Buddhist Teachings By Ven. Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #289 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #288 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

Something To Think About Series #287 Thought of the day from Venerable Robina Courtin

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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

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 Lam

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

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

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 aw

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

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

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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 h

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