I believe I can only express our deeply felt gratitude to  chairman Yoon, chairman Bae, director Lee and director Kim,  and all the staff for this wonderful day. I will make a short  comment about this conference. But first I will introduce the  foreign scholars. I will introduce all the scholars who made  presentations at the conference.
 
  The first is a distinguished and senior guest from Japan,  professor Hachiya Kunio from Tokyo University in Japan.
  The second is professor Eileen Barker from London School  of Economics. And you may not know this, but she is OBE,  which means Order of the British Empire. She is one of the  few scholars to have received this distinction from Queen  Elizabeth. She is a member of the Order of the British Empire, OBE.

  Then we have professor Bernadette Rigal-Cellard from University of Bordeaux in France. She is actually the chair of her department. She hosted a wonderful conference on East Asian new religions in Bordeaux last May of this year, featuring several participants from Daejin University and Daesoon Jinrihoe.

  Then we have Professor J. Gordon Melton, who is a distinguished professor of history of American religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is the only scholar I Know who wrote more than one hundred books about religions.

  Then, we have professor Susan Palmer from McGill University in Montreal Canada. That is another city we visited recently, and Daesoon Jinrihoe delegation enjoyed the hospitality of professor Palmer in her home in Montreal. And she is also a world famous specialist of new religious movements, particularly of children who grow up in new religions.
  And we have professor Patrick Laude from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. If you look at him, you will easily conclude he’s not American. He’s a distinguished French scholar of Eastern new religions.

  Next we have Rosita Soryte from Lithuania. She is a diplomat with 25 years of experience in the business of diplomacy. Most recently, she has been a minister counselor in the Lithuanian Mission at the United Nations in New York. Her most distinguished achievement has been chairwoman of the European Union Working Group on Humanitarian Aid during the Lithuanian presidency of European Union.

  Then, we will not leave Lithuania because we have Milda Alisauskiene. She is a professor of sociology of religion in the University of Kaunas in Lithuania. She also hosted last week a conference there in Lithuania, with a distinguished Korean delegation led by professor Bae. She is an expert in new religious movements and she is concluding her term as the president of the International Society for the Study of New Religions.

  Then we have professor Holly Folk from Western Washington University in Bellingham near Seattle, in United States, in the State of Washington. She is also a distinguished expert of new religious movements and expert of Chinese Christian new religious movements.

  Then we have professor Edward Irons of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia Pacific Studies, who is a well known expert of Chinese and East Asian new religious movements, and some of us were with him recently in Hong Kong.

  Then we have professor Thien Hong Ninh of California Polytechnic State University in USA. And she doesn’t look like an American-American. In fact she is of Vietnamese origins and we learned to appreciate her papers in recent conferences. She is a very distinguished specialist of Vietnamese religion and Vietnamese new religious movements.

  Then we have professor Po-Chi Huang of National Chengchi University in Taipei who is also a specialist of Asian religions, including India. And that gives me the opportunity to welcome all the Taiwanese delegation of this conference and to remember that our next conference of CESNUR (Center for Study of New Religions) will be in Taiwan in next year, June 2018.
  And somebody who needs no introduction is professor David Kim of Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. I am sure all in this room know him as a well known specialist of Korean religions.
 

  Then I would like to make a short comment on the conference and our gratitude about the conference. Some time ago, I learned that in the holy book of Daesoon Jinrihoe it is written that “Buddhism is form, Daoism is creation, and Confucianism is propriety”. And Daesoon Thought as a synthesis of the Three Teachings offers to us form, creation, and propriety. And I believe we have seen all these three at work both in the forum and in the wonderful visit to the headquarters temple of Daesoon Jinrihoe today. So the question I want to ask after this conference is “did we attend a conference only or did we attend something more than a conference?” I believe that the second answer is the real one. Yes, it was a conference but it was at the same time a spiritual experience, a real experience of form, creation, and propriety. This conference was a conference like no other.

  Of course, all conferences involve the exercise of the mind, but I will conclude with another teaching I found in the holy book of Daesoon Jinrihoe. I learned that our mind is inhabited by divine beings, and the way of divine beings to interact with the external world is through our mind. It is the first time a conference had such a magnificent scope of meaning. Whether or not we are believers of Daesoon Jinrihoe, it is very nice to believe that when we use our intelligence, divine beings work through us in an action beneficial to this world.

  There is a famous Western symbol that is the tree of life. The tree of life looks like a tree but it’s much more than a simple tree. Its roots are above, in the sky or in the heaven. In the Western tradition, the tree of life is the tree of knowledge and wisdom. But at the same time, it’s also the tree of spirituality, compassion, and love.

  For this reason, I want to conclude this very short and humble speech by presenting your chairman Yoon with a Tree of life. It comes from Lithuania. Lithuania is the country of amber. Amber is found on the shore of the sea, so you can regard it as a very natural stone. And in fact it’s not really a stone, but something different. It comes from trees buried on the depth of the sea roughly one million years ago. The sea takes small pieces off these trees and they are found on the beaches. When you put amber in your home, you have some effects similar to what in the East is the Feng Shui.

  Amber is a gift from the sea, but in ancient European countries it was regarded as a gift from the gods. So, with deep gratitude from the heart and deep emotion from what this conference and this visit have been, I would like to present chairman Yoon with a tree of life made of amber from the Baltic Sea. So thank you very much and thanks to all those who made translations and all the staff and volunteers which made this magnificent event possible.