Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this seven-minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin uses the metaphor of water and waves to teach emotional resilience. She begins by guiding practitioners to observe turbulent thoughts and feelings without resistance—breathing through them moment by moment, floating rather than struggling. The core teaching is that the mind’s true nature is clarity, not the turbulent surface we identify with; even a disturbed mind has the same clear nature as a calm one, like agitated water remains water beneath the waves. Rather than suppressing difficult emotions, practitioners learn to understand their true nature and release the fixed beliefs held about them, enabling natural transformation. She concludes by anchoring practice in bodhisattva intention—dedicating the positive seeds planted through this inquiry toward awakening for all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HEL 1998 09 09.mp3
UUID: c7848339-63a6-405b-8814-bd1189c8f1f4
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Happiness in Everyday Life (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 1998-09-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 7.1 minutes
Words: ~584
But even that, just don’t worry. Let it go. Just float with it. It’s like just floating in the water, you know? You won’t drown.
It’s okay. You don’t have to think anything else. Just feel whatever you’re feeling and just go with it. Breathe in, breathe out. It’s moment by moment changing.
Each instant, something different. Each instant, each instant of thought, of feeling gives rise to another instant of thought and feeling. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to worry about. Just be satisfied.
This is it. Changing moment by moment. Now just switch slightly the focus and think about or observe, feel the clarity of our mind. That mind is not physical. We think it is so black and so real and so concrete.
It’s completely clarity, clear. Its nature is clear. The nature of the mind is to it’s clear and knowing. It knows, it reflects whatever phenomenon appears to it. Its nature is clear.
And the more clear the mind is, the more clear the phenomenon appears to the mind. And so naturally, when our mind is turbulent, like the waves at the top of the water, moving and moving and smashing and crashing and turbulent and turmoil, of course, whatever appears to that level of mind, of course is distorted. Of course we cannot see it clearly. So to subdue the mind and have the confidence to know that even the nature of all our mind, especially in the depths, which is where we can feel it, is where it’s clear, but the nature of all the mind, including that turbulent water, it’s the same. The turbulent water is the same nature as the water that’s calm.
It’s clear. So through a clear mind we observe, we know phenomena clearly. They appear as they are, not distorted. So to have the confidence in that clarity of my own mind that first of all it’s impermanent, changing moment by moment and that it’s clear in its nature. Even my turbulent minds in their nature are clear, are perfect, are pure.
It’s not as if I have to throw away the turbulent water at the top. I have to subdue it, learn to understand its real nature, let go of the view I have of it. And thus transform it to its real nature which it already is, which is clear. Just let go. Accept.
So now we just conclude with some, just with the confidence, know, to know that the last two hours, hour and three quarters, if we’ve been thinking and talking and working things out, that in fact we have been working on the mind. In fact we have been sowing positive seeds each moment on our mind and that is the job. That is the doing of it. We have been doing it. In that sense we’ve been purifying all the things we’ve talked about, we’ve understood, we’ve maybe clarified in our mind.
In that sense we’ve purified stuff from the past and in that sense we’ve sown seeds on our mind to grow constructively and positively towards our final enlightenment in the future. So just conclude with that confidence. Dedicate all the energy that we’ve created this last couple of hours to that goal which is fulfilling our real nature, completely awakened mind for the sake of all other beings, which is the driving force to allow us to get there. And that each of us has that potential this very moment.