Be Your Own Therapist

Join us for Be Your Own Therapist with Venerable Robina Courtin. We spend our lives being seduced by the outside world, believing completely that happiness and suffering come from “out there.” But if we look into our hearts we can see that this is not true, that the more we hold on to people and things and experiences, the more dissatisfied and lonely we become.

Happiness and suffering come from the way we perceive and interpret things, not the things themselves. At the heart of it, according to Buddhism, is the instinctive clinging to a limited sense of self, which causes us to respond with attachment, anger and the rest.

By becoming deeply familiar with the workings of our own minds and hearts through meditation and purification practices – truly, being our own therapist – we can slowly loosen the grip of ego-grasping and begin to open up our marvelous potential for clarity, contentment, love and the other qualities that Buddha says are innate within us.

Ordained since the late 1970s, Ven. Robina has worked full time since then for Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s FPMT. Over the years she has served as editorial director of Wisdom Publications, editor of Mandala Magazine, executive director of Liberation Prison Project, and as a touring teacher of Buddhism. Her life and work with prisoners have been featured in the documentary films Chasing Buddha and Key to Freedom. For more information, visit https://robinacourtin.com/ Watch the trailer for the documentary about her life here: https://www.chasingbuddhafilm.com/