If somebody comes to us and wants to talk about their problems, how can we avoid getting pulled into their bad trip?

Lama Ole’s answer:

Don’t accept any of it. A higher level of joy is a higher level of truth! A disturbing emotion is something negative in itself—something that brings suffering, a bug in the program. You give them your trip instead. That is called realism: you make the good things real.

Sit there with the Lama in your heart laughing and shining light out to everyone. Then they can tell their stories until it becomes too much and they go away again. It’s a mistake to strengthen people’s bad trips. That would be a misunderstanding of bodhisattva activity. Real bodhisattva activity is telling people, “It’s all a dream! The trip is not important! It was not there before, and it will be gone again soon!”