When somebody comes to us with a problem, I have found the ten steps below to be helpful. They are born from my basically having made every mistake in the book and the sometimes painful lessons I have learned trying, but failing to help those I love. I share them with the hope that you might learn from my mistakes and help those you love.

First, just listen fully with a compassionate heart free from any personal attachment to them not suffering, nodding often, seeking to understand how they are perceiving, feeling, and experiencing what they are going through. Give them the time and space to say whatever it is they need or want to say, no matter how long it may take. Sometimes this is all people need from you – just somebody they can express themselves to or a shoulder to cry on. Often just giving people the space to verbalize what is happening inside of them is enough for them to realize the answers to their own questions or to at least get it all off of their chest. That is perfectly OK and often enough. While you are listening to them, generate Venerable Geshe-la (or Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka) at your heart, imagining the person we are speaking with is actually in his presence and they are expressing themselves to him. You can also generate Avalokiteshvara or Tara in them, reciting their mantras as appropriate requesting that their minds be blessed.

Second, repeat back what you understood them to say from their perspective (not your interpretation of their experience). Explicitly recognize what happened to them and how that made/makes them feel and what they thought about it. It’s often helpful to ask to confirm that you understood them correctly to make sure you are understanding them and everything as they are experiencing it. This step is important because unless they know we understand their problem as they are experiencing it, they won’t accept, appreciate, or understand any advice we might later give.

Third, empathize with them about how hard that is, how sorry you are that they are going through all of that, and reassure them that it is entirely normal that they are having the reaction that they are having to it. If somebody has wronged them in some way, it is very important to call that out explicitly as wrong, hurtful, and harmful. We must be able to call a spade a spade, call out wrong as wrong, and acknowledge what happened to them was hurtful. This step is important because people need to feel validated in their reactions and experiences of things before they are open to viewing things differently. If we don’t do this, then there is a real risk that any advice we later might give gets misperceived as us gaslighting them, telling them that the are wrong to experience what happened to them as harmful and that they are the one at fault for their suffering or the other person’s wrong behavior. Indeed, they may think we are saying the other person’s wrong behavior is somehow correct and our friend is the one in the wrong to take things as they did.

Fourth, we can either explicitly ask or do our best to intuit (requesting blessings helps) if the person wants any advice or suggestions or whether they just want to be heard and perhaps receive a loving hug. Here again, it is super important that we abandon any last trace of attachment in our mind to them being OK. If we need them to be OK for ourselves to be OK, then we will feel compelled to try change them and give them advice (and attached to them accepting our advice) so they can get better so that we can be better. This corrupts the whole process and just creates obstacles to them accepting any advice we might offer. It’s not our job to control or manage other people’s emotional reaction to things. Our job is to accept them as they are exactly where they are at, without any personal need whatsoever for them to change or get better.

If they are not open to receiving advice, then don’t give any. Let me repeat that: if they are not open to receiving advice, then hold yourself back – don’t give any. Just be loving and compassionate acceptance. Our job is to be for them what they need, not impose upon them what we think they need. If we give unsolicited advice, all we often do is create the causes for them to reject the advice they very well may need, which doesn’t help anybody.

Fifth, if they are open to receiving advice, don’t offer any yet. Ask questions first. How does this make you feel? What do you think is driving that? What are your thoughts about how to deal with it? What does this make you want to do? If you did that, how do you think it would play out? Have you dealt with situations like this in the past? What worked and what didn’t work in those situations? Just ask questions with genuine curiosity and no implied judgment of what you think are the right answers. Ask the questions that help them find their own answers. Do not ask them the questions that guide them towards your answers or solutions because they will sense that and again it can be mispreceived as a form of judgment, gaslighting, manipulation, or the offering of unsolicited advice. Much better to help people uncover their own solutions than be given solutions by you. Request Venerable Geshe-la at your heart to help guide you to ask the right questions.

Sixth, ask again (or intuit with blessings) if they want your perspective on the whole thing. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. Again, let go of all attachment to them being OK or wanting to be their savior or giving advice or them receiving advice.

Seventh, if they do want your perspective, begin with once again repeating what you understood, call a spade a spade recognizing what the other person did was wrong, empathizing with what they are going through, acknowledging it is both hard and normal how they are reacting, and then flag what you agree with in terms of their own responses or solutions they identified in step five. Reinforce all that you have previously done and validate where you agree with their proposed solutions.

Eighth, if they are open to more, begin explaining your perspective by making a distinction between the outer and the inner problem as you see it. The outer problem is what happened and what external situation they need to deal with and the inner problem is how it may have triggered delusions in their mind that are disturbing them or they are unable to see how this bad thing that happened to them is actually good for their inner personal growth. Begin by offering very normal, very practical advice for how to deal with the outer problem. When the car breaks, take it to the mechanic. Sometimes Kadampas are reluctant to offer normal practical external advice, as if doing so is somehow not our place or takes away from the Dharma solutions we also have to offer. This is total nonsense. We should help people in all ways we can, both normal external good advice and internal advice. Most people strongly grasp at the external situation as THEIR problem, and so if you don’t show them how they can also address the external situation, they won’t feel like you understand or heard what their problem is. They also have a broken down car and need to get it fixed, so explain to them what they need to do so fix it. We should feel free to share our own experiences of when we faced similar situations and what we did externally to try address it, all while making clear that the external solution may or may not work. As Kadampas, we also need to know how to function in this world and get stuff done. Worldly wisdom is still wisdom. Once people feel like they have a solution – or at least a course of action – for their external problem, then they are more willing to be open to what we might have to say for addressing their internal problem.

Ninth, now you can turn to thoughts and suggestions on addressing their internal problem. The first thing you need to ask yourself is are they open to receiving internal advice using Dharma terminology or not. Most often, frankly, they are not; but sometimes they are. If they are not open to or familiar with Dharma terminology, don’t use it. You need to be like the ancient Tibetan translators who first had to learn the Dharma in Sanskrit and then translate it into Tibetan. We learned how to speak Kadampa through our own training, but we need to learn how to translate it into normal speech that the person we are speaking with can accept and understand. Sometimes it will be through personal stories, sometimes sports analogies, and sometimes it will be through passing on wisdom you got from your grandma. Your job is to explain things to them in a way they can understand, not how you understand it. Begin by helping them accept the situation for what it is, differentiating what we can control and what we cannot control. For the things we can control, help them see what they can do – how they can change their mind towards the situation or view it differently. More often than not, people can understand that while they may not be able to change the external situation, they can change their opinion about it. This is the beginning of the wisdom realizing emptiness. Usually, any difficult situation reveals many truths of Dharma. For the things they cannot control, help them see how this difficult situation gives them to a chance to develop some valuable internal qualities like patience, love, compassion, a backbone, setting boundaries, etc. A thorough understanding of the Lojong teachings on transforming adversity into the path is usually all we need. It is typically best to transmit this through telling stories about how you dealt with things when you faced similar situations and then let them apply the story to their own situation in their own way. Resist the temptation to tell them how they should be thinking or feeling, rather give them options they can choose from about how they might be able to view or relate to the situation differently and leave them free to decide what to take or not take from your stories or suggestions.

Tenth, ask them questions about what they think of what you had to share, if any of that was helpful or if you missed the mark. When you ask, you need to be completely free from any attachment whatsoever that they understand, appreciate, or follow anything you said. They may get mad at you for what you said and reject everything. Or they may think you are nuts and your advice is crap. Or they may appreciate what you said but you know they will not act on it. All of that is TOTALLY OK. You need to accept any and all of that. Be patient with them as Venerable Geshe-la has been with us. They may only take a fraction of what we offered and that is perfectly OK. Sometimes they hear what we say now, but will need to go through a few more similar life experiences before what we said makes any sense to them. What they take from what you offered is entirely up to them. We have no need for them to listen to us, follow our advice, or even get better. Of course we hope they do all these things, but we have no personal need for them to do so. We leave them completely free to ignore us or even hate us for what we had to say. We can request Dorje Shugden that their conversation with us becomes a cause of their enlightenment, even if they reject everything.

I’m not saying any of these ten steps are guaranteed to help and there may be many circumstances when they are not appropriate. But generally speaking, I have found them to be helpful when people have come to me with their problems. Each thing above comes from having learned the hard way that doing the opposite doesn’t work. I hope others reading this might be able to learn from my mistakes and be more helpful to those they love.

If we can learn how to help others, then we can really help the Dharma flourish in this world. If we are not able to help people with their personal problems – help them solve their problems with Dharma – then what, really, is all our practice about? But if people start coming to Kadampas when life gets hard and we are able to help them, then people will start to see the value of ancient Kadampa wisdom in the modern world. This is how it flourishes. Everyone needs Kadam Dharma. Skillfully helping them when they come to us with their problems is part of how we make it available to them.