His Holiness entered the assembly hall of Jangtse Monastery and paid his respects to the Three Jewels. Behind the throne, at the head of the temple, he made his way round saluting the various images of the Buddha, Je Tsongkhapa and his spiritual sons, meditational deities and so forth. On the way His Holiness greeted friends old and new. The Prayer to the Six Ornaments and Two Excellences was recited (the Two Excellences referring to Sakyaprapha and Gunaprabha, whose expertise was in Vinaya, while the Six Ornaments refer to Nagarjuna and Aryadeva whose expertise was in the Madhyamika school of thought, Asanga and Vasubandhu whose expertise was in the Chittamatra school, and Dignaga and Dharmakirti whose expertise was in Pramana or epistemology), followed by Je Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Excellence.

Taking his seat, His Holiness briefly spoke to those assembled.

“Tri Rinpoche, Abbots and former Abbots and everyone gathered here, my greetings to you all. Thank you for receiving me here today. Since I’ll have a lot to talk about from tomorrow, I don’t have much to say today. I’ve been a little busy. In Rome I felt a bit tired because the days’ programmes were quite long. After that there were teachings for Russians attended by 1400 in Delhi. The Russian students are sincere, and were enthusiastic about coming, despite many of them not being very well off at the moment.”

His Holiness asked how many people are here in Mundgod for the teachings and was told 30,000 are expected. He enquired about facilities for translation into various languages and it was confirmed that these would be made available over FM radio. He ended with smile and a wave:

“That’s all for today; see you tomorrow.”