Every adversity both teaches us some truth of Dharma and gives us some opportunity to train our mind. In this way, our suffering becomes a cause of our enlightenment.

What we lack is (1) a stronger wish to attain enlightenment than to enjoy a pleasant life, and (2) the wisdom necessary to know how the adversity we are facing is exactly perfect for our spiritual training.

If we wish to enjoy samsara more than to accomplish spiritual goals, knowing how to transform our suffering into the path won’t work to help us maintain a peaceful mind in the face of life’s difficulties. We will think, “oh, that’s nice, but I don’t care. I just want my suffering to stop and the external thing is the cause of my suffering or cause of my happiness.” But when we want to accomplish spiritual goals more, it all works. We become willing to accept difficulties – meaning we can keep our inner peace in the face of them – because we know they are moving us closer to our much more important spiritual goals. Fundamentally, we understand that whether we are happy or not depends upon our mind, so the only way to be happy is to change our mind – our external situation is almost irrelevant.

Dorje Shugden can help with both of these things we lack. For the first, he is the protector of the Kadam Dharma or Kadam Lamrim. The actual Dharma only exists within our mind. He protects the flourishing of the Dharma within our mind. The quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma is bodhichitta, the wish to attain enlightenment. Just as all rivers eventually flow into the ocean, all Dharmas flow into the mind of bodhichitta. The Lamrim principally functions to change what we want from worldly happiness to spiritual goals, up to the wish to attain enlightenment.

For the second, Dorje Shugden is a wisdom Buddha, an emanation of Manjushri. His blessings are particularly powerful to help us understand how what we are facing in life is perfect for our next step in our spiritual journey. All we need is faith in him and a pure spiritual motivation. We then make requests that he arrange what is best and that he bless our mind to see how what is happening is best for us. When we receive these blessings, we then see and know. This enables us to accept our situation and get to work on transforming our adversity into the path.

Just as Dorje Shugden can do all this for us, he can also do all this for those we love. It may not be as quick or as obvious how this is happening, but since he, those we love, and ourself are all empty, it is definite it is happening. We gradually karmically reconstruct our empty world.

Because the methods we have are perfectly reliable, all we need is the perseverance necessary to never give up and both we and all those we love will get there in the end. This is why it is the Joyful Path. We know the final outcome is assured.

New Year’s Day is of course preceded by New Year’s Eve.  The evening before is usually when friends get together to celebrate the coming of the new year.  Sometimes Kadampas become a social cynic, looking down on parties like this, finding them meaningless and inherently samsaric.  They mistakenly think it is somehow a fault to enjoy life and enjoy cultural traditions.  This is wrong.

If we are invited to a New Year’s party, we should go without thinking it is inherently meaningless.  Geshe-la wants us to attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and modern life.  New Year’s Eve parties are part of modern life, so our job is to bring the Dharma into them.  Venerable Tharchin said that our ability to help others depends upon two things:  the depth of our Dharma realizations and the strength of our karmic connections with living beings.  Doing things with friends as friends helps build those karmic bonds.  Even if we are unable to discuss any Dharma, at the very least, we can view such evenings as the time to cultivate our close karmic bonds with people.  Later, in dependence upon these bonds, we will be able to help them perhaps in Dharma and non-Dharma ways.

One question that often comes up at most New Year’s Eve parties is what to do about the fact that most everyone else is drinking or consuming other intoxicants.  Most of us have Pratimoksha vows, so this can create a problem or some awkward moments for ourself or for the person who is throwing the party.  Best, of course, is if you have an open and accepting relationship with your friends where you can say, “you can do whatever you want, but I am not going to.”  It’s important that we don’t adopt a judgmental attitude towards others who might drink, etc.  We each make our own choices and it is not up to us to judge anyone else.  We might even make ourselves the annual “designated driver.”  Somebody has to be, so it might as well be the Buddhist!

If we are at a party where we can’t be open about being a Buddhist, which can happen depending upon our karmic circumstance, what I usually do is drink orange juice or coke for most of the night, but then at midnight when they pass around the glasses of Champagne I just take one, and without a fuss when it comes time, I just put it to my lips like I am drinking but I am not actually doing so.  If we don’t make an issue out of it, nobody will notice.  Why is this important?  Because when we say we don’t drink, they will ask why.  Then we say because we are a Buddhist.  Implicitly, others can take our answer to mean we are saying we think it is immoral to drink, so others might feel judged. When they do, they then reject Buddhism, and create the karma of doing so. We may feel “right,” but we have in fact harmed those around us. What is the most moral thing to do depends largely upon our circumstance. It goes without saying that others are far more likely to feel judged by us if in fact we are judging everyone around us! We all need to get off our high horse and just love others with an accepting attitude.

Fortunately, most Kadampa centers now host a New Year’s Eve party.  This is ideal.  If our center doesn’t, then ask to host one yourself at the center.  This gives our Sangha friends an alternative to the usual New Year’s parties.  We can get together at the center, have a meal together, do a puja together and just hang out together as friends.  We are people too, not just Dharma practitioners, so it is important to be “exactly as normal.”  If our New Year’s party is a lot of fun, then people will want to come again and again; and perhaps even invite their friends along.  It is not uncommon to do either a Tara practice or an Amitayus practice.   Sometimes centers organize a retreat weekend course over New Year’s weekend.  For several years in Geneva, we would do Tara practice in six sessions at the house of a Sangha member.  The point is, try make it time together with your Sangha family.  Christmas is often with our regular family, New Year’s can be with our spiritual family.

But it is equally worth pointing out there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a quiet evening at home alone, or with a few friends or members of your family. Just because everybody else is making a big deal out of it and going to parties doesn’t mean we should feel any pressure to do the same. I personally have never enjoyed the party scene, even when others are not getting drunk, etc. I much prefer a quiet evening or a solitary retreat. There is nothing wrong with this, and if that is how we prefer to bring in the New Year, we should do so without guilt or hesitation.

What I used to do (and really should start doing again), is around New Year’s I would take the time to go through all the 250+ vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism and reflect upon how I was doing.  I would try look back on the past year and identify the different ways I broke each vow, and I would try make plans for doing better next year.  If you are really enthusiastic about this, you can make a chart in Excel where you rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how well you did on each vow, and then keep track of this over the years.  Geshe-la advises that we work gradually with our vows over a long period of time, slowly improving the quality with which we keep them.  Keeping track with a self-graded score is a very effective way of doing this.  New Year’s is a perfect time for reflecting on this.

Ultimately, New Year’s Day itself is no different than any other.  It is very easy to see how its meaning is merely imputed by mind.  But that doesn’t mean it is not meaningful, ultimately everything is imputed by mind.  The good thing about New Year’s Day is everyone agrees it marks the possibility for a new beginning.  It is customary for people to make New Year’s Resolutions, things they plan on doing differently in the coming year.  Unfortunately, it is also quite common for people’s New Year’s Resolutions to not last very long.

But at Kadampas, we can be different.  The teachings on impermanence remind us that “nothing remains for even a moment” and that the entire world is completely recreated anew every moment.  New Year’s Day is a good day for recalling impermanence.  Everything that happened in the previous year, we can just let it go and realize we are moving into a new year and a new beginning.  We should make our New Year’s resolutions spiritual ones.  It is best, though, to make small changes that you make a real effort to keep than large ones that you know won’t last long.  Pick one or two things you are going to do differently this year.  Make it concrete and make sure it is doable.  A former student of mine would pick one thing that she said she was going to make her priority for the coming year, and then throughout the year she would focus on that practice. I think this is perfect. Another Sangha friend of mine would every year ask for special advice about what they should work on in the coming year. This is also perfect.

When you make a determination, make sure you know why you are doing it and the wisdom reasons in favor of the change are solid in your mind.  On that basis, you will be able to keep them.  Making promises that you later break creates terrible karma for ourselves which makes it harder and harder to make and keep promises in the future. We create the habit of never following through, and that makes the practice of moral discipline harder and harder.

Just because we are a Kadampa does not mean we can’t have fun like everyone else on New Year’s Eve.  It is an opportunity to build close karmic bonds with others, especially our spiritual family.  We can reflect upon our behavior over the previous year and make determinations about how we will do better in the year to come.

I pray that all of your pure wishes in the coming year be fulfilled, and that all of the suffering you experience becomes a powerful cause of your enlightenment.  I pray that all beings may find a qualified spiritual path and thereby find meaning in their life.  I also pray that nobody die tonight from drunk driving, but everyone makes it home safe.  Since that is unlikely to come true, I pray that Avalokiteshvara swiftly take all those who die to the pure land where they may enjoy everlasting joy.

Preparation 2:  Starting with the end in mind.

Before we begin, I want to give the final conclusion of where we are heading.  There are two main questions we are going to answer:  what does it mean that things are empty, and what are the main implications of this?  What does it mean that things are empty?  It means that everything is a mere karmic appearance of mind.  ‘Mere appearance’ – refers to the fact that things are nothing more than projections of mind, like a dream.  ‘Karmic appearance’ – refers to the appearances themselves arise from the ripening of karma.  Karma is like a ‘movie’ that when activated projects an image, or more modern and time-sensitive, karma is like a YouTube video that projects certain appearances for a certain duration (and most of it is crap!). ‘Of mind’ – refers to the conventional and ultimate nature of the appearance itself.

Conventional nature means the chair is the mind in the aspect of the chair.  The mind is like play dough, and the shape it is formed in is the chair.  This world is my mind in the aspect of this world – or more specifically, it is the emptiness of my mind in the aspect of the world.  This world is the body of my mind.  Ultimate nature refers to the ultimate nature of the mind, emptiness.  It is the emptiness of my mind in the aspect of the chair. 

Another simple way of getting to the same object is to understand that emptiness has three key recognitions to it.  First, things are projections of mind – this is the same as above, things are nothing more than dream-like projections of mind.  Second, things are taking place within the mind – everything that happens, happens ‘inside’ the mind.  And third, things are the nature of the mind – the objects are ‘made of’ the mind.

What are the main implications of emptiness?  For now, I would like to highlight four main implications.

First, we have choice.  When we consider karma, we sometimes think that everything is deterministic and we have no choice.  But when we understand emptiness, we realize we have complete choice over everything. The whole point of Dharma is to make manifest this choice.  We aim for choice of mind, choice of rebirth, choice of experience, choice of world.  Nagarjuna said, ‘for whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible.  For whom emptiness is impossible, nothing is possible.’

Second, we are responsible for everything.  If everything is a mere karmic appearance of OUR mind, then everything is coming from our mind and our karma, so we are responsible for everything that happens.  The duality between ourself and the creator falls away.  We realize that we have been a negligent creator because we have created a world of suffering, and we need to take responsibility for our creation and create a new, pure world.

Third, we need to become a Buddha because only a Buddha’s mind is powerful enough to free all living beings from suffering.  Suffering sentient beings exist because we are uncontrolledly projecting such beings in our karmic dream.  Only a Buddha’s mind is powerful enough to completely stop projecting suffering sentient beings and a samsara and to perfectly project a pure world filled with pure beings. 

Fourth, from a practical point of view, we need to simplify our life down to two things:  appearance and response.  Various things appear, like the waves of our karma.  What appears does not matter at all.  The only thing that matters is how we respond to those appearances.  If we respond to these appearances in a deluded way, they will become increasingly turbulent and distorted.  If we respond to them in a virtuous way, they will become increasingly pacified and pure.  Our job is to make cease this contaminated world of suffering.  It is like unraveling a giant knot of Christmas tree lights, until eventually this entire world of suffering subsides completely into clear light emptiness.

The final view we are striving for is the union of the Madhyamika-Prasangika school and the Chittmatrin school.  To establish this view, we first need to establish each one individually, and then we put the two together.  The Prasangika school quite simply says everything is like an illusion – there is nothing really there.  The Chittamatrins say ‘everything is mind.’  They would say there is something, but it is not ‘there’ like it appears to be.   There are no ‘external objects’, everything is inside the mind.  In fact, everything is mind.  It is mind in the aspect of the chair.   What is there?  The mind is there.  The union of the two says, ‘the illusions are the nature of an empty mind.’  It is the emptiness of the mind appearing in the aspect of the chair.

And now Shantideva returns to the attachment we have toward objects of worldly concern, such as possessions, praise, reputation.

(8.17) If people think I have many possessions,
They will respect me and like me;
But if I harbour this kind of pride,
I shall experience terrible fears after I die.

(8.18) O thoroughly confused mind,
For as many objects as you accumulate,
You will have to endure a thousand times more suffering
Because of your attachment to them.

(8.19) Thus, because objects of attachment give rise to fear,
The wise should not become attached,
But remain firm in the understanding
That by their very nature these things are to be left behind.

We have so many possessions. So many.  No matter how much space you have, we always find a way to fill it.  Venerable Tharchin said objects become possessions when we impute “mine” on them.  In reality, we shouldn’t have any possessions, as in our heart everything we have should belong to “others.”  We might be temporary custodians of some objects, but from our perspective we are practicing the giving of keeping. If we relate to anything as “ours,” then at the time of death we will feel it being ripped away.  The only things we can validly say are “ours” are our indestructible wind, our indestructible mind, and our karma.  Everything else is like the child of a barren woman – a non-existent thing belonging to someone who does not exist.

As Kadampas, I think we live, and should be seen to live, humbly, not extravagantly. We avoid the two extremes of materialism and spiritualism.   The extreme of materialism thinks that only material things matter.  This is an extreme because material things have no power to give us happiness and we eventually need to leave them all behind.

The extreme of spiritualism is when we think material things don’t matter at all.   This is an extreme because we need certain physical conditions for our practice or to help sustain others’ practice.  Perhaps we do not need these conditions ourselves, but those we want to help do.  If they think to adopt a spiritual life means to live in poverty, etc., then nobody will be interested in the spiritual way of life.  It is similar to eating meat.  Many Buddhists are vegetarians, but we don’t say, “to be Buddhist, you have to be vegetarian.”  If we said this, then many people would conclude, “I don’t want to be a Buddhist,” and then they would walk away from the Buddhist path and continue to eat meat.  If instead we say, “some eat meat, others don’t, it is your choice,” then they become Buddhist, and some of those who become Buddhist stop eating meat eventually. 

The middle way is we should use everything we have for the enlightenment of ourself and of others.  Then we can have many things, but we are using them all as means to accomplishing spiritual ends.  This enables people to realize the changes that need to be made are internal.  Having or not having are equally irrelevant.  What matters is our mind.  At the same time, we need to have everything around us be attractive, clean, organized, welcoming because we are inviting people into a spiritual way of life.  This is especially true for our Dharma centers.  It is not a waste of money to have comfortable chairs and a pleasant environment since these things matter for people, especially when they first come into the Dharma. 

(8.20) Even if I have acquired many possessions,
Fame, and a good reputation,
None of these things
Can go with me when I die.

Atisha said you have to depart leaving everything behind so do not be attached to anything.  Many people might not have strong attachment to things, but they might be attached to their reputation or their legacy or how they are remembered.  We have to leave that behind too.  None of these things go with us when we die, so we shouldn’t be attached to any of them.

New Year’s Day is of course preceded by New Year’s Eve.  The evening before is usually when friends get together to celebrate the coming of the new year.  Sometimes Kadampas become a social cynic, looking down on parties like this, finding them meaningless and inherently samsaric.  They mistakenly think it is somehow a fault to enjoy life and enjoy cultural traditions.  This is wrong.

If we are invited to a New Year’s party, we should go without thinking it is inherently meaningless.  Geshe-la wants us to attain the union of Kadampa Buddhism and modern life.  New Year’s Eve parties are part of modern life, so our job is to bring the Dharma into them.  Venerable Tharchin said that our ability to help others depends upon two things:  the depth of our Dharma realizations and the strength of our karmic connections with living beings.  Doing things with friends as friends helps build those karmic bonds.  Even if we are unable to discuss any Dharma, at the very least, we can view such evenings as the time to cultivate our close karmic bonds with people.  Later, in dependence upon these bonds, we will be able to help them.

One question that often comes up at most New Year’s Eve parties is what to do about the fact that most everyone else is drinking or consuming other intoxicants.  Most of us have Pratimoksha vows, so this can create a problem or some awkward moments for ourself or for the person who is throwing the party.  Best, of course, is if you have an open and accepting relationship with your friends where you can say, “you can do whatever you want, but I am not going to.”  It’s important that we don’t adopt a judgmental attitude towards others who might drink, etc.  We each make our own choices and it is not up to us to judge anyone else.  We might even make ourselves the annual “designated driver.”  Somebody has to be, so it might as well be the Buddhist!

If we are at a party where we can’t be open about being a Buddhist, which can happen depending upon our karmic circumstance, what I usually do is drink orange juice or coke for most of the night, but then at midnight when they pass around the glasses of Champagne I just take one, and without a fuss when it comes time, I just put it to my lips like I am drinking but I am not actually doing so.  If we don’t make an issue out of it, nobody will notice.  Why is this important?  Because when we say we don’t drink, they will ask why.  Then we say because we are a Buddhist.  Implicitly, others can take our answer to mean we are saying we think it is immoral to drink, so others might feel judged. When they do, they then reject Buddhism, and create the karma of doing so. We may feel “right,” but we have in fact harmed those around us. What is the most moral thing to do depends largely upon our circumstance. It goes without saying that others are far more likely to feel judged by us if in fact we are judging everyone around us! We all need to get off our high horse and just love others with an accepting attitude.

Fortunately, most Kadampa centers now host a New Year’s Eve party.  This is ideal.  If our center doesn’t, then ask to host one yourself at the center.  This gives our Sangha friends an alternative to the usual New Year’s parties.  We can get together at the center, have a meal together, do a puja together and just hang out together as friends.  We are people too, not just Dharma practitioners, so it is important to be “exactly as normal.”  If our New Year’s party is a lot of fun, then people will want to come again and again; and perhaps even invite their friends along.  It is not uncommon to do either a Tara practice or an Amitayus practice.   Sometimes centers organize a retreat weekend course over New Year’s weekend.  For several years in Geneva, we would do Tara practice in six sessions at the house of a Sangha member.  The point is, try make it time together with your Sangha family.  Christmas is often with our regular family, New Year’s can be with our spiritual family.

But it is equally worth pointing out there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a quiet evening at home alone, or with a few friends or members of your family. Just because everybody else is making a big deal out of it and going to parties doesn’t mean we should feel any pressure to do the same. I personally have never enjoyed them party scene, even when others are not getting drunk, etc. I much prefer a quiet evening or a solitary retreat. There is nothing wrong with this, and if that is how we prefer to bring in the New Year, we should do so without guilt or hesitation.

What I used to do (and really should start doing again), is around New Years I would take the time to go through all the 250+ vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism and reflect upon how I was doing.  I would try look back on the past year and identify the different ways I broke each vow, and I would try make plans for doing better next year.  If you are really enthusiastic about this, you can make a chart in Excel where you rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how well you did on each vow, and then keep track of this over the years.  Geshe-la advises that we work gradually with our vows over a long period of time, slowly improving the quality with which we keep them.  Keeping track with a self-graded score is a very effective way of doing this.  New Years is a perfect time for reflecting on this.

Ultimately, New Year’s Day itself is no different than any other.  It is very easy to see how its meaning is merely imputed by mind.  But that doesn’t mean it is not meaningful, ultimately everything is imputed by mind.  The good thing about New Year’s Day is everyone agrees it marks the possibility for a new beginning.  It is customary for people to make New Year’s Resolutions, things they plan on doing differently in the coming year.  Unfortunately, it is also quite common for people’s New Year’s Resolutions to not last very long.

But at Kadampas, we can be different.  The teachings on impermanence remind us that “nothing remains for even a moment” and that the entire world is completely recreated anew every moment.  New Year’s Day is a good day for recalling impermanence.  Everything that happened in the previous year, we can just let it go and realize we are moving into a new year and a new beginning.  We should make our New Year’s resolutions spiritual ones.  It is best, though, to make small changes that you make a real effort to keep than large ones that you know won’t last long.  Pick one or two things you are going to do differently this year.  Make it concrete and make sure it is doable.  A former student of mine would pick one thing that she said she was going to make her priority for the coming year, and then throughout the year she would focus on that practice. I think this is perfect. Another Sangha friend of mine would every year ask for special advice about what they should work on in the coming year. This is also perfect.

When you make a determination, make sure you know why you are doing it and the wisdom reasons in favor of the change are solid in your mind.  On that basis, you will be able to keep them.  Making promises that you later break creates terrible karma for ourselves which makes it harder and harder to make promises in the future. We create the habit of never following through, and that makes the practice of moral discipline harder and harder.

Just because we are a Kadampa does not mean we can’t have fun like everyone else on New Year’s Eve.  It is an opportunity to build close karmic bonds with others, especially our spiritual family.  We can reflect upon our behavior over the previous year and make determinations about how we will do better in the year to come.

I pray that all of your pure wishes in the coming year be fulfilled, and that all of the suffering you experience become a powerful cause of your enlightenment.  I pray that all beings may find a qualified spiritual path and thereby find meaning in their life.  I also pray that nobody die tonight from drunk driving, but everyone makes it home safe.  Since that is unlikely to come true, I pray that Avalokiteshvara swiftly take all those who die to the pure land where they may enjoy everlasting joy.