Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This previously recorded talk was given by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on December 10, 2017 at Longchen Jigme Samten Ling Retreat Center in Crestone, Colorado. Rinpoche explains how remorse and forgiveness are the essential ingredients of the Buddhist path and their practice results in the experience of grace.

Speaker: Owen Ziols. Owen reflects on how he understands and cultivates renunciation. Renunciation may be understood in the context of ground, path, and fruition, the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma, and the eight worldly concerns. Underlying all approaches, however, is the need for self-reflection and skillful means.

Speaker: Polly Banerjee-Gallagher. Polly Gallagher tells the story of how she and her siblings held vigil at her mother's deathbed a year ago and how Rinpoche and the Sangha showed up for her family during that time as well as later when she took her parent's ashes to India. She also shares details about her mother's generous approach to life and reflects on the impact of the Dharma in her life.

Speaker: Ram Jyoti. Drawing from a broad array of sources, including the Dharma, the enneagram, A Course in Miracles, Carolyn Myss, and The Gnostic Gospels, Ram Jyoti reflects on what she has learned about confession, despair, aspiration, and kindness. Confession requires us to look honestly at ourselves, offering in return a sense of relief and purification. Cultivating the courage to "simmer" prepares us to learn the lessons that can be taught only by experiencing betrayal and despair. Extending patience and tolerance to our neuroses engenders kindness to all beings, and generates the aspiration to liberate all beings.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la reflects on identity and how to have a healthy relationship with the world as a Dharma practitioner. An understanding of the Four Noble Truths illuminates how sentient beings try to build a world that suits their preferences, and how this leads to suffering. The bodhisattva path provides a way beyond suffering based on reducing our neurotic attachment to self and developing a strong basis to navigate and fully engage the world in a healthy manner. This requires working with one's identity with the skillful means of the Dharma, especially in the midst of the identity crisis of modernity and all of its challenges. A tree needs strong roots and then branches out into the world and the elements.

Speaker: Paddy McCarthy. Paddy reflects on how we can use the process of aging as an opportunity to meet the challenges of dying, training ourselves to pass with fearless confidence through illness, dissolution, and the bardos. Learning how to accept the process of aging teaches us how to die with clarity and openness. By doing so, we can increase the likelihood of attaining either enlightenment or an auspicious human rebirth that will enable us to continue on the spiritual path.

Speaker: Bill Filter. Bill recounts the story of how he came to the Dharma and met Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la, speaking from the 2023 Nyingma Summer Seminar, reminds us that the Buddha's first teaching in Sarnath was that there is suffering. The Buddha went into great detail about his investigation into how we suffer. Our suffering springs more from our own mind and attitude than from the our physical conditions, as evidenced by people in developing countries. Our neurotic self-attachment and the five destructive emotions spin the wheel of samsara. The Dharma teaches that the path to the cessation of suffering involves working with karmic cause and effect in an open-eyed manner, seeing the results of our negative and positive actions and steering our life toward a dharmic life using practices like the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Immeasurables. Karma is not about fault or punishment, but simply about cause and effect, our action and Nature's reaction, the wonders of interdependent arising. As practitioners, we drip-feed samsara into our practice to develop a healthy relationship with the world and transform samsara. We take refuge in the Three Jewels as guide, path, and community as an act of appreciation and gratitude, as an alternative to the spiral of our negative habits. Dungse-la ends with an in-depth explanation of lenchak (karmic debt and codependence).

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la, speaking from the Illustrious Moon children's program, explores karma or cause and effect. Each of our actions and the primary tone of our approach to life will eventually come back to us as karmic results. The effect will be related to the cause, so if we're angry a lot, the effect will be related to anger. Our intention matters and amplifies karmic results. Lojong mind training slogans like "don't be so predictable" remind us to be less habitually reactive to karmic results that appear in our life and respond in new ways that gradually shift our karma in a positive direction due to the workings of cause and effect.

Speaker: Gretchen Kahre-Holland. Gretchen reflects on two opportunities presented by the pandemic: to go into retreat, and to emerge with a fresh perspective on how to relate with our own minds and with others. Rinpoche once advised his students to "pray that your life falls apart---but not to put it back together in the same way"; more recently, he advised us to treat the pandemic as a retreat. As we emerge from this "retreat" and prepare to gather at NSS in person for the first time since 2019, we have an opportunity to apply Rinpoche's advice. As we put our lives back together, we can reflect on how we want to engage with our own minds and with the Sangha, using our experience and natural intelligence to cultivate an open, curious, and fresh approach. In this way, we can overcome the cycle of discontent, craving, and speed that characterizes modern life.