Become Your Own Therapist

Something To Think About Series #284 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #283 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #282 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

It's a commonly held misconception that Buddhism and activism conflict. In fact, the logical consequence of spiritual practice is action for the sake of others; it just naturally follows.  But our actions – helping our next-door neighbour or helping stop the destruction of the planet – need to be grounded in wisdom. As the Dalai Lama says, "Compassion is not enough; we need wisdom."  In other words, we need to work on our own minds first. We need to recognize our own suffering and how it's caused by our own attachment and anger the other unhappy emotions. Taking responsibility for these and wanting to change, based upon having compassion for ourselves, is what causes us to go beyond the narrow sense of self and realize we're all in the same boat.  This brings optimism and confidence that every small action counts and we develop the courage to never give up. The great bodhisattvas are fierce in their determination to never give up on sentient beings: they "think in terms of eons," as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says. Tibet House, Sep 3, 2025.

Something To Think About Series #281 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #280 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #279 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Venerable Robina discusses the three poisons - attachment, aversion, and ignorance. Attachment is a junkie that only wants everything to be nice, it's this fragile child in us, that can only handle everything going nicely, and when we understand this, we will totally understand trauma. What arises when attachment doesn't get what it wants, that's called aversion, and it's the interplay of these two that is the source of the problem. Trauma is an undealt with problem. From the Buddhist view of the mind, there's not a single thing we ever experience that ever goes astray, everything stays in the mind. It goes into the memory but we bury it, at some point you can't live in denial, it's going to come up at some point. When it's an intense thing, especially violence, then you suppress it, you push it away, you don't want to look at it, so it goes in there, and that is what a trauma is. We don't have the means to deal with dramas, we don't have the analysis, we get guilty, we think it's all our fault, we push it away and we don't deal with it, we don't know how to deal with it, we haven't been taught. Our tragedy in our culture, we wait until serious things happen, until we're having a mental breakdown or panic attacks. We don't have methods for dealing with our mind, our attitude, or our interpretation of the event. The trauma is your own mind, the event is the external, we don't know how to interpret our mind, which is the response to the event, and that's the skill we have to learn! Questions about - past abuse and current relationships, the death of a best friend, terminal illness, letting go and advocacy, specific practices or teachings most useful for dealing with abuse, dissolving anger by understanding and accepting karma, trauma and grief, and how useful is it to go back into past experience and how do you think about them without wallowing? Vajrayana Institute, Sydney, 26th April 2025.

Something To Think About Series #278 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #277 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #276 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #275 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #274 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

You've got to know the reasons for something. If you can't identify the problem, then you can't identify the cause of it, how can you ever find the solution? Once you understand the cause of it, it's clear. The quality called enthusiasm or enthusiastic perseverance, or joyful effort, is the fourth of the six perfections on the bodhisattva path of the Lamrim. They all say that it's the most important. Each of the perfections is more difficult than the last. The first four of the six perfections are generosity, morality, patience, and enthusiastic perseverance. They seem these fairly disconnected concepts but there's a lot of logic to them. The fourth one is the most important on the entire path, because if we don't have enthusiasm, if you don't make effort, if you're effort isn't joyful, if you don't have perseverance - they all come to the same thing, you won't be successful. You could have wisdom coming out your ears, you could even have incredible compassion, but if you don't have enthusiasm, if you don't have this perseverance, this not giving up attitude, then you will not be successful. When you hear about enthusiasm, it sounds lovely, but we have no idea how to get it, it doesn't tell us anything. We've got to analyse it, and it's really so clear when you do. The opposite of enthusiasm is called laziness, and there are three levels. The second one is what we call procrastination, where we put things off. Let's analyse them, then there's no confusion any longer, and we know the solution. The first one is I can't be bothered. We know that, we are so intimately familiar with that. They are talking very specifically in relation to dharma practice, not in terms of going to the gym every day or washing the dishes. In fact doing samsaric activities with enthusiasm is a type of laziness, but we're not discussing that here. I'm going to use analogies and examples in ordinary examples because we really understand them, but it's specifically referring to enthusiasm for practice. The very first point, and it's really helpful to hear this, the lamas all say, and it's so logical, the only way you will ever have enthusiasm to do something, therefore not be lazy, is when you know the benefits of something. So if we look at samsara, nobody has to convince us of the benefits of sleep, nobody convinces us of the benefits of our best coffee, or getting what attachment wants, or all the things we know that preoccupy our lives. We know when we know the benefits of whatever it is, we will do it, because we can see the result. Even just getting that ice cream you like, you don't care if you go to six different shops, you're prepared to persevere to do it. That's what's difficult, it's easy to see the benefit of going to the gym, it's easy to see the benefit of nice food, comfort, people smiling at you, and all those kinds of things, in other words attachment getting what it wants. But it's very hard to be enthusiastic about the long term result, which means to become a Buddha. In fact it's so abstract, so long distance, even if we see His Holiness, see Lama Zopa, as crystal clear examples of the benefit of this goal, it's still very hard because it's so distant for us. But we have to think about it. So what laziness is, the first one is I can't be bothered. Ask yourself the question - What can't you be bothered doing? Well it's really obvious, the thing you can't be bothered doing, is the thing that you can't do, that you're not capable of, and that's why it's difficult, because you're not good at it. So you go to the gym, you are initially enthusiastic, you think about it, you get ready, you go to the gym, you've got the goal in mind, and this is the point - you know necessarily it takes effort, but look what happens the moment it becomes difficult, that's the second that attachment isn't getting what it wants. It's attachment to comfort, not to sex, not to drugs, maybe to being seen as a nice person, but the primordial attachment here is the grossest one of all, it's attachment to our comfort zone, feeling comfortable. If you understand this, it's a revelation. So of course anything you can't do properly demands effort, so there's got to be that point at which you go beyond that bit of pain, you stretch yourself to that next little step, and if you don't do that you will never change. If you go to the gym and the moment it starts to hurt, meaning the moment your attachment is not happy, and you stop and say I just did the gym - no you didn't! Because we know you've got to go beyond that point, and it's got to hurt. In other words, you've got to go beyond attachment, and that we do not want to do, it is primordially painful to do what attachment doesn't want. Vajrayana Institute, Sydney, 22nd June 2025.

Something To Think About Series #273 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #272 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #271 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #270 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #269 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Discussion with Vincent Moore - Aug 12, 2025 We talked about opinions and the impact of negative thoughts, prison chaplaincy and the doors that open when you adjust your attitude, activism and changing the world by exploring your self, the need to abstain in order to perceive the nature of your attachments, and the importance of recognizing your enormous potential.

Something To Think About Series #268 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #267 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin     Read More

We explore why suffering is baked into samsara, the hidden cost of attachment, and how the Four Noble Truths can become a living, breathing guide. Ven. Robina Courtin discusses "The Drawbacks of Samsara". We dive into the nature of suffering in Samsara, the subtle role of attachment, and the practical meaning of the Four Noble Truths. Robina speaks to the balance between devotion and clear-eyed reasoning, showing how both can deepen and stabilize our practice. Our conversation explores the six realms of existence, the workings of karma, and how understanding the nature of Samsara inspires personal responsibility for our inner life. Throughout, she returns to one essential truth: the quality of our thoughts and intentions shapes the quality of our lives.

This session with Ven. Robina follows on to explore attachment in more detail, as well as renunciation, dependent arising and having an open heart. She says, attachment is very primordial and can manifest as as possessiveness, manipulation, controlling, expectations, addictions. We need to start to work with attachment and aversion by controlling our body, speech and mind. "Attachment doesn't like when we see our own crazy mind. We need to learn to counteract that, and be glad to see our crazy minds. And learn to live wiht it and be kind to ourselves about it. Rather than wishing it would go away, because that is naive." Q&A at Namche Bazaar – Attachment (Part 2) – Renunciation, dependent arising and having an open heart. Lawudo Trek | March 26, 2019 | Namche Bazaar, Solu Khumbu

Something To Think About Series #266 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

In this Q&A session at the end of one of the hardest sections of the trek, Ven. Robina discusses the different between pleasure and happiness. She speaks about how we can be more flexible with physical difficulty or outer challenges and how we can train and strengthen the mind through practice. Lawudo Trek | March 25, 2019 | Namche Bazaar, Solu Khumbu

Something To Think About Series #265 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #264 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Venerable Robina answers questions from students and part of a teaching on purification and emptiness, one afternoon during the Lawudo Trek in Nepal. Questions - about karma and rebirth, can an animal be born as human, the Manjushri mantra, and is a guru-disciple relationship relevant in the modern world?  Lawudo Trek, Nepal, 28th March 2019.

Something To Think About Series #263 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #262 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #261 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Start the day with your mind pointed in positive direction.

Something To Think About Series #260 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #259 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

This is such an interesting point, it sounds nice - oh yeah our minds play a role. Rinpoche said one time, and I'm quoting him exactly I promise, it's very shocking when we hear it, I've quoted it a lot, Rinpoche said - “The vast majority of all human beings on the planet have absolutely no idea that their mind plays any role at all in their lives.” Now this sounds almost impossible to believe doesn't it. I'll qualify it, we clearly know that our mind plays a big role when it comes to learning mathematics, learning music, and learning carpentry, I always say this point, we know our mind is the main player. If you don't have the right theories and think the right thoughts, you can never play the piano, you can't make a cake, and you can't make a table. So we do know it when it comes to theoretical things, intellectual things, or scientific things. We know the mind has to be trained to perfection. But Rinpoche's point is when it comes to becoming a happy person or an unhappy person, we have absolutely no idea that our mind plays any role at all, and that's the part that's shocking, and I think that's exactly right. Even if we're good little Buddhists we all know karma, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But the moment your hubby does the wrong thing, your wife slurps her coffee, the red light is red, you don't think it's your mind that is the problem at all. I mean even the best Buddhists, because we are so addicted, totally from eons of lifetimes, Buddha says, to seeing that the outside world is the main cause of our happiness and suffering, and that's why it's so difficult, it's incredibly difficult. Even the smallest disturbance on the outside, we know this, the smallest disturbance, we don't even bother looking at our mind, we just believe in the thing out there being the problem, and we know this is true. So it's very humbling. Karma theoretically is not complicated, it's just that it's so utterly shocking to us because it's the exact opposite of what we think. Many of us practicing for so many years, we know how tremendously hard it is, so we should not underestimate how difficult it is. But it's the essence of being a Buddhist, it's the absolute total point of all Buddha's teachings, that the mind is the main player. That the mind is the creator of everything, from the hell realms to Buddhahood, the mind is what creates it, it's as simple as that. So all we can do is keep hearing it, keep getting the theories clear, and be able to say them in a simple way because we mostly just get very confused, we go - oh yeah it's karma! What do you mean? Oh well it's just karma. That's like saying please explain the roses in the garden. Oh it's botany! Can you explain it for me? No! What good is that? You've got to learn a bit of botany, so you know how to use the law of botany. So we have to learn to know the words so we can use the law of karma. So let's look at how to think simply, what are the basic principles? This is part of our problem, we can't say the basic principles. But because we've heard it from the Tibetans in the same way that they would have said it in the 14th century, and talking to the choir, they don't really explain it in the way we need it to be explained. They don't stress the logic behind it, because the main point of karma in the first stages of the Lamrim is behave yourself, be nice, and don't kill, don't steal, and don't lie; and if you do you'll go to the hell realms for twenty two eons. I mean you're shaking in your shoes if you hear Lama Zopa talk. So let's use our concepts, let's look at what would help us! Western modern people who don't have this view. How do we present it to ourselves so that it begins to be logical to us? Well there's lots of different ways, you know, let's do that. Questions include - Karma is a natural law so there's no room for guilt? Why is ‘should' anger? Karma as a hypothesis? What is the correct way to act towards a teacher? What can we do to become more attuned to karma? What is the relationship between karma and loneliness? If someone is unkind to us, how do we fix it? Question on karma and children born with disabilities. How do delusions relate to karma and how do we work with them? Vajrayana Institute, Sydney, July 27th 2025.  

Something To Think About Series #258 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #257 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #256 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Start the day with your mind pointed in positive direction. 

Something To Think About Series #255 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #254 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Why is living in vows is so powerful? In order to get another decent human body, in a condition of a reasonable human life, we need many conditions for that. We are in charge of our life but we're not used to believing it, we somehow feel that someone out there will take care of us, but Buddhism doesn't talk like that. It's up to us. We have to decide what kind of rebirth we want. We have to decide, intention is - I will. To get another decent human mother we need bucket loads of rich intentional non-killing seeds in our mind. So we need to know how to create them. We need to have plenty of those so that when we die peacefully, that one of those seeds can be triggered, and we'll get another decent human mother, and keep on moving on our spiritual path. We've got to go through this inconvenient thing called death, and start again with a little baby body, and off we go again, it's a drag. But given that we have to do it, let's navigate it as well as possible. Let's be in charge of it! Don't just cross our fingers and hope for the best. There are four things that need to be in place in order to have a non-killing karmic seed drop into our complete karmic action bank vault. There has to be first the object of the action, a living being, for example a mouse. The second is your mind involved, discrimination - that is the mouse I must not kill, then the thought, the intention - I must not kill the mouse, now the crucial piece, the motivation is compassion for the mouse. The compassion, the motivation is what makes the action virtuous, and obviously the stronger the compassion, the more the action is virtuous, the more rich and delicious the karmic seed is. The third thing is the action, you save the mouse. Then fourth, the result, a happy living mouse. This is where we can turn an ordinary deluded action into a virtuous action by merely changing our motivation. This is the power of motivation. Let's look at the action of eating. First is the object, for example a cake. Second is your mind involved in it, you intend to eat the cake, normally that intention is completely mixed with attachment, spontaneously, we're programmed with attachment. So what we've got to do before we shove it in the mouth, we offer it to the Buddha, see it as empty of existing from it's own side, and think I'm going to eat this cake so I can be fat and healthy, so I can help others. You make it bodhichitta. It's actually so simple, if we understood how easy it is to create virtue, we'd be over the moon. This is so powerful! Then the cake goes in the mouth, but you've completely altered the character of that action. You've turned it from a typical negative action of mindless attachment to a positive action. It's so simple, it's incredible! That's why we have to remember, every action we do in the day - eating, sleeping, going to the toilet, going to bed, having sex with your lovely new boyfriend, whatever - you can put Bodhichitta in there. But we get shocked when we hear this because we think oh no that's bad, you can't do that, no no. Rubbish, of course you can! Don't go round killing people with Bodhichitta please, that's not cool. But get my point, all the ordinary things in the day that we can't imagine not doing, we can turn them into virtuous actions by being conscious and having a positive motivation. It's better than nothing, eventually when you are a Bodhisattva, it will only be a positive motivation, there won't be any taint of delusions, but we've got to start somewhere. Just to get another human body when we die, we need one seed, but you can't just rely on one, you've got to have plenty there. You need lots of non-killing karmic seeds. This is a really important point to get, this is where vows come in now. If I didn't have a vow not to kill, when I see a creature and intentionally decide that I will not kill, because of compassion, it's only then that I will drop a non-killing karmic seed into my bank vault. But if you don't meet many creatures, then how many times a day do you actually have the intention - I will not kill? Karma is proactive, it's intention, I will! Probably we are sitting here merely not killing, we're not killing at this moment, but we're not creating any virtuous karma of not killing. So how are we going to create the karma of not killing and have enough karmic seeds in our mind? So how do we then create bucketloads of non-killing karma without having to not kill? By living in vows of not killing. This is such a technical simple point, that if we did understand it, we would be sad not to live in vows. We really don't understand it. Psychologically vows are incredible! This is buddha's teaching! Vows are so powerful that they are like a subtle physical energy that can be seen by clairvoyants. Mahamudra Centre for Universal Unity, New Zealand, 19th April 2021.

Something To Think About Series #253 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #252 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #251 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Start the day with your mind pointed in positive direction.

Something To Think About Series #250 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #249 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Many people all over the world don't like karma, Buddhists included. It's seen in a really cliched, hippy kind of way. So serious people don't like to talk about it. But actually, if we look at the big picture of Buddha's view of the universe, it's a coherent world view actually. The thing is, if the law of karma were not relevant to Buddhism, if it were not something valid, the whole of Buddhism would collapse into a heap of complete absurdity.  The whole of Buddhism is rooted in the view of karma, so it's crucial to understand. Because it's so fundamentally different from the philosophical materialist view, which of course is the view that prevails in our culture, and the one we think is serious, then we feel sometimes embarrassed to talk about it.  But let's look at it. The Buddha's view is fundamentally different from other religious traditions. But often when we hear about karma it sounds exactly the same. Don't do this and don't do that, and if you do do this something bad will happen. We don't ever think about the good things. We hear it as a system of punishment and reward. If we want to understand Buddhism we need to know these differences and understand them properly, so we can start to apply them in our lives. To make these differences really clear, we need to know what the mind is. This is the starting point for the Buddha, and this is the central point, all the way to Buddhahood, all the way to enlightenment. To understand the mind is absolutely vital. The mind is what ‘creates' karma.  The Buddha's view is super clear, all the evidence is there, all the literature is there, all the findings of all the great yogis are there - that consciousness or mind (these words are used synonymously) is not physical, not the brain, nor is it even a function of the brain. It doesn't mean the brain doesn't play a role, it's very evident. The brain is a physical indicator of what is going on in the mind, in the consciousness. Mind has got far subtler levels of cognition, this is something absolutely fundamentally necessary to understand if you want to understand Buddhism, Buddhist psychology, Buddhist philosophy, and the view of karma. The potential of mind, there's nothing equivalent in modern psychology. It sounds like science fiction to neuroscientists and psychologists, the level to which we can develop our mind. So you could say that one of the key jobs of being Buddhist is to remove from the mind - all ego, fears, neuroses, delusion, attachment, jealousy, anger, low self esteem, depression. But not only can we do that, we can develop to perfection all the other parts of our mind - love, wisdom, compassion, generosity - all the virtues. Buddha has found these are at the core of our being. These are who we actually are in our being.  Mind and consciousness refer to your thoughts, intellect, feelings, subconscious, unconscious, instinct, intuition, this entire spectrum of our inner being, this is our mind. It's a much more subjective use of the word, and it's super personal. Mind does not come from anyone else, nobody gives you a mind. We don't need creating, we do fine creating ourselves, and this is where the law of karma comes in. So then what is it that determines the person I am? The Buddha is like a doctor, this is a really powerful point about karma, the Buddha says it's a natural law that nobody wants to be harmed. This is fundamental, no-one makes it that way. A negative action is one that harms another. It's a natural law, like gravity, that every millisecond of what any sentient being thinks, does, or says - is a natural process of programming your mind, or as they say in the texts - of sowing seeds in your mind. Seeds by definition will naturally ripen, and in this case, as our own future experiences. His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls karma ‘self creation'. Mahamudra Centre for Universal Unity, New Zealand, 12th April 2021.

Something To Think About Series #248 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin