demented delight

Apprentice When I told you that I was sad but that maybe I understood something – i.e. I’m sad because understanding just makes it clear how hopeless it is – you said that samsara was indeed hopeless but that although it is sad – that ‘that sadness’ is the basis of a profound and stable joy. There is something I do not understand. How can this sadness be the basis of a profound and stable joy?

Lamas Because joy without the sadness of having seen that samsara is irredeemably defective is not stable – and therefore the cause of misery. The ‘sadness of having seen that samsara is irredeemably defective’ is a ‘sadness which matures into desirelessly desirously demented delight’ – i.e. that which knows sadness as ‘a texture of itself’. That is stable.