Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8.5-minute talk, Ven. Robina Courtin draws a striking parallel between the literal incarceration of some of her students and the inner “prisons” of attachment, anger, and pride. Opening with Arturo, confined to a tiny cell since age twelve, she shares Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching: our outer prison is nothing beside the inner prison of ordinary people’s habitual grasping. Robina explores how constant access to gratifications keeps us deluded, while those forced to accept difficult circumstances develop genuine non-attachment and progress. She shows how constraint can paradoxically accelerate practice when the mind stops fighting reality and begins relinquishing its addictive patterns. The key to success, she emphasizes, is staying happy when you don’t get what you want. Pitched at general practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 DAR 2003 06 20.mp3
UUID: 5bd9001e-2f1f-4cee-91bb-db20ced29029
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Death and Rebirth (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2003-06-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 8.5 minutes
Words: ~1,520
They’re full very small room with very few possessions and that’s their life. So you either go mad or you start looking at yourself and so they really become very incredible practitioners these guys but in insanely noisy environment so this is one of the things right and so they all have some have these quite remarkable experiences because they really work so hard because this is the irony of it when you really don’t have a choice, it’s often when you make the best progress, you know. We and this is why this sounds shocking, but Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who’s, you know, the Lama of Buddha House and my Lama, several other peoples here, he when the very first guy who wrote to us, Arturo, this young Mexican who wrote to me when he was eighteen, he was in this maximum security prison called Pelican Bay in California, and he’s been in basically in the system since he’s twelve, like a lot of these guys, you know, and he’s in for life, not for killing, I mean, because the sentencing is so severe there. You don’t have to kill anybody to get life sentences, and they mean life by the way.
They really do mean life, you know. So oh god, that’s a lot again. Yeah, I know. Oh, you love, thank you very much, okay so when he turned twenty one I asked Lama Zopa to write him a birthday card well actually Lama Zopa wrote him six birthday cards I mean like a long letter on six cards but one of the things he said to him which actually again is interesting you’ll see there in the section Lama Zopa’s teaching it’s a double page spread of a teaching of another letter that he wrote to another inmate similar to what I’m telling you now it’s very interesting the approach that he’s suggesting they take a way of working with their situation you know and he said to Arturo basically and I’m paraphrasing and this sounds shocking but you know these guys really understand it he said your prison and he’s in his cell twenty three hours a day he won’t get out as long as he lives and he’s only twenty four now and he has an eight foot by ten foot cell, ten books, the inside of a pen, a toilet and a telly and that’s his life. Okay?
That’s it. Skinny because I don’t get much food, very pale, low-grade aches all the time, hepatitis C. It’s very interesting. Not blaming anybody, just telling you the situation. Right?
So he said to him, he said, your prison is nothing in comparison with the inner prison of ordinary people. And I’m sorry, he means us. The prison of attachment, the prison of depression, the prison of pride, the prison of, you know, anger, whatever. And somehow, it’s it’s of shocking to hear it, but this is the point and this is the second level of suffering that I just touched on before I didn’t go into it in more detail, is when that what when we’re living in what we mean by happiness and you check most of our life, it’s because we have, from a karmic point of view, incredible amount of virtuous merit from before that we’re now ripen it’s ripening in terms of our being able to get what we want very easily, good friends, job, money, support, health, and we totally take it for granted, but we’re so getting it so easily, it’s like we’re getting our fix all the time, we can’t see that we’re junkies. If you can get your fix anytime you like in good shape and at really good prices and very pure, you would not suffer, you know?
You would not suffer. I mean you would, you see my point, but you’d be sort of every time you’d get another fix. So we get our fix and everything is our fix. Now if you think when you go to prison, especially these heavy ones, you lost all your junk, you’ve got nothing to rely upon, so naturally you go mad or you start giving up attachment, giving up pride, giving up jealousy, giving up anger. I mean, if you continue to be angry in prison, this is what truly causes them to lose their minds because there is nothing you can get that you want.
You’re only getting what you don’t want, and in these very strict prisons, you can’t even hardly breathe without permission, and I’m not being rude about anybody. I’m just showing. So what I’ve noticed is the guys that I know have been doing it for years. They truly have accepted their reality. This is my life, now let’s get on with it, you know.
And I can see the suffering and the pain of the guys I know who haven’t accepted their reality. Now, I mean, look, excuse me, look at us, our profound dissatisfaction, Endlessly trying to change things, get this, get that, get this and because we can do it easily, we’re deluding ourselves into thinking I’m happy. But just imagine if you lost it all tomorrow. We’d have a mental breakdown. Well that’s that’s what suffering is.
So we only know we’re suffering when we don’t get what we want, you know? So the real key to success is when we don’t get what we want that you stay happy, then you know you’ve given up attachment. In other words, you can have your cake or you can leave it. It doesn’t matter. But you enjoy your cake, you’re not kind of uncaring.
Uncaring. And that’s why in a way you can say it’s much harder for us to practice because we think, why should I? And we all know when something goes wrong, then you start checking it up. Well, that’s what happens when you go to prison, you know? They all say you learn patience and humility in prison.
You know? It’s their wake up call. They all say that. All the guys today, you know. It’s very interesting.
So, I mean, I have such respect for these people, honestly, because it really shows me, you know, how easy it is that I’ve got it. Anyway, there you go. Maybe it’s time to finish. What do you think? It’s nine thirty.
Time to go home, please. So I want to do a little commercial. Listen, I’ve done it already. On the back of the magazine, you’re gonna see an advertisement for the pilgrimage, and we did this the last two years and it’s to raise money for our prison project, it’s a gorgeous experience. So if you can if you’d like to go to India or Nepal, you’ve always thought you’d like to go on a pilgrimage all the holy places of the Buddha but you’ve to spend a month with me so if you can bear that then then you can email Effie the darling lady in San Francisco who organizes the pilgrimage just to get the information you never know you might find the money to do it but it’s a wonderful experience and it raises money for our prison project and it’s a very special thing to do.
Go on pilgrimage. It’s just gorgeous. That was my ad. Okay? My commercial.
So now we can finish with a little another little wee prayer and yeah. This prayer is saying basically two little prayers. One is saying, basically, here we’ve been sitting for a couple of hours and as many moments as there have been is as many karmic seeds that each of us has planted in our minds. So we’ve done this two hours of gardening. How fantastic, you know?
So we we rejoice and we make this strong aspiration that these seeds grow and we nourish them from this moment forward with our virtue, you know, our good qualities so that they ripen as quickly as possible in the development of bodhicitta, our marvelous potential just like we motivated in the beginning for our sake and the sake of every living being. And the second little prayer is just making the aspiration that compassion grow and grow in the hearts of all. Okay, everyone. Thank you very much for coming, and I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow or Sunday. For the weekend course, you can come to Little Bits or the whole lot.
Thank you very much. As Venerable Robina said if you’d like to come tomorrow you’re more than welcome Please bring your lunch because catering won’t be provided nearby. No. No. The restaurants. Well, people can go to the restaurant or they can bring their own.
You can come for a little bit or a lot. You can come for one hour or a morning or an afternoon, whatever you feel. You can be a one percent Buddhist on the day. Okay? And if anyone would like an escort back to their car, please meet here and we’ll organize that for you.
Thank you very much for coming.