PhD Options: Discussion with a Professor of Buddhism.

no kidding so you've fallen prey to you
know the standard Buddhist device of compulsive gardening have you oh using indigenous plants only Mountain one of my first two professors of Buddhism his his monastic training was in Japan and he complained that you know the Grand Master of his temple was obsessed with gardening and kind of didn't give a damn but didn't give a damn about the monastic discipline or other issues well the the universities in Taiwan also a lot of them paid a lot more attention to gardening than to educational content some universities there are beautiful views and beautiful gardens but not a lot under the surface yeah yeah I sent Nadia my resume also I sent Nadia the resume and say can you make sure that that William shoe gets this so I see yeah you be able to find the things that you were looking for yeah I agree and you know coming to your University it's humbler than I was expected I mean it's uh I had low expectations and the reality is even lower you know um I visited many of the Buddhist universities in Taiwan and you they're humble in their way but I was expecting it to be more on that on that level and it's really not you know the other reality is which is not my resume I have a five-year-old daughter my daughter lives in France I fly back and forth to see her in France which is not true you know in some ways I have actually been a paragon of the Buddhist virtue of not caring about material possessions I've never owned the car or I did I didn't own a cell phone so I was 36 I lived quite a simple life but ultimately I do need to earn money so the value of the the education of those kinds of outcomes you know matters also I don't know if anyone's indifferent to that stuff but ultimately I can't be to have to graduate from school well I don't yeah I don't think that kind of employment is really open to me but the other the other huge consideration here is just that I'm a Canadian citizen so for better and for worse as a Canadian citizen I have radically fewer opportunities it's also true that I have radically less competition you know with within Canada and so on so in terms of what my options and opportunities are they're they're really changed by being Canadian and you know for me quite a long time ago I gave up on probably the career path you're alluding to which we go to an Ivy League League school so or you know Cambridge or Oxford in England and get a PhD out of there and then pursue that I just mentioned apart from the fact that I have known people as friends who took that path also my ex-wife the mother of my daughter who's already been mentioned she got her PhD from Cambridge University so I spent time at Cambridge and Oxford I was married to her for six years wasn't wasn't a short term yeah you know and so I knew her and her situation and all of her friends just last night I had dinner with a woman who got a PhD from one of the major universities year and it's nail kind of permanently unemployed or send me an employ I've known a lot of people who who took that path so it's not something that's really glorified for me so you know on the one hand there's the question of you know pursuing the education as an in itself or as an adjunct to what might otherwise be a be meaningful life right now so yeah I mentioned this because you'd never guess this from my resume I'm enrolled to begin a baking college baking college is only a four month program so that I will be a qualified Baker and I can earn a living baking bread IME I agree I it's quite monastic in its way you wake up early you know you do you do something honest with your hands yes all right but but the other side of that is I've spent so many years working so hard on languages and it's hard for me to even explain this to like my own mother or my own relatives or friends I have to say to people so like I said to my mother recently look you have never worked on something as hard as I worked on learning Chinese and I I worked way harder on poly and Cambodian emotion and these are the flashes that I worked on on Chinese but it's like is this long process of working on languages and also history in politics and I want this to be meaningful in my life in the president in the future in some way so I mean I think that is the sincere answer to the question you're asking and the other the other foot I'm just is I've I've alluded to the fact that visited many universities and spoken to many many professors you know I wish I could tell you I have a bunch of options I wish I could tell you of a bunch you know positive negative or where in between but I really don't you know my options my alternatives are limited to zero so I've you know I feel like I've already looked at everything in Taiwan in Thailand also for example in Europe I've talked to all the universities in Germany and France as well as United Kingdom's walls as well as England and of course Canada and within the u.s. I haven't talked everybody does financially many of the American universities are not an option you know some of the American universities $50,000 a year and as there's no real employment value to the degree years and though often no language trading value also many of the American universities is $50,000 a year and I wouldn't even learn anything language with University of the West one of my hopes was just being there being in a suburb of LA where 40% of people are Chinese and where the students speak Chinese you know I get to work on Chinese every day you know I'd be in a Chinese language environment or have some some Chinese speaking friends or something although I'm not I mean having now been to the University of the West there's no Chinese language club I notice you know they don't have a Chinese language program they're not set up in that way and you know some of the schools in Taiwan are where whether or not your degree is in Chinese where they're they're set up to help you improve your Chinese so yeah that was one of the positive hopes about us was that I could live you know Chinese language yeah you don't have a place with I'm getting that education all the time regardless of my formal this is a largely segregated area and the people kind of you know are working in their own little circles and you would hardly there are a lot of Chinese restaurants but I doubt those are very conducive place to hone your linguistic right skill most Asian students on campus as far as I can tell they are you know mainland Chinese here to study MBA and gosh I hate to generalize or to cast them into stereotypes but many of them were primarily driven by hedonistic concerns yeah you're hitting local pub scenes karaoke doing their own things I'm not I'm not sure if you will find us to be a ground intellectual exchange sure linguistic immersion right right you know I really appreciate you saying that obviously I think I think you and I have a lot in common actually you but you know that's that's often I have to have to emphasize the people the fact that somebody is Chinese doesn't mean they're motivated to be my Chinese teacher or my partner or anything else or talked to me about you know the history of slavery in China or something whatever I have to be doing research on you know so no I've seen that again again also with Laos Cambodia with other languages and cultures of of worked on yeah well look I'll ask you so I've mentioned this as a parallelism I have a Chinese professor in Canada and I asked him you know he does really like me he's very positive me he likes my writing and I said to him one day well what do you think about me getting a master's degree you know with you you know basically you as my supervisor in one of these departments and there was a silence and then he answered he said every one of my graduate students I track their career after they leave and he said to date not a single one has found employment full-time employment you know so I've seeded me working in a restaurant but he months so kind of you know whatever sticky habit of a decent job I remember that was you know he's cultural in Chinese he's you know born and raised in China so his manner of speaking is a little bit more wouldn't you know but I got the message in good conscience I cannot this vital information from any prospective student it's not a star it's just it's hopeless so if I'm understanding you correctly you are at the same time pursuing some type of a vocational trade is so that that may give me the luxury to get a PhD I mean again I was thinking I could end up pursuing a PhD in something like history but that also never runs steady income you know I just say you know I was thinking that maybe if I can be reasonably successful in this kind of vocational training that's going to set up yeah Southeast Asian language program at UCLA I probably did maybe maybe ten years ago or five years ago or something look I say again I'm a Canadian citizen so in terms of the in terms of the gone see and the cost because remember for most American citizens like people pay fifty thousand dollars a year to get a degree in political science so my first degree isn't was not in the United States and the main value of that is the informal connection to sources of employment so they like you know literally one of the program's like oh you'll get to meet a Madeleine Albright you know great you know for me that that's useless now I don't know for an American citizen maybe there's some value in that kind of degree at UCLA of course I'm skeptical but you know the the cost-benefit ratio compared to when if you take fifty thousand dollars to Laos or Cambodia you're a rich man you can live for many you can open a hotel or something it's ridiculous you know the difference goes so I just say but as as a Canadian I do face kind of special disadvantages that way and that's part of what led me to learning Chinese Chinese wasn't my first choice it was my last choice but now I mean Chinese now is my main language of scholarship and comes here I wake up every morning and practice reading or any Chinese I'm not fluent because of only been doing it for so many years I have you know that's that's a field that's dominated by people who are born Chinese and speak speak Chinese is there for you yeah it's a very hard road for me to get on I mean I started learning Chinese at what age 35 or 36 for guys I'm not a white guy start learning Chinese let me just let me do the actual the actual diploma in question NTNU in Taiwan gives that diploma and there's also so I have done all the research on this and there's one University in the south which is called wen wen Zhou Ursuline languages versus those are the two in Taiwan to give that training so I have done the research on that and you know honestly it would be a very long very expensive path for me to get on that leads to very uncertain very low wage employment even compared to teaching ESL and you know I mean what you say is true there is some work for that I do think I have a lot to offer us in English sorry as a Chinese language teacher because my approach to language my understanding of what a westerner needs to know and how to teach language is very different from someone who speaks as the first language I do think I have some some advantages there but in terms of in terms of earning a living and the long narrow path to that that form of employment in terms of the credentials you can get the number of years the amount of the amount of money to be spent very tough and this is the thing I'd note when you go to NTU gone and talked to those people almost all the students doing it are from countries that can't get need of Chinese speakers as teachers so for example there's work doing that stuff in Israel and Latin America and South America thank you know because those defendants that aren't already full of Chinese immigrants working at minimum wage but like here in Los Angeles you really think I can earn a living being a Chinese teacher there's a huge number of Chinese people who already speak the language well yeah I got a survive now you know that's a totally good question but I mean look I'd say three things one it was so this is before I came here because I talked about this with my girlfriend with my mom you know look why am I going to LA to visit this University number one was the idea of being in a university where nonprofit work was appreciated like because I made even the bakery it may be a non-profit you know I mean I may do that as a charity you know obviously you earn your on a salary from a charity that may become a nonprofit mission for me and you know a lot of my own interests in life in terms of charity and what-have-you I didn't go to Cambodia to get rich or related to nonprofit and charity work so that was appealing the idea of being a university or nonprofit and charity work is a big deal being in a university were my background as a scholar of Buddhism is appreciated or at least understood you know what I mean because believe me I can be in all kinds of contexts where people just look at me like what who are you you're from where or even like I've been in many contexts with the fact that I used to live in Cambodia it's just regarded negatively like people just think I'm a bad person because I live in Cambodia you know as opposed to being in a place with people just be a little bit positive of that or open oh isn't that interesting you know you studied Buddhism in Cambodia and Laos you know just responding a little bit a little bit positive that and then the third thing has already mentioned was that the prospect of doing language work you know constantly are consistently of raising the level I haven't but I mean you know I could go back to Palin I really was a family scholar for many years and I'm look I'm not boasting you I've met most of the people who have PhDs and family I met them face to face I met the great poly scholars I met Jacqueline philias at I met Richard Gombrich I met the new generation coming up and of course I've read their work and stuff and you know I I really was I had the potential to be one of the greatest scholars in that field or the greatest partly because my competition is very humble the quality of scholarship and the honesty of scholarship is really low in the 21st century it was better 200 years ago or 150 years ago but you know you know be that as it may I did all that work so yes you could say there might be the temptation to try it in to some extent you know again even if it's not reviving my ability in Pali to get some value out of that you know now and in the future my life so that's very appealing and I've got to say so you know yes for me in my position today and given the lack of other options open to me it's the idea of getting a PhD in something like you know Buddhist philosophy whatever you call it is still appealing and interesting I prefer frankly to have a degree that maybe was called Asian Studies or something like that you know I think but you know yes I am open to that and I am you know what some levels still positive about it and you know for other people I mean look the other thing is you can look at this too as like I've already done all this work in research and okay I mentioned one one brief anecdote I talked to a professor at a university in Canada that has a PhD in input a Studies program and you know starting to be was very positive we had maybe four e-mails back and forth and then I said to him very casually that I was thinking about opening a bakery you know within the same period of time like getting a PhD you know you know a PhD could take years and years and he immediately became hostile and negative and kind of like hung up the phone was an email conversation but he said wrote back really English and no forget it I won't consider you as a PhD student here at all if you're thinking about for any business in the side and I remember that's mind blowing cuz I've been friends with so many people while they were getting their PhDs including my my ex-wife you know while she was my wife you see and they don't a lot of time with their hands and it's like don't these people realize I'd be coming to this already with such a high level of preparation like in some ways it is cashing in on the investment of time I put into this area of studies for a period of over ten years already it would not be as hard for me and of course I maybe I could you need a more productive research maybe more positive out of it but it's I'm not I'm not in the situation of a normal person who just finished a BA and is looking to enter and I'm a and Buddhism you know great deal of sympathy for for you know this is quandary that you're in don't you think that these three reasons you listed cannot be met by a place like UCLA you know I imagine that you know a place like that would you know like meet your needs much more much more than been our than our school can possibly do and you end up with a PhD from a pedigree program and in the often chance a you do return to Canada you can become a full-time professor I hate you mouth my own school PhD from our program would amount to almost nothing employability why not spend the same amount of time and energy you know somewhere else this is after I went to the campus I was thinking maybe I should go back to Taiwan for that reason but I doubt it would be you know I've been doing this for I've been I've been doing this for more than 15 years so I know all the specific professors there there isn't one professor at any of those universities who even have a Skype conversation their phone conversation me like like you are now you know so you know I could get into the specifics I mean you know University of Toronto I know exactly the professors involved I have four I mean since the year 2001 so however many are up to now 17 years I know the situation of that University and you know when you look at it institution by institution many of these institutions have intentionally closed the door in my face some are just not interested to open the door and in some cases there are those factors that I mentioned that as a Canadian you know what's already absurdly expensive in the United States is even more expensive and you're looking at you're looking at a path that isn't worth isn't worth getting on Canadian employments are first and foremost reserved for Canadian citizens well that's my that's now forbidden under NAFTA the free trade agreement the United States documents that a league like that yeah yeah so car French are yeah but it is still true that there is preference for hiring Canadians ISM I mean it is absolutely true that there is some preference and that's why I alluded to that earlier when I said as a Canadian I disadvantages but there's also kind of a smaller market of competition they very often do want to hire a Canadian candidate yeah but they can't be racist so to speak against American citizens as openly as there were and say the nineteen 1970s yeah so that that's a change in Canadian institutional crisis and we do have in Canada you could be in departments where none of the professor's are Canadian it's now very common where everyone's a foreigner in a in a Canadian academic department yeah especially in Asian Studies offices yeah this would be kind of gaining yourself okay so I'm not suggesting somehow you were only eligible for this level of work but really speaking America right now house in a voracious appetite for healthcare professionals yeah right that line of work will require say two years worth of training one year's worth of training you know like in two years you know a safer example as a registered nurse you'd be making upwards of seventy eighty thousand US dollars per year and there's a tremendous demand that they're almost indiscriminate when it comes to citizenship you know when it comes to whatever the case might be temperament connections you know if you if you got the certificate you get the job right away even before you're done your work okay I understand that you wanted to be true to your passion you know no I think you asked a good question obvious I've looked at many jobs with that including becoming a police officer including joining the military I mean I've looked at so many people have said the same characteristics that make me a good scholar Buddhism would make a good police officer I'm not joking I say that both I kind of focus attention to detail equanimity detachment along these things and you know I'm a forceful but not violent personality anyway uh you know I have looked those things but I think for me the bottom line is you're looking for a job that's compatible with being a real intellectual and you know baking it's not the baking as my great passion I feel it's ethically positive morally positive I'm vegan I'm not just engineering I'm vegan and I know some somebody serve vegetarian somewhere on the spectrum but I'm fully vegan so the bacon connects positive that and ideas I have but ecology and ethics but also the nature of baking as a repetitive manual labor you know there are creative challenges in coming up with a recipe but then once you've got that recipe you make it a thousand times I think that really is compatible with studying languages and teaching languages and studying history and politics and being an intellectual and I do not think that the type of you know emotionally and mentally exhausting work of say being a caretaker for the elderly as a nurse or something those kinds of biomedical degrees I don't I don't see the same way so I think there are various reasons but yeah that that would be my answer that question to tell you thank you for your concern and thank you thanks for help it's it's it's a surreal conversation to have but I think it's you know it's it's a necessary one I know I might not be successful in s waiting you right well look I hope I have your current email I'm using the moon in hands email so you know maybe I'm going to spam cuz that's working that's what I've been sending to so I may be blocked you may have blocked me ten years ago it's quite possible or amid going to spam yes aren't you but I guess I'll go back and and re-examine some of the options in Taiwan because I mean for me you know I would say I mean Buddhism is one of my interests but I'd say what I've always been looking for is a combination of research and humanitarian work kind of research type stuff and then making the world a better place type stuff and you know I've tried to do a yeah I tried to do that in Cambodia I tried to that in Laos but I mean now it's a really weird situation because I was hoping Chinese as a language would open a lot of doors for me and it hasn't it really hasn't I'm not in a better situation now with Chinese that I was when I was studying obscure languages like like pallium [Music] doors for you you would have to be very focused in terms of you know chasing down a certain specific goals rather than just you know like being generically proficient in multi languages yeah pick up pedagogy for example right you have to cultivate you know when she you know in with the right people well right but with that haven't been said I'm vastly overqualified compared to the normal person who applies to enter an MA program and that's really what we're talking about is why can't I get a masters degree somewhere so then you say is reasonable but in that context there should be ma options of it yeah just clear in the past of course your you're more than welcome to to give a shot right right I completely understand the question is what happens next right exactly yeah and also actually even before then right in the process of adding to what comes next you may not be happy yeah yeah so well I understand you know as they say I've been to a lot of the Buddhist universities in Taiwan I was expecting a seal I to be you know similar to that and boy walking into you're walking into the dining hall walking into the canteen and seeing hamburgers for say oh it's not not wow this is not really what I was expecting to be the study human Viking materia doh so yeah I commented to the guy giving me the Torah sit-ups Eli temples thank you very much your tongue see if we can stay in touch by email I'd appreciate that and I think yeah I love text message you mind mail but it's basically the same as my name in a hard place financially speaking your situation is aggravated as a result of you know pursuing a PhD degree I know that's really what I've seen I agree it's a road to know so if you want to ameliorate your situation this might not be you know the path that you want to pursue so that yeah well I think I think the basis of or if I do become a student at your University I think it would have to be that for other reasons I'm committed to living in Los Angeles and maybe I'm committed to working in a bakery here or running a bakery or owning a small bread factory or something is something like that I'm involved with vegan activism or some other kind of positive activism in LA and then you say okay can this be compatible with also you know pursuing something in Asian Studies Asian languages Buddhism I think you'd be that kind of argument yeah field research in that front my understanding is that there are a lot of ethnic established friends and a lot of vegetarian restaurants Elise instinct a bro Valley yes and you you might be looking at some pretty steep competition you know there are a lot of Asians coming in with capitals you know they're able to you start things in the right way whereas I imagine that that's the way capitalism works I mean that's that's the way to have successful businesses you know where people are already busy you know if you want to you can you can put a bakery in the middle of the desert or you could put it in the middle of northern Michigan State but no being where there were already ten other bakeries is almost always the most successful place totally clever thinker yeah yeah yeah no that's the I would just I'm just describing the context in which that's possible but yeah I mean I assume you're someone who might be interested to hear but what I now learned if I mean I could talk to UCLA I just really doubt it because again you have to look at the specific professors involved I in the United States it's very unlikely I mean I can say is I'm just a 0% chance anything that would work out for me but that is my experience for more than 15 years and remember I have to talk to a professor and ask people professor who looks at my resume or looks at my articles and says yes we're interested so I mean you asked about UBC University of British Columbia I approached them with a totally broad mandate like not wanting to narrowly focus on terribad Buddhism or something saying look this is my background I can do kind of almost anything and their response was in effect look we do nothing but 18th century Japanese poetry and certain centuries of Chinese poetry and if that's not that's the case with places like UCLA or USC or any of the big name schools and in fact if you succeed in getting into one of these programs does like there's good likelihood that you're going to get full scholarship you know you're going to get yeah I mean it's very prejudicial I mean it's this is really based on human pride and Buddhism is a highly bigoted religion there were Mahayana Buddhists who regarded me as the devil when I was in Voltaire about of Buddhism I mean there's real hatred and rancor and racism and I mean it's a deeply divisive you know religious mentality filled I've got I mean I've been through peer review where my article was rejected because I corrected an error in the poly tech society dictionary that dictionary isn't even written by Buddhist monks the dictionary written by Riesz David's in England you know by a white man it was not a monk and I was told it was religiously offensive that I would find fault with the dictionary and therefore my article couldn't be published you know professors hate me for religious reasons and reject me for those reasons and that's not surprised to be the same if our scholar of Judaism or a scholar a [Music] professor a professor of mishear and Buddhism will never invite me at a professor of Zen Buddhism will never let me in a professor of Tibetan Buddhism will never be an I once got an invitation to get a PhD at Stanford if if I drop everything I was doing and start learning Tibetan how's that for a trade-off I don't want to learn Tibetan I don't respect a bit elitism I don't you know I don't want to put a whole new fruits of it so like you you really think for a minute about who is the establishment that's just on the Buddhism side then he can look at the Asian Studies Asian politics side and again there were all these categories that exclude me the largest one in Asian Studies just being the people who only do literature only do poetry so it is interesting you can tell I'm not complaining I'm just sharing this with you but no it's it's easy to say there must be an opportunity somewhere but I'm telling you honestly there isn't the reason I'm talking the reason I just spent thousands of dollars no whatever over 1,000 dollars coming to LA to visit your campus is that there were no better options for me anywhere just a few minutes ago you reminded me of the possibility that maybe 10 years ago I blocked you yeah so so in complete candor I say this because I really think that people change over time and you say as a result of becoming more seasoned and you know having had more life experience and so forth well my Wie my you know tempered are our edges over time and so on so forth and so my experience with different universities with different and Buddhist studies programs and I think it's fair to say that this is probably shared by many of my sin PI's by by my colleagues and so forth is that universities in general are places are as devoid of prejudices as you can find anywhere else okay so I'm not saying there is none I'm saying compared to possibly every out everywhere else in the world these are probably the most progressive the most liberal open-minded places one can find and so if if you consistently encounter difficulty with professors I seriously doubt that it's because you like altercations or that they they insist that you pursue a ultra specialized study it might have to do with our style of approaching them and I have to do with the way that we present our own case it may be that substantively speaking you are brilliant you know you're still err but when it comes to packaging yourself you know when it comes to look I'm not saying this because somehow I detected any you know quoting expenses you know on your part at this given moment you know from what has transpired in the past two days or so this is based on very vague memory that I had about our past changes like long time ago okay and so and these professors are human beings and they might find you you know do you think people and other disciplines make the kind of excuses you're making because I've heard these excuses and Buddhist studies on my life do you think do you think do you think honestly if we were talking about medical school through document architecture if we'll talk to women women toys in Latin and Greek if I had studied ancient Greek if I'd say injury do you think I'd have to tolerate this kind of horseshit from you or from Cambridge or Oxford or Harvard or the small University in Canada or UBC because I've heard this all my life all my life I've had to hear this I know you have good intentions I know you do but in response I have to ask you live up to a higher standard live up to the standard you imagine they take for granted in Latin and Greek shouldn't it be possible for someone to be a legitimate scholar of Latin or Greek and proceed on that basis because what you're describing to me say yeah I've heard these excuses before and I don't think they'd fly another fields I think they perceived as deeply immoral okay for whatever it's worth you don't find this helpful that's fine I understand is it would you maybe do you want to ask me a question there's no you think you you misunderstand my response asking a question I'm not asking a question yeah III don't think that the things that I've suggested are immoral or excuses and that in terms of succeeding either as a graduate student or as in a commission one cultivates a full spectrum spectrum of qualities which include patient's and giving people the benefit of the doubt and not reflexively ascribe being the worst type of intention to people so look I don't if you don't find this line of conversation helpful we can drop this issue okay so okay but look what why don't you look why maybe I've misunderstood you why don't you summarize for me what your point is because what you won't clean but what you clean was the for one second and look at the way you're responding to what I have said have you really detected any Amity on my part no one wants whoever disrespect on my part none whatsoever and I don't I don't claim anything that's all yeah well you are saying that there are these deeply seeded prejudices and biases you think any of the examples I gave were not things I've encountered in real life do you think I'm lying or no I didn't say that at all I think it's totally reasonable I think your district I'm talking about real-world situations I know I mean this I don't think it's unreasonable that someone who's devoted their life to tear up tubes for me I don't think it's unreasonable someone who devoted their life to Tibetan Buddhism only wants to work with other people who study Tibetan Buddhism I don't think that's unreasonable but I'm singing to you sorry I'm gonna finish my sentence I didn't say it's unreasonable I just said that is the type of situation that excludes me it's totally rational if you had a Department devoted to French literature and I want to study Spanish literature naturally they're not gonna want me as a student you get that kind of thing in Asian Studies in a buddhism language [Music] I've got more than 15 years of experience and I think there's nothing unreasonable what I said and it is true everything I've told you is true professor and I think they're just intuitively it should be clear to you that there's a lot of truth to that that a department that's devoted to Tibetan Studies or you know any other field like that okay so why did I why do you think I said that let's just let's just be clear why do you think I said that so uh I'll tell you it's it's because you're judging people on matters of belief that would not be judged in that way like in China I'm not judging I know I know William William I was answering the question in reference to other institutions I've dealt with in reference to this broad do you actually misunderstand me I mean when I say to you in that sentence we could have said one that would be somewhat antiquated in English yeah so we'll you're not capable of having this conversation somebody tells you in a totally down-to-earth way and I didn't ascribe any bad motives to anyone yes there are departments that are for example devoted to Tibetan Buddhism or Zen Buddhism someone who's devoted their whole life to Japanese I don't think it's unreasonable they want to exclude me and you've said that's not your experience so a professor who just does Japanese Buddhism and says to me honestly he doesn't want me as a practicing I completely understand that why do you find that shocking I don't find that surprising at all you say it's not so we agree saying being reasonable and reporting something I've experienced over Vineyards somehow our field is just inherently it's prejudicial that Buddhism is somehow the most frigid did I say that so what what did I say no I said I don't think the issues are surprising at all compared to what I would encounter as a scholar of Judaism or Islam or many other things I think there are similar so you did actually disregard a lot of what I said and I'm comparing it to the experience I've had in political science in Asian Studies and in many other disciplines yeah sure those are real issues okay actually I said my piece I told you can you welcome to take whatever it's you know that you find helpful or not helpful whatever it's unhelpful so I have to get going aisel really so I this is not the line if you're the kind of conversation I like to carry on further okay that's a lot for you and let me know if there are things I can do with regards to answering your questions otherwise professor I really think if you if you listened back to a recording of this conversation afterwards you have to reflect that what I've said to you if you take a minute to look at the way that you respond right it's my fault right why not say what you really mean okay so what do you want to talk about that we know you want to say that and hang up the phone okay it's I do yeah well that what kind of person does that make you professor okay thank you okay I've recorded the conversation I'm gonna post it on my youtube channel I can clear it back and you can reflect on the fact professor I think you live I think you live in a bubble where you think this has been a tremendously challenging conversation for you but really really someone in another field like ancient Greek this would not be so provocative a conversation this would not be such a challenge for you to deal with the level of challenge I've brought to this conversation it really shouldn't be it really shouldn't be that hard for you to deal with this level of challenge professor I hope by the future