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? Ven Robina Courtin examines self-compassion in this 39-minute session, opening with the cultural shame around emotional honesty and therapy, then exploring how self-hatred backfires when we encounter our delusions—anger, jealousy, neediness, depression. From personal experience, she addresses the compulsion to overshare and reframes discretion as wisdom. The teaching centers on the Four Opponent Powers meditation with Vajrasattva, which guides practitioners through regret for harm, reliance on enlightened method, visualization of purification in three stages (body, speech, mind), and determination against harmful behavior. She closes with the nine-round breathing meditation to clear the three poisons—anger, attachment, ignorance.
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File: 15 2002 01 19 BYT.mp3
UUID: 9833079b-50f9-4e2e-b7ac-a656ec9502b0
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.0 minutes
Words: ~5,548
Puritanical now. So when you start being all puritanical, you say, oh, anger’s bad, jealousy’s bad, no, I’m a good person now. And then, of course, if you start to see it in yourself, you go mad, and you beat yourself up. That’s not helpful at all. So it’s almost like we’ve got to recognize what is poison and what is not, which is delusions, but with great kindness to ourself.
Recognize it when it comes, and almost be happy. Wow, now I can see it. What a wonderful opportunity. It’s just like, you know, when you’ve a car that doesn’t work, and then someone says, a mechanic says you’ve been, you’ve got a great car there. And then you so then you start investigating under the under the what country am I in?
Bonnet. Am I hood or bonnet? I’m a bonnet country. Okay? So I look under the bonnet.
Okay? And then when you’re looking under the bonnet, what are you looking under the bonnet for? What are you looking for? The problems. Right?
And how do you feel when you find the problem? Don’t you rejoice? Great. Now I can fix it. That is exactly the attitude to have towards yourself.
And that’s very brave. But that’s correct. You should be happy to see your delusions. That’s why they say this practice of transforming problems, of being happy when something goes wrong, because you’ve got this great and marvellous opportunity to see that you’ve got anger still. Instead of the moaning and complaining and victim and it’s not fair and how dare you, you think, Oh, okay.
I’m learning about my mind here. Fantastic. That’s very courageous, and we’ll really learn quickly if we do that. It’s being very brave. But it’s based on the assumption that you have marvellous potential, and that you want to develop it, just like that beautiful car.
That it’s got innate potential, and you want to develop it. And what’s preventing you from developing your potential right now is your anger, your fears, your jealousy, your depression, your anxiety. So you want to find a way to of bring it up, you know? So we can see, especially if we’re suppressed, it’s very hard. I mean, I’m thinking of a friend now who’s a Buddhist, not here in this country, but she’s one of the people who’s kind of, you know, developed multiple personalities to deal with the incredible pain and suffering of her life.
She’s lived in utter denial. And it’s the most painful experience she’s going through now, you know, trying to uncover it or integrate all this insanity inside herself. Of course, she’s been terrified of looking at it, you know? So we all have to look at our own minds in different ways and be kind to ourselves, Know that we’re suffering because we’ve got delusions, not as if you’re a bad person, which is what our culture is saying. I mean, even only maybe now it’s reasonable to go to therapists, but you check a few years ago, you’re insane if you go to a therapist.
You’d hide it. You’d pretend you weren’t. Why? Because it’s an insane assumption that we all have to be normal, and that we all pretend that we have no problems. I mean, how terrible can you get, you know?
It’s so unkind to ourselves. And the thing is too not to go on about them. This is where too, really, it’s important. I can again see in my life, I spent, you know, kind of very open with my mouth, and my heart is maybe open, but it was a very big problem because whatever I felt, I said. And I always expressed all myself, so I was always leaving myself open and vulnerable to so many people.
I never realized what I was doing. So when I began years and years ago, when I was a Buddhist, like twenty years ago now, I had this dear friend who was a therapist and who was also a Buddhist, and she was one of my most precious friends in the world because she helped me hugely to learn through using her own skills by being my friend, to get to really hear myself more like, I was blocked from hearing the Dharma in a very skillful way, you know? Because I was just full of all this typical self hate that most people have, and, you know, trying to be this good Buddhist and not be angry, then just devastated because I always got angry all the time, like, locked into So she really helped me have more self respect, and one of the things she helped me learn to do was not vomit out whatever I thought about myself to every person who wants to hear it, or doesn’t want to hear it most of the time. So we make ourselves so open and vulnerable, so we don’t have to go on about ourselves all the time and be very selective whom you speak to about your problems.
Don’t open your problems to everybody. Have enough respect to really maybe choose one or at least one person whom you really trust, who doesn’t get caught up in your ego games, but whom you express your feelings to because they can help you hear them better. And then you you just be careful what you say to other people about yourself. You protect yourself. You have self respect, you know?
You can hear when people are really uncontrolled and really needy. Anyone they speak to, especially on airplanes, the strangers, it’s most fascinating, isn’t it? When you see I remember one example. I mean, we all do I remember I used to. But this one person in front of me, I’ll never forget it, it was almost like she just turned on a switch.
And for this entire flight, there’s this vomit of her own every atom of her life, the most intimate things just pouring out her mouth to this total stranger. And that’s the thing about our own neediness. This is how attachment functions. This huge neediness we have to be heard by somebody. We don’t care who it is.
We have this frantic need to go blah blah blah, you know? Why? You check it. It’s attachment, this profound bottomless pit of neediness. And you check.
Because we’ve got this so deep, and since we’re tiny kids, what happens when you have a problem? You run immediately to mommy, don’t you? Mommy, mommy, he did oh, darling, I know, you know, she holds your emotion for you. Well, I’m sorry we haven’t grown up yet. We still haven’t weaned ourselves from mommy, you know?
We’re keeping finding new mummies to pour our emotions onto because why? Because we do not know how to hear what we feel. We don’t know how to express it properly. We don’t know how to hold our own emotions. We have to give it to somebody else to get them to say it’s okay for you to feel that.
I mean, we’re like babies still, you know? No wonder we suffer. It’s terrible. So this way, we have to learn to have the courage to hold and have our own emotions. We don’t need to tell somebody else.
It’s like it’s almost as if it’s whatever we feel isn’t valid until someone else has heard it, isn’t it? Whatever the experience is. Even if you’re driving on the road and something weird happens, even before you stop having the experience, already you find yourself telling the person about it when you get home. You have to pour it all out. It’s just like a child.
I’m not saying don’t share, being all mean with your feelings, but it’s like learning to be appropriate, to know whom you speak to for your own benefit, or whom to speak to who needs to hear it, you know? It’s very interesting. I was going to a meditation tonight. How are we? What is it?
Tend to who? Ten minutes ago. Oh, goodness. We’ll have to do meditation. Sorry.
Just wiggle and relax or just relax or whatever you wanna do. I’ll do this quick meditation. It’s the four opponent powers. It’ll probably take about twenty minutes. Just to give you the taste, okay, of how it works so you get the idea.
What’s happening? You’re leaving. Oh, you’re getting comfortable. Okay. Okay.
So just kind of, you know, just relax, close your eyes lightly, feet on the ground, back straight, hands in the meditation mudra if the chairs allow you, and what kind of chairs? Yes you can. Right? Like that. And just bring all your awareness, listen to yourself.
So I’ll just do this fairly quickly, go through the four stages So that you can know how it works, this is the main thing. Just give you a taste for it. Okay. So the first step let’s let’s launch straight into it. The first step is regret.
So let’s just think of the main things. Let’s say the main things are old, old rubbish habits, you know, that really give us so much pain. Because this point of regret isn’t because you’ve harmed others yet. This is because you’re harming yourself. So regret is based on your compassion for yourself.
Because you know that these things that you have the states of mind, the anger, the jealousy or the depression, all the things that you do with your body and speech that harm others all of these are what cause you suffering. So regret, this first step, is a strong recognition that these are what cause you pain, and you do not want any more. So it’s like kindness to yourself. So whatever it is that are in our mind, our old habits, and then the things that we do on the basis of this and all we have done in this life, harming others, like killing or, you know, whatever, we have a strong sense of regretting this because we don’t want any more suffering from this. We’re fed up.
You know? Just contemplate for a couple of moments. And also include, even though you don’t remember, but if it makes sense to you, to think of anything that you must have done in infinite past lives to harm all living beings in all the different realms. Whatever you have done, the lying, the killing, the stealing, the harming, since beginningless time, you have absolute regret because you do not want the future suffering from any of this at all. You’ve gotta be delighted to sort of own it all, you know, the whole lot.
You deeply regret. So now we think, well, whom can I turn to, you know, to give me the methods that help me purify these my mind so that I can turn around and release myself from the suffering of them and stop doing them again? So we think, well, okay. In this case, we turn to the Buddha, whose methods we’re using, like a doctor. So the to the extent that it has meaning for you to have a refuge in the Buddha, then you kind of conjure that up in your mind.
And then we we we so we visualize the the Buddha. In this case, his name is this case, his name is Vajrasattva. It’s the same Buddha, if you like, just different aspect, you know? And it’s not in the aspect of a monk. It’s more this aspect they call the bodhisattva aspect, looking very radiant in kind of white silken clothes, Indian style, you know, with earrings and necklets and anklets, you see in some of the very beautiful statues.
Five pointed crown, long black hair, partially held up in a top knot. Very radiant. And his very energy is representing purification. Think of it like that. So in his left hand, he’s holding a bell, which is the the the wisdom wing that’s crossed at his heart.
In his right hand, he’s holding what they call a dorje or a vajra, which is like indestructibility, and it’s and it’s representing the compassion wing, which is crossed over the left at his heart. And the the crossed over like this is is the is the complete development of these two wings, which is what our potential is. And it’s like everything’s made of light. He’s sitting on a lotus. He’s sitting above our heads, facing the same way as we are.
And if we have a spiritual teacher, a lama, we imagine that it’s their mind manifesting in this aspect for our benefit. Just get a feeling of the presence of this enlightened energy above us, radiant light. And we think, well, you know, we’re delightedly turning to the Buddha whose methods we’re going to use to help us purify. And the second part of this so called reliance, the second step, is is where we generate compassion. We think of all the the living beings that we have harmed in this life, in the past, unknowing or what, whatever, countless numbers, whom we really now do not want to harm any longer.
We only want to benefit them. So we imagine now that we’re gonna be doing this practice to purify our delusions so we can become a Buddha so then we’re really capable of benefiting all these beings. And compassion so love, for example, is the wish that others be happy. Compassion is the wish that they don’t suffer. So how to just generate this in the heart, you know, strong wish to not harm others, only to benefit them.
Now we go to the third step, is where we take the medicine, do the practice. So in this case, what we’re going to do is visualize coming from Vajrasattva’s heart, very powerful nectar in the first stage. We do it in three stages, and we recite a mantra. We’re going to purify first stage, we’re going to purify all the negative karma created with our bodies, this body and previous bodies. The second one is we purify all the negative karma created with our speech.
Third one is we purify all the negative karma created by our minds, the delusions themselves, which are the source of our own suffering and the harm we do to others. So we strongly imagine from Guru Vajrasattva’s heart, he very compassionately sends powerful, like a hose of energy so strong, this nectar that forcefully enters our crown, filling us completely. And then what it does is force out, you imagine, all the imprints of all the harm we’ve ever done with our bodies since beginningless time to any living being, this life, past life. And it all forces out this negativity in the aspect of like filthy liquid that leaves through the lower orifices of the body and then disappears as far as we can imagine. Really think of this, imagine this, want this, strongly visualizing this as we recite three times this mantra, this long mantra of Vajrasattva.
If you know it, you join in. Otherwise, just focus on the cons focus on the visualization and the sound of the mantra too. So imagine totally full of this amazing radiant nectar now. Absolutely all the negativities of all the harm we’ve ever done with our bodies completely gone. I feel so delighted.
Disappeared into space. Now from Guru Vajrasattva’s heart, he again sends this powerful nectar, hose of energy that enters through our crown, and this time fills us up, but forces out through all the the top orifices, all the the imprint know, all the negative imprints of all the harm we’ve ever done with our speech in the aspect of filthy liquids. All the harm we’ve done. You know, the uncontrolled speech, all the rubbish pouring out of our mouths with no concern for whether the person listening even wants to hear it, for the lying, the gossiping, the bad mouthing, the criticism, finding fault, all this nonsense. The harm we’ve ever done since beginningless time, It’s pouring out like filthy liquid through the top orifices of our body.
Just like when you turn on a tap in the sink, all the junk in the glass comes to the surface, doesn’t it? Just like that. I do recite the mantra. Reimagine this. Want this.
Pretty full of this nectar. All the negativity of speech disappeared completely. Gone. Not one atom left. So delighted.
Now Guru Vajrasattva this time sends very compassionately from his heart chakra powerful beams of light. It’s more subtle. And what it does is enter our crown, and as it hits our heart chakra, you imagine it completely, immediately, eradicates all the imprints of the negativities of our mind, which are the source of what we do with our body and speech, which are the source of all of our own pain as well as the suffering of others. So all the ego grasping, the ignorance, the attachment, anger, pride, fears, delusion, depression, anxiety, the whole deal, we imagine instantly gone. Just like when you turn on a light in a room, the darkness is instantly dispelled, isn’t it?
There’s sort of no argument. You know? Boom. The light is there, just like that, full of this radiant light. All the delusion’s gone.
All the fears, depression, anxiety, mental suffering, gone completely. Imagine this. So relieved, so delighted. So now we do the fourth step, the most important in a way. Strong determination not to do again.
So, you know, It’s like. Don’t lie to ourselves. So if we don’t if we can’t say, I will never gossip again, well, don’t don’t say you will. But give yourself a timeline. It’s really important you have great courage.
We have the courage to be very precise, you know, just like we are with a diet. Be very accurate. So if there are things that we can say like, I will never kill with intention, say it absolutely. I will never kill again. This is very powerful.
Or if you can say, for sure, will with intention, you know, I will never lie again. And if we can’t, then we give ourselves a time. We can say maybe for one year. Perhaps we can say for one month. Perhaps we say for one day, one hour.
It doesn’t matter. Don’t just say, I’ll do my best. It’s kind of wimpy. Really make determination. Give yourself a strong goal.
And the more strong it is, the more likely you are to succeed. And it’s only the strength of our own mind that causes us to do this, and we can build it up and, eventually, can we say, never, you know, with great courage and determination. So if there are some things let’s say we’ve already taken vows to not kill, not lie, not steal, we say it. I will never kill, never lie, never steal. I will not gossip for one day, one year, whatever whatever our main habits are that we know harm us and harm others.
And you’re promising it to yourself, no one else. So now we imagine that the lotus that Guru Vajrasattva is sitting on dissolves up into his body, then he very happily dissolves into white light that enters our crown. So we feel that the Buddha, the Lama, and our own mind completely merge, becoming the same thing. This is who I am. This is my true nature.
And then we rejoice that we’ve done this activity and remembering that it’s the power of our own mind that is we are using. And that it’s our own mind that as Lama Yeshe says, you know, it’s your own mind that created negativity. So it’s with your own mind that you transform it by creating positivity. You know, we instead of this view that I’m still the same old hopeless person no matter what I do and think, it’s nonsense, you know. You just done a whole pile of gardening.
And by doing this kind of practice, the lamas say this type of practice, this particular one, is unbelievably powerful, you know? Has huge power to transform our mind, to remove negativities from our mind in a deep way, you know? So be delighted with that. Rejoice. That’s the power of our own mind.
Lama Yeshe. She also says, you know, purification is the power of the regret, the power of the reliance, the power of the practice, the power of the determination. That is what purification is. That is what it is. Know, that’s the process.
So it’d be so delighted we’ve done this. And also, as Lama Yeshe says, now we can go to bed with a happy mind. You start the day with practice. You do something during the day. You finish the day with practice.
So, you know, it’s like cleaning up your house, cleaning up your desktop every day, you know, doing some gardening every day. It’s very practical. Take it one day at a time and rejoice. One of the most important practices is to rejoice in our efforts, you know, to delight. It gives us courage to continue.
So we dedicate now the virtue that we’ve created by doing this practice. The seeds we’ve planted in our mind, may they arrive at us quickly as possible in the development of our own amazing potential for the sake of all beings as well as ourself, of course. K. So now be silent. Gotta go back into yourself now.
Totally focused. You might have a whole day of, you know, plenty of stuff, food for thought. Really just focus your mind, either on just what you’re feeling. Just relax, but just be with yourself. Act like you’re on your own now, you know, really strictly.
Now until let’s just see how it looks by tomorrow morning. You know, be strict between now and at least breakfast. Absolutely silent. And that doesn’t mean kind of communicate with other people. Even if you’ve got friends, it might sound weird, but don’t have contact with others.
It’s like you’re on your own. That’s the real meaning of retreat. It’s not just to be silent because there’s some virtue in just not saying words. It indicates that you’re learning to be in yourself. And that means not even communicating with someone else.
Don’t feel it’s weird, you know, because you really want to be on your own, like we do sometimes. We really need that. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do here. Be totally internal. You know?
Just process with yourself. Understand what’s happening in your mind. And don’t have communication with someone else. Let’s just do it for breakfast very strictly. Just mind your own business between now and breakfast.
That’s the idea. So thanks, everybody. Have a good sleep. Let me just say how to go to sleep. Okay?
One of the things they say is to not just try and, you know, go to bed when you lie down. There’s different things. If you’ve a lama, let’s say, have you’re closer to one of the deities, you’ve got a feeling for Tārā or Chenrezig or Buddha or something, you’re you’re used to that. And you one way to go to sleep is like with your head in their lap, like blessing you, you know? Another way to go to sleep is like just relax peacefully after doing this meditation, and then have a strong aspiration to see your dreams as dreams, as they say.
The meaning of this is because dreams aren’t real in the conventional sense. A person isn’t shooting you, you’re not being killed, you’re not drowning, you’re not flying, you’re in bed, for God’s sake. But your mind is doing it, so we get caught up, don’t we? Because we get caught up in how things are. So it’s used as a good analogy for how to live your life, to see everything as a dream, so to try and see your dreams as dreams first.
So to make the strong aspiration that if you do dream, to have a sense of objectivity that it’s just a dream. And that’s very powerful. And then think before you go to sleep, I will wake up in the morning and I will think immediately, my goodness, how amazing. I’m still alive. You know?
My gas tank, my petrol tank of morality hasn’t run out yet. My life is still here. How incredible. May I make the most of this day? And that’s before you even open your eyes.
You know? So already you’ve started to counteract counteract permanent grasping, and already you’re starting to shift your mind. That’s a good way to go to sleep and then to wake up. Okay. Good night.
I really feel I think I’d like you all to move forward. I don’t know what happened to this morning, but I feel so far away from you all. Unless you don’t want to, leave it like it is if you’re happy. If you’re happy with how you are, leave it. You don’t have to do what I want.
It’s alright. If you want to, though. Move it just feels like you’re so far away. I can’t see any of you. Thank you very much.
Given this permanent me. But we can see we didn’t sort of think, oh, I’m really permanent, did we? We didn’t have to think it because it’s already in the mind. It’s something very deep. And this is what Buddha is saying.
So we have all these assumptions that we don’t even articulate. We just we just absolutely assume there are certain truths. Know? And one of these is that we are somehow, we won’t die today. We won’t die tomorrow.
We won’t die the next day. In a sense, we’re permanent. Intellectually, we know it’s not true, so we have some kind of tension there. But the way we live, we live according to this instinct virtually that I’m a permanent person, which is precisely why when we’re told we’re sick or we do die, it comes as an unbelievable shock to us. This is the reason.
So we need to train our minds, as what Buddha is saying, in in learning to, you know, see how things are. Not because of some interesting just idea to see how things are. It’s because that’s what causes us happiness. That’s what prevents us from suffering. So thinking now, trying to conjure up say the thoughts and conjure up a feeling for it, for the truth of it.
I am still alive, and it’s amazing. I’ve still got all these various conditions, this incredible fortunate life that I worked so hard to get. So how crazy to waste it? We all know the more we appreciate something, its values, qualities, the more we don’t want to waste it. We understand that.
It’s natural. If we don’t appreciate something, then of course we won’t even use it, not even, not to mention, waste it. So if we don’t appreciate our qualities, our health, our reasonable amount of wealth so that even we can be here this weekend, you know, not having to be working eight hours a day just to get a mouthful of rice. This is fortunate. It gives us the the leisure to look more deeply into our hearts to be contemplating such things as we’re doing here this weekend.
That’s an extraordinary good fortune. Rather than having to have been forced to use this body and speech just just just to, you know, eat, sleep, you know, to do to use his body and mind just to eat, sleep, and go to the toilet. So we’re fortunate that we created the course for it. So we know if we work hard for anything, we don’t want to waste it. So let’s not waste this day as long as we might have.
Let’s make the most Make the most of this day. And that means, at the very least, to not harm others. Minimally that. That protects us as well. Even more than that, let’s use the rest of this day as much as we can to again listen to these ideas, to see if there’s something relevant to our own life, to develop our own amazing qualities and our potential to be useful to others.
For this reason, we’re sitting here now. So just checking our bodies, getting them in the appropriate position to do some contemplating, remembering that it’s not the body that meditates. It’s not a physical experience. Of course, we tend to think of it this way. If we if it feels comfortable, then we think we had a good meditation.
But that’s not that’s not the point at all. The point of meditating is to is to train the mind to be focused so that we can then develop insight into how our minds are and how to bring them into sync with reality. That’s the purpose of meditation. So checking first. Most of us sitting in chairs, then having our back straight.
Say this is really meditators say this is the most important thing, the back very straight. Like an arrow. Not tight, you know, not not too tense, but certainly strong. The muscles relaxed, but the bones and the skeleton sort of strong and upright. Otherwise the mind becomes very sluggish.
The shoulders not tense, very square and strong, slightly held back, not slumping forward. There’s a way you can see. There’s a way to hold yourself up very straight, but to be relaxed. Muscle’s not tight. That’s crucial.
You think of your spine. It’s like an arrow or like a pile of coins you’re holding up very carefully. Hands in the meditation. Mudra in your lap. Left underneath, right on top.
Thumbs touching away from your body. Feet as we’re in the chair, feet firmly planted in the ground. But if we’re sitting on the floor, having, you know, cross legged to the best of your ability with your back straight and best to have your bottom slightly raised, just even just a cushion just underneath the coccyx, you know, that’s it. Not necessarily under the whole having your legs flat is good if you can. This is a cushion just under the coccyx, so it raises up your back and keeps it very strong.
Your head slightly down, chin tucked in. Eyes, best to be open, if we get distracted easily, which is reasonable, then we have them lightly closed. But have your eyes looking down as if you’re looking at the floor, straight ahead of you at the floor. So you get a sense of the whole the whole posture is an inward looking thing, isn’t it? So settle into this position and then forget about it.
Okay? Or your tongue, jaw relaxed, tongue behind the top teeth resting there. So you breathe very easily and so you don’t have to swallow too much. They say for meditators who are sitting a long time, it stops you from having to dribble. So just settle into this position now.
Be very comfortable, very natural. So let’s now try a meditation that uses the breath. We call it the nine round breathing. It’s like three sets of three breaths. So you imagine the first three breaths you’re taking very full complete breaths.
Not loud. The person next to you shouldn’t hear. Very complete full breaths. And when you these first three breaths you imagine when you breathe out all the air leaves that you imagine you’ll visualize it through the right nostril. And it’s like in the form of like yucky smoke, know.
And it’s all your anger, frustration, aversion, irritation, annoyance, criticism, judgment, all that part of us. Totally breathing it out, imagining it disappearing into space, this kind of yucky smoke, you know. In the next three breaths, when you breathe out, you visualize it all leaving your left nostril. All this is your attachment, neediness, this bottomless pit of dissatisfaction. Always wanting something more.
Always thinking something’s missing. Dissatisfaction, attachment, neediness. Left nostril completely disappearing into space. Not one atom left. And then the next three breaths, when you breathe out, it goes through both nostrils.
You visualize it leaving through both in this form of this yucky smoke. And all it is now is your ignorance, your indifference, your uncaring. They call these the three the three poisons, the three root delusions. Ignorance, aversion, attachment. So when you breathe in, if it you know, check it out.
When you breathe in, you breathe you imagine through the other nostril breathing in all the blissful energy of all the holy beings, which is really your potential. Think of it as like your potential too. Blissful radiant light that you breathe in completely, and then it drives out when you breathe out all the all the unhappy energy. Just visualize like this. If you lose track, just start again.
The right anger, the left attachment, both ignorance. Just at your own peace through these three sets of three breaths.