it behoves the ICRC to to engage, you know,
wisely and humbly with religious groups in order for them to actually be able to operate effectively and to achieve their own goals.
And that's part of the goal of this project as well.
And there's one third goal that I'd like to emphasise, which is that through religion, through engagement with religion,
the ICRC can better fulfil its mandate to persuade states and non-state actor ers to uphold their duties in times of war.
A big part of the ICRC work is communicating with military leaders and government leaders who have the capacity to
make decisions that either can preserve the humanity of people affected by war or that can violate that humanity.
And the power of religion is potent today and not something to be overlooked as a resource for helping influence ethical conduct of warfare.
So that's maybe been a lot to take in.
But I wanted to introduce this work and maybe encourage you to explore some of what's been happening in this project.
Where my my research first intersected with the ICRC, whose work was in my study of the gift of fearlessness.
So in my, my work on letter writing, I came across teachings on the three gifts.
So in a in a Buddhist context, you know, there are three types of gifts that one can give in order to protect this gift, this parameter of generosity.
There are material gifts. There are gifts of Dharma, and there's the gift of fearlessness.
So letter writing is really about the first two gifts. It's about giving the gift of Dharma.
Letters were often used as a way for religious conversations to happen, and this idea of instruction or blessing,
which I think falls under the gift of Dharma and genuine shapers epistolary manual framed letter writing in that way.
Letter writing is also about material gifts. I was, you know, part of my studies looking at gift registers are always an important part of letters.
What gifts are you enclosing?
And you can really see a whole gift economy happening in Tibet historically based around letters, exchanges of ideas and exchanges of materials.
So tea or mandalas or silks, if you're really, you know, a high ranking kind of letter recipient.
But the gift of fearlessness was something I wanted to learn more about.
And surprisingly, there's not a lot of commentary, all literature about it.
But this is an idea that's that's slightly better developed, perhaps, than the other Buddhist traditions.
The gift of fearlessness is the gift of safety or protection for those who are in fear for their life.
In Sanskrit. This is a by a donner gift of fearlessness.
So the fear, the fear that is relieved by the gift of fearlessness is specifically fear for one's life.
Extending protection to refugees and extending mercy to animals who are destined for slaughter are
common examples of a by Adonai that that not only Buddhism but also Hinduism and Jainism invoke.
So this gift of fearlessness can be translated also as the gift of protection.
The gift of security or the gift of assurance. Different ways to think about about this gift.
And you will see that here we have green Tara holding her right hand in this gesture of abaya fearlessness like this.
And there are many images of the Buddha also extending this gesture. So I saw a strong connexion between the gift of fearlessness.
And what in ISIL or sorry, international humanitarian law is called the principle of protection.
So this is the idea that those without power, those sorry those with power states and other other stakeholders should provide
protection to those who are vulnerable to violence and who lack political protection.
So, you know, I've got a quote again, there's not a lot of literature on this and Tibetan tradition,
but there's enough to work with and to do something. I think a very important partial report has as a gloss on the gift of fearlessness.
In his words. At my perfect teacher, he says, The gift of fearlessness is.
And this is. Yes. This is my translation.
I think actually doing whatever you can to help others in difficulty.
So this includes providing a refuge for those without a place of safety.
Giving protection to those without a protector and being with those who have no other companion.
And he extends the humanitarian aspects of this gift to include animals,
which is maybe how some of us in this group are more familiar with this gift in Tibetan context today.
Speaking about actions such as forbidding hunting and fishing, buying back sheep that are on the way to slaughter,
and saving the lives of fish, worms, flies and other creatures.
So the gift of fearlessness is actually a two fold gift.
It is the gift of being released from fear. But it's also the gift of the material and social political circumstances that are causing the fear.
Sorry, the gift of the circumstances that will relieve the actual fear, the cause of the fear itself.
So in other words, the gift of fearlessness is not merely kind of a psychological gift that can be given through through teaching or comfort,
but it's also the gift of material things that can relieve the person from danger.
So if we look at Hindu, if we look back to the Hindu tradition, which I had to do,
because the Buddhist commentary literature was so sparse on this idea.
So Hindu Digest's list, you know, different types of gifts that are material in nature food curds, honey.
Fearlessness, cows, land, gold, horses and elephants.
So fearlessness and those contexts is really understood as something tangible and material, not merely something psychological.
So the circumstances of safety,
the tangible conditions for safety and this is important because it's not always possible to change someone else's feelings.
We probably have very little power to actually do that as individuals, much less states.
But we do have more power to actually change someone else's material conditions that then might have an effect on their psychological state.
So both aspects of the gift of fearlessness are important.
And I want to offer another quotation from Super Campus autobiography.
So he, you know, an 18th century Gaelic llama looking back on his life and, you know, he was displaced.
You know, actually, so many of the biographies we look back and read in Tibetan history have displacement as part of those biographies.
There's a conflict or there's kind of food insecurity.
And so people move from one monastery to a different monastery to escape these insecure conditions.
But simper, Ocampo reflects. In any and every world system.
The good and evil that befall people, both collectively and individually, is indeed the fruition of their karma that is shared or un shared.
But conventionally speaking, in any place,
the waxing and waning of the Buddha's teachings and the respective happiness or misery of beings
all follow as a consequence of the words and actions of the Kings and Ministers of that land.
Therefore, merit and non merit, happiness and misery, whatever befalls the people, follows as a consequence of the powerful rulers of that place.
And there is no place where that isn't the case.
So here's super cambogia something useful I think challenging the idea of karma a little bit and saying,
well, ultimately karma is the explanation for what happens to us.
But conventionally speaking, it is the influence of states and of governance that really makes a difference.
And whether people experience well-being or suffering and this is important,
this is an important part of the gift of fearlessness and holding states accountable for their role.
And, of course, in Buddhist tradition, we're thinking of kings as states,
because that was the primary form of government available right for the imagination of these writers.
But the imperative of kings or states to provide protection for those who depend on them for protection.
In fact, the the monarch's murti goes even farther if we go back to Hinduism and says that giving the gift of fearlessness.
Returns to the giver. Sovereignty.
This is an important political idea that sort of buried it, you know, in the Tibetan tradition here, as well as shared across across traditions.
The idea that a state's legitimacy or sovereignty should derive in proportional
relationship to its ability to give protection to those who need protection.
So I think this is an important point that can really improve, you know, buddhism's push to hold states accountable for upholding humanitarian ideals.
One reason I think it's so important is that I was really enjoying reading this.
This Matthew Moore's book on Buddhism and Political Theory came out a few years ago.
I was interested in this, you know, this juncture between transcendental values of Buddhism and ideas of social justice or political action.
But actually, you know, through no fault of his own, More's analysis actually came up with a pretty bleak, I would say uninspiring,
you know, picture of how of of of the importance of states and governance and human life according to Buddhism.
You know, he deals with several kinds of theories that emerge in a variety of Buddhist texts,
but overall concludes that governance just really isn't that important in Buddhist tradition.
I'm I'm generalising. So read it for yourself. He says a lot of wonderful things, but that's the unfortunate conclusion of the work he did.
And so I think it's important to find if we you know, if you're doing work that intersects with humanitarian principles,
I'm looking for divergent voices within these traditions to find out why and how governance can matter and therefore,
what kind of legitimate pressure Buddhists across the world can can rightfully place on their
leaders to uphold these kinds of principles in order to relieve suffering in the world.
Of course, the ICRC is focussed on context of of conflict, but beyond conflict.
Right. The goal of states. The duties of states to protect those who need protection.
So I wanted to spend a little time together, I mindful of the time,
but I wanted to spend a little bit of time looking at some beautiful images because,
you know, the commentary, literature and and Tibetan tradition on the gift of fearlessness is relatively scarce.
But we have a beautiful set of tanks that are in the Rubin Museum.
And I'm borrowing the images here from from the Himalayan art resources with item number in the corner.
There's a beautiful set of images and of course, that the chief the central image is this green,
Tara, who is granting relief from the eight great fears.
And I think we can also learn from some of these images, which are not only images, but are ritual objects.
You know, they're meant to be engaged with veneration and an attitude of worship and merit making.
We can learn something from these images, too, about humanitarian principles, especially here.
I'm going to focus on displacement as a particular outcome of conflict.
So the set of tankers kind of walks us through very detailed images of Tara protecting from the eight great fears.
And these are the fear of water, lions, fire, snakes, elephants, thieves, false imprisonment and ghosts.
And so they're really interesting ways that each of these can actually reveal some humanitarian dimensions.
Let's look at a couple of these together. So this is a detail from a larger the larger Tonga image, which is executed with great detail of Tara Green.
Tara protecting from the fear of water. And Tara is above on the kind of raised platform temple that you can see out of the picture.
You can notice here.
When I look at this image now, I see a lot of news images that we've come across over the past couple of decades of people fleeing in boats,
trying to escape war and violence and trying to find a place of safety.
For me, a humanitarian lens made these images come to life in a new way.
But we can I don't know if my is my arrow visible if I point.
Yeah. Okay. So here we have some merchants, I think travelling.
They have a bunch of jewels that they've collected for trade and they're supplicating Tara for help.
We have stormy clouds surrounding them.
The idea of wind and storm. And we even have, you know, our.
I want to say Dragon because it doesn't quite look like a Naga to me, but threatening in the water.
So we have a few different dangers visually represented here, the danger of of capsizing and drowning, the danger of the unknown underwater creatures.
We have also the danger of losing one's property.
And what I think is happening on the right hand side of this detail is I think often in these paintings,
skin colour is used as a differentiation between the protagonist and the villain.
So I think what might be happening here is we might have a pirate who's threatening them also with their jewels.
But I'm not 100% sure. You'll notice if if you're a little chat box isn't in the way here, that the sails had changed direction.
So the boat here is a boat in trouble.
The sails are blowing this way because the wind, which we can see right pushing, is trying to push the boat away from Tara from safety.
But here, the wind has changed directions and has brought them to safety.
And so they're able to climb here and offer a jewel to Tara. So what do images like these do for us from a humanitarian perspective?
I think we can see the multiple kinds of risks and hazards that accompany journeys across water.
So exploitation, a vulnerability to theft and loss of property as well as, you know, vulnerability to loss of life.
And one element of this painting that I think is really fruitful and that could actually help.
Part it's part of a larger kind of set of evidence that can help humanitarian organisations think
about assistance to displaced people as we have when when these sailors reach their place of safety,
they're offering their jewels to Tara.
What this means to me is that we we kind of the larger humanitarian field need to take seriously the moral agency of displaced people.
You know, displaced people are often seen either as vulnerable and victimised or as even as a parasite and a burden,
you know, that that people desire to shift to someone else.
What a great reminder here that actually displaced people have the desire and capacity to give back or give forward, to make offerings,
to actually improve the merit or the outcomes of the communities where they find themselves to be agents for good and contributors.
And of course, we have lots of newly emerging literature on how important this is.
And merit making is a big part, actually, of that kind of moral agency for for Buddhists who are displaced.
The ability to come before a monk or a holy site and to make an offering is important
for the psychological well-being of people who are displaced from their homes.
And so the more that humanitarian organisations can help facilitate kind of moral contributions for people who are in vulnerable situations,
the more we can actually help them flourish, not only because we enable them to plant good karma and to kind of build, build a future.
That way we build an existential orientation to a future. The role of hope is not to be underestimated.
And for displaced people, but also.
Well, let's see. I just. Yes. Also creating a sense of time.
There's a lot of research now about the importance of displaced people having an integrated sense of connexion to their past and their future.
And that means actually help them create and envision future for themselves.
And one of these ideas that I've come across lately is called time mindedness.
Like when that sense of time is integral and people don't feel disconnected from from a given past and a possible future.
So enabling gift giving and merit making for displaced people actually can be a very powerful form of assistance.
Let me put a couple more images up and maybe I can ask for your thoughts on this one.
So this is a detail from the image protecting from the fear of thieves.
And I don't know if you can see. Well, so Tara again, is up on this platform, but I've zoomed in so we can see the detail.
So we again, have have some people with some some wares that they're carrying from trade.
We've got a bandit with a sword who has bloodied someone.
And then we have these, like, saviours coming from Tara. They're actually connected to Tara's hands by these golden threads.
So these are like puppet ninjas that are coming to to battle the bad guys and actually looks like somebody got impaled over here.
So it's it's not a light kind of live painting.
You know, one thought that came to my mind and I feel free to chime in if you if you have something you'd like to share.
One thought that came to my mind is, you know, that here Tara is really fulfilling the role of the state.
You know, it's the state's role to uphold law and order and to, you know, to create conditions where where robbery doesn't happen is often.
And so when Tara has to send this little, you know, I call them puppet ninjas right into sort of save save the day, she's stepping into a gap.
That is that is the gap of governance not being fulfilled properly.
This has made me think more about questions of, you know. Why?
Why should these why should people have to perpetuate, Tara?
Right. Why can't they rely on good governance to take care of this kind of kind of justice for them?
Right. Why why must someone rely on the hope of a miracle rather than relying on a state, a functioning state, in order to protect them from robbery?
You know, displaced people are very vulnerable to loss of property, not only the property that they left behind, sometimes at a moment's notice.
You know, sometimes you get a two minute warning before a bomb is going to drop and you have to run.
So there's the vulnerability of losing property that you have to flee from, but also being exploited on the road.
It's hard to safeguard your property when you are just travelling, perhaps carrying your jewellery, you know, whatever kind of assets you have.
Maybe I can throw one more image before you, before we wind down and we open up for more questions.
So this is this is the fear of wrongful imprisonment.
It's an interesting contrast maybe or flipside of the the problem of thievery.
You know, with the problem of thieves, the reach of the government is not strong enough.
The government is just not present where it should be to prevent crime.
But in this scene, we have a very powerful government that's actually wrongfully using its power.
And, you know, when I see this image here, we have someone imprisoned at the bottom of the screen with my little dialogue box.
We have, I think, a family member here lamenting that their loved one is imprisoned.
And maybe we have the ruler upstairs with a kind of an edict or ruling coming
down about the fate of the person who is chained and shackled in the prison.
Here we can think about all kinds of oppression action,
but we can also we can also think about the treatment of enemy prisoners and the kind of pain and trauma that they experience.
And perhaps Tara's intervention here symbolised by this beautiful bird, also attached to Tara by a golden thread.
Perhaps we can think about Tara's interventions as being meant for enemy prisoners, as well as for those wrongfully imprisoned.
In fact,
one of the main roles the ICRC plays for in detention centres is providing visits and letter writing materials for for people who are imprisoned.
Enemies of war. Prisoners of war. Maybe I can make a couple of final comments on these on these tankers.
I spent a lot of time with all of them and more than we have the capacity to reflect on today.
You know, these are visual manifestations of what the gift of fearlessness can look like.
I think there is a a healing dimension to being able to see one's fears visually portrayed.
And also visually recognised by a bodhisattva.
Or a female Buddha, however, you call Tara. So I think there is a healing dimension here in making those great fears,
which are relatively universal fears visible, and knowing that not only do we as humans see our own fears,
recognise them, but also that divine beings see them and have the capacity and the intention to to intervene and to relieve those fears.
I think the the fact that these tankers are not only visual artefacts, but ritual artefacts, again,
also reminds us of the importance of ritual engagement for the healing of trauma and whether
that means access to monastics to give guidance and to and to give ritual forms of protection,
or whether that means ability to make merit in order to kind of build one's own future and
provide that karmic pathway forward through an intractable kind of existential condition.
I think the role of ritual is something that that Tibetan Buddhist tradition in particular can
offer for humanitarians thinking about how to protect and support people who are displaced.
And, you know, one of the joys of my work with the Red Cross so far has been getting to reach out beyond the Tibetan context,
where I have my linguistic and kind of historical training has been,
but also to think about, you know, the polyglot because, you know,
I have been doing a little bit of the thinking about Vasantha as a displacement narrative.
You know, this is a story shared across Buddhist traditions. What does it mean that the Santa only was kind of in a position to give up his
property and his wife and his children after he was exiled from his kingdom?
You know, how did that loss of political protection influence the conditions that then.
Right. Made him want to give things away, which, of course, into Santa.
His case, he chose out of his great store of merit to give away his children, his chariot, his horses, his wife.
But what if he didn't have a choice?
What if we read this narrative differently and think about the vulnerability of exile and what that could mean for people?
But it's been really enriching for me to collaborate with colleagues and hear about his studies and other other Mahayana worlds,
to think about some of these narratives and teachings that are that are shared outside of the Tibetan context.
So maybe I'll leave that as a final kind of possibility to think about if you're interested in contributing to humanitarian work in some way,
maybe giving ourselves permission to step outside Tibetan studies also,
and to think about collaborating and building constructive work with, with scholars in other areas.
I've enjoyed so much this time with you. I'm going to cede the floor for the Q&A time.
But I appreciate you being here and I look forward to learning from you.