On 30th Nov 2011, the Diamond Wisdom team met up at Singapore’s Changi Airport at 6am, all ready to check-in. For a few of us , it was our first trip to Guangzhou. We were all very excited because we would soon be seeing Gehse Michael … but also sleepy as most of us had been up late the night before.

We were met at Guangzhou airport and driven to our hotel – 5 minutes’ walk from the public talk venue. Straight after checking into our hotel rooms, we gathered together to practice our yoga. After an hour of yoga, we felt refreshed, energized, and most importantly, happy. Right on time , the Guangzhou local team had a delicious packed vegetarian lunch ready for us.

The evening of 30th Nov, was the second night of Guangzhou’s public talks. The entire auditorium was filled with around 600 people – and over the two nights, over 1,200 people listened to Geshe Michael’.

It was a big success for the Guangzhou organizers. We were so happy for them.

The topic was Finding your passion, similar to 11th & 12th Oct Public Talk, in Singapore.

Roy led a meditation called, “Giving Passion”, in Mandarin. Jenny and Candy were involved in the debate called, “Blocking The Blockers”. Jaki and Tee Peng were part of the question and answer session. Lastly, the night ended beautifully with Candy leading a meditation, “Rejoicing in a Love of Life” in Mandarin too.

Before the evening talk started, all of us were worried about whether the Guangzhou crowd could understand our Mandarin (well, Jaki didn’t’ even have any Mandarin to be understood !) or whether they could accept our answers or how would they react to us, and we were all so happy and relieved that it turned out well.

The 3 days weekend business retreat started on 2nd December, so we had a day and a half of rest before everyone arrived.

We arrived the retreat venue on 1st Dec, and we fell in love with it.

It was in a rural area of Guangzhou, and very near a National Park, where there were lots of trees, and behind our resort, was a mountain with a trail leading up to the peak.

And yes!, We did trek up the mountain, and it took us about 45 minutes. It wasn’t particularly high, however, it was really pretty steep during the second half of the journey. Candy even had to take off her high heels, (she didn’t prepare any track shoes), and walked up with us barefoot, even though it was really cold that morning, only about 10 degrees.

When we reached the peak, we found a perfect place where we could sit and enjoy the bird’s eye view of the entire National Park. We sat in meditation for a few minutes, as it was really cold, and took some amazing photos.

Everyone felt so good, as the air was really fresh, the surroundings, and weather was cool.
We even talked about the possibility of bringing our entire team in 2012 to have a proper training and mini-retreat at this resort.

The weekend retreat was beyond words, an experience we won’t forget. Geshe Michael gave a teaching on the “Four sets of Fours” – how seed planting works; how to speed up a seed ripening; how to get rid of an old bad seed; and how seeds ripen.

It was similar to what we learnt at the Singapore retreat but more structured teaching, based on the same ideas of planting seeds, and getting whatever you want in your life. This new structure really helped people to understand the teaching, and we could all see the joy in their faces after graduation.

At almost every break time, every teacher was swamped with questions from the students. The questions were really direct, some were difficult, and some were about serious life issues. Most of the participants were business owners, and top executives from banks, SME and MNC companies.

All of us gave our best shot at answering the questions. We just wanted our answers to provide people with more clarity and clear off their doubts, and to help them start a brand new way of life with the Diamond Cutter system.

In summary, the five of us were grateful and humbled by the warm welcome from the Guangzhou people – the organizers and volunteer team, and the participants at the talk and retreat. The organizers really took great care to make sure we were always well-fed, warm and happy.

We had an amazing experience and also discussed inviting the Guangzhou team to Singapore in Feb 2012, for further exchange. We gleaned lots of ideas from the Guangzhou team and it’ll be great to implement these to further improve what we do here in Singapore.

We look forward for the next trip in 2012.

At Diamond Wisdom, we love to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Wonderful and Fruitful brand new year for 2012.

Roy Phay

Success Always,
Roy Phay