So welcome, welcome everybody.

It's nice to see you all.

So here we are for our third and final class about victory over Mara.

And we're going to look at a third rendition of the same story.

And at the beginning of the class, I put up a slide,

so what is the function of part one of the class, I put up a slide, what is the function of, you know, part one of the objectives of this course

as to like what Mara means for you.

And that, of course, is still an objective.

And we'll see another version of Mara that we hadn't seen before.

But as I was pulling together the notes for this last class, I was reflecting on, like, for me,

what this experience has been to look at the same story with different versions of it.

And not only that, to do something about what we might call

more Buddhist studies than just Dharma.

The Dharma teaching is the way that I teach it,

I would say, is something to help us with our practice

and with our life and to find more freedom, of course.

And Buddhist studies is different in that it... and define more freedom, of course.

And Buddhist studies is different in that it maybe steps back and it looks a little bit at the nature of the teaching.

So not as much as the content, but the nature of it and who is saying it,

where is it come from what is it influenced by

what role does it have what is the function i i said that so something like that so buddhist

studies like i would say practitioners don't really need buddhist studies they don't want to

...