Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What does it mean to be your own therapist? In this 25-minute teaching, Ven. Robina Courtin anchors the answer in karma and personal responsibility. The core Buddhist insight: your consciousness arises from what you’ve done before, not from parents, God, or circumstance—making you the architect of your experience, not its victim. She traces how this differs from Western culture, where blame typically goes to mothers and external conditions instead. The practical implication: recognizing that your mental and emotional patterns stem from past actions, you stop blaming and can actually take control. The Q&A addresses why consciousness must be beginningless, the nature of anger and delusion, and how Buddhism understands mental health—not as clinical pathology, but as a consequence of karma. For newcomers exploring how Buddhist teachings apply to psychology and personal responsibility.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 2002 01 18 BYT.mp3
UUID: a85ff39f-5713-4c81-8a63-15f1a7c75fd7
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 25.4 minutes
Words: ~5,176
Gross level, what kind of person, what kind of experiences, positive ones, suffering ones, happy ones, sad ones, you name it. So karma, this and so this consciousness, you know, if if it’s not clear okay. If it’s not created, if it’s not made by mommy and deity, Buddha says not created by god or Buddha, not made by mommy or daddy, isn’t physical. And we all know it can’t come from nothing. Nothing can suddenly just come out of the blue.
You point to anything in this universe, even the universe itself. You know? I don’t quite know what all the physicists say, but even the Buddhist view, as the Dalai Lama said one time, big bang, no problem, he said. It’s just not the first big bang. That’s all.
But even you know, at the time, there are these very detailed descriptions in Buddhist, you know, cosmological, whatever the words are, about cosmological teachings about how the universe begins, you know. There’s a very subtle wind energy there that’s indestructible. And then due to but the the energy, the force I’m just saying the simple ideas here now. We’re not going into much detail about it. But the the energy, the force that causes that wind energy at the time of the big bang, if you like, whatever, to develop in to this universe is not god or Buddha.
Isn’t ran it’s not random. That’s an insane idea. It’s the it’s the collective karmic energy of all the billions of beings who have, since the beginning of this universe up until now, occupied this universe. And even the way the universe goes, it is becoming more and more polluted and destructive and more earthquakes and more this and more that. That’s due to the karma sentient beings.
They’re not acts of god as we hear them or acts of a person called mother nature or random events or merely physical. And we’re gonna be discussing all of this over the weekend, you know. This is a crucial kind of it’s a fundamental point in Buddhism, this idea of karma and how things are coming into being. And and mainly for the reason, for the implication of it, the the experiential implication, is that not in an arrogant way, but that we are responsible, in the sense that I am the result of what I’ve done before, because my consciousness, carrying all those imprints of past actions that were done in that same continuity of consciousness, not called Robina, indeed, before Fred or dog or whoever, whatever was said, done, and thought in that consciousness at those times and came along at the time of the death of the previous person, which in Buddhist terms is not more than forty-nine days before this present conception, that was then on autopilot when it left that left that form, pushed by the force of its own karma, not by god or Buddha or being punished or rewarded, then found its way to my new present mommy’s womb, and off this new person came, began, Robina Courtin.
She’s the fruit of what she has done before. Okay. Helped along or hindered by the various external conditions of my life, my parents, the Catholic nuns, the people who brought me up and all the rest. We’ve always got these external conditions, but now this is the crucial point in Buddhism. Our usual view is that that’s where all that’s where that’s where all the responsibility is.
They made me. I didn’t ask to get born, did I? You know? They put me here, so they’re responsible. This is the assumption.
It’s an assumption deeply held in our being, isn’t it? We never our mommy didn’t teach us this just about. It’s an assumption. You know? And what it brings, if it’s interesting, the more we look into it psychologically, especially the assumption of blame.
You know? Guilt and blame we have so strongly. Okay. We don’t blame god. But I have to say, I remember one Tibetan mama, when he was in Italy visiting another Tibetan mama who was at one of our Buddhist centers then, he was in hospital.
And he said he was shocked when he heard the way that the Italians abused God and Our Lady when things were going wrong. God is a pig, they’d say. He said he couldn’t believe such horrible things. You know? But I know I wasn’t born up that way.
I wasn’t born up as an Irish Catholic and the French Catholics. We never ever you never ever abuse God. You never blame God, but you happily blame your mom, don’t you? I mean, she gets the lot. Right?
Because she made me, isn’t it? And so therefore, it’s her fault. Therefore, I’m innocent. I mean, these are the assumptions deep in our bones, aren’t they? They’re hard to hear it.
But when we look more and more into our minds, we begin to see this, you know? There’s a sense of hopelessness and victim, and it’s not and what have I got to do with it? It’s interesting, you know? So this is a Buddhist approach. So this consciousness of ours is not physical, is not is not merely referring to the to the to the to the intellectual process, isn’t the brain.
Depends upon it to function. Indeed, it does. It’s obvious. Not made by god, not made by Buddha or superior being, not made by mommy or deity. So that includes all of us.
Every part of our being is coming from our past habits. So the same way that we know that if you you know, after twenty years of really practicing hard at piano, you can play it very well, and I say, wow. You can play the piano. What happened? Oh, well, I practiced for twenty years, Robina.
Oh, I see. That’s reasonable. Well, you know, since the time I was a very small kid, my mom could see that Robina was angry. Why? I practiced it, honey.
I brought it with me. You know? Why? How come Mozart could play piano when mommy gave him a piano?? Come on.
He just fell into it because he’s practiced it before. So, basically, what we are is and we all can see with little children, and we tend to think that mommy and deity make them. If we’re parents, we feel we’ve made our children, don’t we? Buddha says, excuse me. You’re just this gardener, you know, helping this thing grow.
That’s all. Due to very strong karmic connection between you and that sentient being who’s in your womb, and I’ll talk about it tomorrow, you’ve got this relationship together to put it together and do something useful. You know? Strong karmic connection brings you together. It’s no accident.
And, again, I’m saying it’s not somebody determining. It’s not God or Buddha who’s doing it. This is the Buddhist view. So the point here is about this consciousness is beginningless, because the conclusion here is you can’t find a beginning of it, because the biggest, fastest question we have is, where did it begin? If God didn’t make me, mommy, deity didn’t make me, where did I begin, please?
And we think, absolutely, there has to be a beginning. Well, we’re happy to accept that god is beginning us. But what Buddha is saying is that every one of us is beginning us. It’s not meant to be a holy thing. It’s simply Buddha’s view.
That’s all. You know? Buddha’s observation. That’s all. Because if you exist now, your consciousness, then it has to have come from a previous moment.
And if that existed, it has to from previous moment. So, you know, you go back two lives. Well, maybe I began that moment, you know, January the first eighteen forty two. If your consciousness was existing at that moment, it has to have come from a previous moment. So you trace it back a thousand lives, ten thousand lives, a million lives.
Buddha says you can’t find the first moment because at any given point, you say there’s the first moment, then you it has to have come from a previous moment. It’s chicken and egg. You know? The conclusion in Buddhist terms is your, my, and everybody else’s consciousness is beginningless, necessarily. This is how Buddha talks.
And also, endless. So, therefore, it’s up to us what we do with it. Rather than being this victim who gets kind of pushed along here and pushed along there, thinking I haven’t got any control over it, what can I do when I didn’t ask get born and what a drag life is anyway, it’s that, you know, recognizing some sense of responsibility that I created the cause to be who I am, to have this experience, to have that happen, this happen? So if I don’t want suffering, if I check up I don’t want suffering, and what I’m getting is a result of my own past, then I better be very careful not to create more suffering for the future, hadn’t I? It’s a very powerful motivation, you know.
And this is the first level. Don’t get all high yet about, you know, altruism. That’s advanced. We can have that as a basis. But we’ve got to go from where we are, starting right at the beginning.
We start to look at the advantage to oneself of practicing morality. Then we’ll discuss karma tomorrow. We’ll talk about all that. So I meant to give an overview, but I didn’t. But never mind.
Maybe it’s question time. It’s nine o’clock. What time would you like us to finish, Gloria? Oh, around, what, around nine thirty. Okay.
So anybody got any questions so far that I’ve discussed? Yes. I mean, how come we’re not Buddhas now? Okay. It’s interesting.
It’s probably the it’s the words. Buddha is saying that your true nature is to be a Buddha, but it doesn’t mean that you have one you have been one and have lost it. It’s not like that. In fact, if you’re not a Buddha now, it indicates you could never have been. Because if once you even before becoming a Buddha, because it’s all seen in gradual stages, you know, the the spiritual development goes in gradual, gradual points, and we’ll discuss this over the weekend.
But well and truly, before you even become a Buddha, there’s a certain point beyond which you can’t go back into suffering. So it’s logical that if we are caught up in saṃsāra now, which is really the term for being caught up in suffering, then it follows logically you have always ever been in saṃsāra. You’ve never been out of it. So it’s not a question of what went wrong. So maybe the question, given this, then probably the question is, well, what is delusion and how come we are delusion?
How come there is anger? Where does anger come from? Where does well, it’s the same answer to mind in general. Mind is the term to cover all the components of the mind, which is anger, love, hate, jealousy. You know, all the subtler levels, all the potentials are all there.
That’s all your mind. They’re the components of the mind. So mind itself is beginning, so so is anger. If anger’s in your mind then you there’s never been a second. It might be always, active, and it’s certainly been worse at some times and not others, but the seed of it that’s the term they use.
The seed of it is there. So as long as the seed is there, you might even have many lives, extraordinary lives. Buddha would talk about the the kind of the peak of samsaric types of rebirth is actually what they call the god realms, which is like, really, maybe, you know, just to be thinking philosophically, the the the the similarity is probably with the Christian view of heaven, the Buddhism, the Muslim view of paradise, and so on. Well, you are blissfully, blissfully happy for eons, Buddha says. But Buddha’s assertion is that that’s not the end yet.
That is bliss that is enormous bliss for eons. No atom of anger. But still in your consciousness, in your very subtle consciousness, are still the subtle imprints of anger and ignorance and all the other things that aren’t manifesting in those rebirths, but are still there because you haven’t moved removed the subtlest things from your mind yet. You haven’t achieved nirvana, which is this word that really is referring to a certain level of conscious development where you’ve realized the true nature of reality. And as long as you haven’t yet realized the true nature of reality, you’ve got the imprints of negativity there.
Uh-huh. Okay. It’s interesting. This brings up a very particular meaning of the word impermanent and permanent. Okay?
There’s a kind of a gross and obvious meaning that impermanent means, you know, beginning and ending. But also, impermanence has a subtle meaning of simply changing from moment to moment, like beginning and ending each fraction of a second. So consciousness, which is, in fact, in the conventional sense, permanent do you understand? It doesn’t begin and doesn’t end. It’s eternal.
But it’s impermanent in its nature. It’s dynamic, movable, changeable, moment by moment energy. So there’s a subtler meaning of impermanence. Do you understand my point? So in the normal sense of the word permanent, yes, once you’ve achieved even a certain level of realization, you’ve achieved this level known as nirvana, which then eventually culminates in becoming a Buddha, fully developed, then that, you can say, is a permanent state.
You can’t go back. But it’s impermanent in the dynamic sense of changing from moment to moment. Do you see? Alright. Yes?
That’s true. It’s sort of like an incident, but finite. There aren’t any new ones coming because, you know, Buddhism doesn’t assert they’re created. So therefore and they can’t end. So therefore, there are countless consciousnesses, but then what they’re doing is the way they term in Buddhism.
They’re all kind of going from sort of circling in the real in all the different in in the cycle of saṃsāra. Samsāra just means is a Sanskrit word. It me I think it means what does it mean? It refers, anyway, to various ways of seeing. It refers to being caught up in this kind of ignorance and delusions that causes us to get reborn and reborn in the different realms of existence.
So they talk about this cycle of rebirth, the different six realms of existence. As long as you’re if you’re caught up in saṃsāra getting born around all these different realms, then you I’m sorry, got so caught up. What did you say? How embarrassing. What was your point?
Oh, yeah. So I beg your pardon. So ridiculous. Excuse me. It’s one of Gloria’s senior moments.
So, anyway, yes, there’s a finite number. They’re all going from one one realm to another. So even though the human realm is obviously growing larger and larger, they’re all coming from different realms. They’re not new ones. Okay.
Exactly. That’s how Buddhism is. Well, so in Buddhist terms okay. In Buddhist terms, one of the ways to hear the teachings of the Buddha is like you would when you hear about Einstein’s explanations of reality. You can say that, well, why does he assume e equals m c squared?
We have to give him more credibility and say that he has discovered that e equals m c squared. So even though you might know yet that Buddha’s right or even want to accept that Buddha’s right, then Buddha is anything in the Buddha’s teachings is said to coming from the experience of Buddha, just like in Jesus Christ’s teachings. They’re coming from his experience. So these the Buddha’s teachings, if they’re valid and they’re passed down appropriately, then they are said to be explanations of how things are. So then it has to be assumed from this that when Buddha says that that plants don’t have consciousness, that that’s his observation.
So it’s up to us to discover that it’s true or not. This is the point. So Buddha’s observation is that what is called a plant, it doesn’t have what what Buddha calls a consciousness, which is this Buddha nature. It’s been reincarnating, you know, as a human, as an animal, as this, and as that. It is it is a living thing, therefore, to be absolutely respected.
It’s the universe. You know? It’s part of the universe. And it’s and, actually, Buddha would say that there’s not an atom of space where you won’t find living beings. It’s okay.
We’ve got a bunch of humans in here. But, you know, according to Buddha, there’s no space where you won’t find. There’s billions of kinds of beings, spirit kinds, tiny, you know, infinitesimal small ones, so many kinds of beings. So they you know, effectively, plants and trees are the abode of sentient beings. So for this reason to be respected, they’re not harmed.
But they’re technically themselves. So in the same way that, say, you could say this body is the is the actual home of Ravina’s consciousness, a tree is is the same elements, basically, but it’s not the home of a consciousness. Although many beings might live there, but that’s not their body as as as it were. There’s a difference in Buddhist terms. Do you see?
That’s how Buddhism talks. Someone else? Yes. Yes. Consciousness in your zone, that if you think you’re being reborn, why don’t we have greater?
That’s a very good point. No. Absolutely good point. Well, like I said, we’ve got the gross level, subtle and very subtle. Okay?
Now first of all, we can see we we function, you know, mainly at the gross level in this in this pretty much, isn’t it? Concepts. We’ve kind of put things together conceptually, time and space. And but yet, at the same time, you check. If you are asked to actually write down every moment of your memory of this life, you probably remember maybe, you know, I don’t know, a tiny percentage of actual moments of this life.
Would you agree? You’ve retained probably not most of his moments. Would you not agree with that? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, then we can see even this so it’s not it’s not the capability of this gross mind to to to really have a recollection, certainly, when we were a child. It’s an invisible time for most of us. It’s rare to remember when you were a baby. Know? It might get some glimpse of something.
But we don’t have it’s not the function of this conceptual mind. Buddha says, though, it is a function of the subtle level of conscious awareness to have memory. So Buddha would say when you eventually access that level through meditation, you’re spiritually more advanced and you’ve developed your qualities, then you will have clairvoyance, and you will see the past and future lives, not only your own, but others. Just this gross level doesn’t have the capacity, and the senses certainly don’t. I mean, the eyes can see as far as that wall of us lucky, you know, Forget about a past life.
Seems to me that the hypnotist thing Yeah. Could access that. That’s what Buddhism would say. You can. It’s kind of random and not very it’s not very trustworthy.
And even too, lots of people have memories, don’t they? I mean, we can depending on our philosophy of view of life, we might not accept it as being true. We might think that living in a fantasy land, but there’s an awful lot of people who seem to have that memory. So in other words, they’re able to access it’s almost like it’s like, you know, sometimes when you go to sleep and you have a dream, it’s almost like you’re awake as well. I know I’ve had dreams when you’ve gone to your dreams, but you still can hear what’s going on.
But you you sort of almost, like, access your subtle level, but you still got your senses functioning. So some people are able to access by by accident, if you like, or from past habit or whatever. They’re able to access and recall certain things, but it’s not the function of the gross mind to do that. Do you see what I’m saying? Oh, yeah.
It just takes a lot to convince me, though. That’s just one area I can’t What? Past lives? Past lives. Oh, yeah.
No. Fine. That’s totally fine. Just all you can do is think about it. I mean, I can’t say I cannot say to you that I’ve always been a Buddhist.
I have even an inkling of a memory of even one single moment of a past life. No way. Of course, I haven’t. You have a sense of deja vu? Yes.
Some of that stuff sometimes. But what I’m trying to get is this point, and this is the approach in Buddhism. But, you know, it’s if something is you know, if a recipe is correct, then it has to make it has to bring the proof of the pudding. It has to bring the pudding, doesn’t it? The proof is in the pudding, isn’t it?
So if, you know, Buddha’s teachings are a correct assessment of reality, then at some point, by following them, you will eventually discover that they are true, just like you would if when you hear about Einstein saying equals m c squared. At some point, by following all of the things that Einstein says, you will come to the same conclusion, or you won’t, in which case Einstein is wrong. Goodbye, Einstein. And as the Dalai Lama said, Buddha has nothing to prove. You know?
If you discover by practicing all the things that he said you practice, you get to a certain stage, and you discover that what he says will happen didn’t happen, and you really did follow the steps, then, honey, Buddha is wrong. You must reject him. Not a problem. That’s it’s a question of experience, not just blind belief. Okay.
In Buddhism, there is talk of faith, unbelievable faith. But in the Buddhist way to see it, and I’m not a and my feeling is it’s probably the same in most religions, but we have to I just I’m not sure. But faith is based on wisdom. So in other words, I could say you’re my dear friend. You know?
Now I’m saying that not why? Not because I think you got cute eyes. It’s because I have found from my experience that you’re you are worthy. You’ve done what I’ve wanted when I wanted you. You’ve been my friend when I needed it.
You’ve not let me down. So I’ve proven that you’re my friend. Therefore, I have confidence in you, and confidence is faith. So faith is based on wisdom. You know?
And it’s your own wisdom that checks up. So I can say I have great faith in the Buddha’s teachings that so far after practicing these years and thinking about it to the best of my ability, which is the the first level you have to do at, but so far, it seems to me consistent. And as far as I’m concerned, personally, so far, the bit that I put into practice does work. So I can say so far, so good. So it’s a little bit based on my experience.
Most of it’s still based on faith, but based on faith that so far because I’ve thought about it. And it’s it’s consistent even intellectually. And for me, that’s reasonable enough. So so far, so good. I’m happy.
I’ll keep going. You know? One step at a time. The proof is in the pudding. Anyone else have a question?
Please. Yes. Oh, honey, it’s I know. It all sounds so cute and simple, isn’t it? It’s all the Buddhist teachings.
What I’m gonna do over the weekend we’ve got a bookshop here, haven’t we? We’ve got a few things out there. So I’ll have a look and see what we’ve got out there. And I’m out during the weekend anyway, I’m gonna be recommending a few good books to start off with. Yeah.
Alright. Somebody else before we topple off to bed. If you Yes. Question is is is endless and beginningless. Yeah.
Yeah. But somewhere at the very beginning of it We just said it was beginningless. A beginningless. So how can you hear the very beginning far back. Far okay.
That’s better. So as far back as we can we can conceive Okay. Go on. Before, there was an extreme amount of harmony difference on the planet. Oh, no.
There couldn’t have been a time when there wasn’t. Well, no. I’m not I’m not saying there wasn’t harmony. You would think well, I I I hope that at some stage, would think that there would be less I know. I know.
Why, though? It’s not logical. It’s logical. It’s not logical, isn’t it? It’s not it’s not comfortable.
I agree, but it’s not logical at all. It’s we’ve been going up and down. Listen to me. Buddha says this is where, again, doesn’t fit at all with the Western view of reality. Buddha says that eons ago, well before this universe existed, a human birth was such a profound, amazing, sublime experience that we didn’t even have gross bodies.
We we had subtle light bodies. We were we’re such a sublime rebirth. So we’re in an incredibly degenerate time now of we’ve got, you know, such gross bodies full of pee pee and caca and get sickness and pain and all this rubbish that after a very short time, we even look like the apes. You know? I’m not being rude about apes.
We look like animals. We have so much similarity. Whereas once, we were these sublime beings. You know? And then so we go in cycles.
And then eons before that, we were really more gross than we are now, and we’re gonna be going down even more gross, and we’ll go up high again. So in terms of the universe, as they go up and down, up and down, up and down. So we’re very deluded, less deluded, very deluded. Another way of talking about it, honey, two lives ago, you could have been in the god realms where you had eons of enormous bliss and joy and clarity and just nothing negative at all, tiny subtle imprints of the negativities. But when the kind of petrol tank of morality ran out, and it’s the karma of morality that gets you to the god realms, when that eventually ran out because you used it all up, here you are back in again in a gross old human form.
So it goes up and down, you know, until you get rid of all the imprints. So it’s not it is it’s like we wish to think that it’s an evolutionary process. We got we were not so bad before. We’re really bad now or we’re going up and down a nice consistent way, but it doesn’t work like that, you know, just like it doesn’t in this life. You check this life.
If from the moment you’re born until now, you’ve only gotten better, my goodness, we’d all be Buddha right now, wouldn’t we? We’ve got up and down all the time, haven’t we? Anyway, who else? Somebody else? Someone else did have a question, didn’t I?
Yes? I was wondering about the Buddhist perspective. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it’s interesting. The broadest perspective of Buddhist the Buddhist way of talking is that we’re if we’re if we’re, you know, we’ll if we’re in Samsāra, we are all mentally unhealthy. I’ll try to be in a cliched sense.
It’s just that, obviously, some of us are far more mentally suffering than others. And according to know, so in other words, Buddhism would be if a person’s got incredible attachment, completely freaked out with attachment or junky mind or something. That’s mental suffering. Equally, what we call schizophrenia is mental suffering. What we call person completely paranoid is mental suffering.
It’s all a it’s just a question of the recipe of the different parts of the mind, how the package comes together in what in the way you experience it. So it’s all the mind. It’s all from past karma, your old imprints, and it’s and it’s and it all and it’s and none of it’s permanent. You know? And so sometimes, a person can have so much mental damage that there’s nothing much they can do about it in that life except just use it up and work you know, experience it.
Other times, when there’s some sanity there, we can see we can put ourselves together a little bit. You know? So it’s, I guess, all a question of degree. There’s much more complex than that, of course. But the Buddhist approach is it’s all you know, it’s described psychologically, the whole thing.
So I’m just kind of yeah. That’s how and we’ll go on about that much more tomorrow. Is that enough for tonight? Do you think? You’re very nice.
You’ve trained them well, Roy. They’re very, very submissive. Nice group. So you’re happy to do silence, you people, or you would like to have some talking time? Everybody’s nodding.
This is amazing. Silence. My goodness. Must be this lovely place we’ve come to. Alright.
So we’ll have a little prayer to finish. So what so then what what’s time’s meditation? Six. Someone’s gonna ring a bell at five thirty or something. Right.
Someone’s gonna ring a bell at five thirty. Okay. You’ve got an awful long time. It’s only twenty past nine. That’s eight hours of sleep.
Woah. We only got eight hours of sleep, don’t we? Okay. Alright. So we just do a little prayer to finish.
It’s really a little prayer like we started, and what we’re really saying is as many moments as each of us has been sitting here, in Buddhist terms, is as many karmic seeds that we have planted. Because each thought, if you like, each moment is a karmic seed, and so the quality of that seed is kind of determined and shaped by our motivation. So we we delight in that, and we think, great, you know? May all these seeds that we have planted, based on our altruistic motivation, may they ripen as quickly as possible in that very fruit of the development of our own marvelous potential for the sake of every living being. Thank you very much, everybody.
Look forward to seeing you at six o’clock for meditation.