Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 12-minute Q&A, Ven Robina Courtin addresses a parent’s worry about their child watching violent action films. Her main point: examine the child’s mind and motivation, not the behavior alone. Is the attraction to archetypal good-versus-evil narratives, or to sadism and harm? She illustrates with a striking anecdote: an elderly, accomplished Tibetan lama encounters Rambo for the first time in the West, watches intently, and concludes the hero is good—a man fighting to save his country. The violence posed no philosophical problem. In closing, Robina offers practical guidance for beginners setting up a daily practice: morning sits with Chenrezig or Tārā, a simple altar with offerings, and the four opponent powers each night. For parents and those beginning to establish a meditation routine.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 Unknown.mp3
UUID: ebd24677-f8c7-4a36-bf92-78bc08388af9
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Unknown 1988 9 Cassettes (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 1988 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 11.9 minutes
Words: ~2,043
Good. And he probably has compassion and kindness, and he’s got this kind of and his his archetypes of, you know, the bad. He’s trying to conquer the bad to help the good. That’s very different than going off and killing for pleasure. Well, I hear that as different, quite frankly.
But then So listen to me. But listen, that’s okay. Excuse me, that’s okay, you know. Listen, I think the real point is this: you’ve got to learn to know what’s in his mind, not just look at his actions. You’ve got to know to look into his mind, what’s there.
You’ve got to see whether he’s really being sadistic and wants to harm people for its own sake, in which case, yes, definitely intervene. He’s creating very negative karma. But if he’s just kind of acting out, kind of re-enacting archetypes and war, that’s okay in a way. I don’t think that’s bad, frankly, in my feeling. It’s actually coming you you should maybe talk to him a bit about it.
Ask him. Try to find what’s in his mind, what motivates him, what are you trying to do? Do you like harming people? Do you want to kill people? Ask him what he thinks.
You’ll soon find out. He’ll tell you. Yeah, but even that is okay. Mean, mom was disliking bad guys. There’s a good all the I mean, all the stories are about the goods and the bad.
Mean, one old it’s funny, funny, it’s a very it’s an interesting story. I know we’ve to go home soon. I mean, she’s still squatting, is she? Where is she? She’s gone to sleep probably.
I’m here. This is interesting. It’s like this one old lama, this amazing old lama, you know, extraordinary high being, the guru of many of the old gurus. When I was taking care of cooking his dinner every day in Germany, he just had come to Europe for the very first time ever. It was actually to Greece.
I it’s very interesting. Try and get him a visa, I tell you, wow. To get him a visa to come to Greece. We got all this work to get him a visa, and we finally one of the people got to the Greek office, to the right appropriate office to get visas, right? And he said, this is the kind of person we’re trying to protect our Christian country from.
Anyway, got a visa, never mind. I was living No, it’s really okay. I lived Athens for year and I loved Greece anyway. So anyway, was really interesting. We got him a visa eventually.
But anyway, in Germany, after Greece, he’d just come to the West. Greece was his first stop, and then he went to Germany. And he’s never watched television much in his whole life. He’d been in a retreat for years. But he, like a lot of Tibetans, they love to watch action movies.
They love to watch action movies. So when someone brought him this movie about Tibetan movie, put the videos, he thanked very politely, and then they brought Rambo. He he had heard about he was so excited. He leapt up from his bed like a little kid dying to watch Rambo, you know, and the whole and he kept saying, he is a this is a very interesting point. He kept all through the movie, he kept saying, he is a good man.
He is fighting to save his country. Now, all our bourgeois, intellectual, middle class views of right and wrong, okay, he was absolutely right. This is a classic little kind of archetypal thing of the baddies and the goodies, and this man was full of the goodness to benefit the world by killing the baddies. It’s construed as like symbols, you know. So that’s what I’m hearing with your boy.
I’m just telling you, my gut feeling. Bad videos are, you know, don’t don’t let your kids watch those videos. I wouldn’t necessarily, but that’s the point about looking at his mind, darling. That’s the point, you know. Don’t act out if I’m not saying you are.
If you have got, like, a little kid who has got the karma like the genuinely bad kids, with brutality and delusion and twisted imprints in their mind, yes, you’d really have to protect that child very carefully. But if another child has got goodness in their mind and they like all these vivid archetypes and things, my feeling is you’ve got a really good kid there. That’s just my gut feeling, you know. But that’s why you’ve got to know the person’s mind. The physical actions aren’t the real thing.
Look at his mind, you’ve got to know his mind. So if you don’t know his mind yet, well, keep your own mind open, and then talk to him and ask him what he really feels. Well, tell him get him to tell you the story, you know? He might even articulate it in that way, even if he says I want to kill, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s really in a harmful negative way. I really mean that, you know?
That’s just my feeling. Does that make sense? Yes. Does that make sense, people, what I’m saying? Yes.
There you go. Well, that’s why I’ve been hanging back. I understand. I’ve been holding back and But then maybe just analyze it, or we have a conversation one day about it, and what do you think? Sort of be brave to see, but then you’ve got to learn — this is where the skill is — learn to know what’s in your kid’s mind.
That’s why being a mother for me is like being the best therapist in the world. Mean, I don’t know you can do it, frankly. You’ve to be so together to be a mother, you know? It’s unbelievable. Well, sit down.
Good luck to you. Maybe we better stop. You are so funny. You must have had an amazing mother because I know your sister, Judith. Oh, Oh, good.
Why do you think you had an amazing mother based on knowing Judy? Oh, okay, yeah. Right, okay. No, she’s a good example, I agree. She’s a very nice person.
Thank you very much. Yeah, anyway. Okay, very good, thank you. So let’s so are we up to finish? Or didn’t we?
Alright, so we didn’t do everything, but never mind. That means I’ve got to come back. Okay. I’m sorry, I finished well. I mean, You really could run out of adjectives with Robina, couldn’t you?
So all I can say is here’s a small offering, and please come back. Dear. My goodness, to come back, how amazing. You really want it back? Well, Chenrezig Institute asked me to come back and I said I would, so if I’m gonna go there, might as well come here, isn’t it?
Yeah. This time next year probably. It might be sooner. But thank you very much. I’m always very glad, I tell you.
Again, not being mean about America. I lived there for seven years. I’m very happy to be there. They even gave me a green card to stay there. But I’m always so delighted to get back to Australia.
Really, it gives me great pleasure. So just happy to be here. First, let’s do some prayers. I meant to bring my long prayers. What can I do?
I’m going to say some short prayers. Okay. Has anybody got a copy of the little book called Daily Meditation Practice by Lama Zopa Rinpoche? By any chance? No.
Got the FPMT prayer book? What have you got, darling? Good. Show me what’s in there. Let’s have a look.
That’s good. We’ll find something. No. It’s it’s okay. Not something not what I wanted in this.
Training your mind. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay. We can just do. It doesn’t matter.
Really doesn’t matter, darling. Well, there’s one here. This is a nice prayer. This is very good. Yes.
This is one. I’ll just recite it, and you just it’s called it’s like a prayer that you do at the end of this kind of thing. It’s a very nice prayer. Where is it? Where’s it end?
One, Okay, I think this is all there is. So I’ll read these verses, just make these your thoughts, if they make sense to you. So from my two collections I have to keep giving commentary. Collections means your wisdom wing completely developed and your compassion wing, okay? From my two collections vast as space that I have amassed from working with effort at this practice for a great length of time, may I become the chief leading Buddha for all those whose mind’s wisdom eye is blinded by ignorance.
Even if I do not reach this state, may I be held in your loving compassion for all my lives, Mañjuśrī, that gentle voice, the Buddha of wisdom. May I find the best of complete graded paths of the teachings, and may I please all the Buddhas by practicing, using skillful means drawn by the strong force of compassion. May I clear the darkness from the minds of all beings with the points of the path as I have discerned them. May I uphold Buddha’s teachings for a very long time. With my heart going out with great compassion in whatever direction the most precious teachings have not yet spread, or once spread have declined, may I expose this treasure of happiness and help.
May the minds of those who wish for liberation be granted bounteous peace and the Buddha’s deeds be nourished for a long time by even this graded course to enlightenment completed due to the wondrous virtuous conduct of the Buddhas and their heirs. May all human and nonhuman beings who eliminate adversity and make things conducive for practicing the excellent paths never be parted in any of their lives from the purest path praised by the Buddhas. Whenever someone makes an effort to act in accordance with the tenfold Mahāyāna virtuous practices, may they always be assisted by the mighty ones, and may oceans of prosperity spread everywhere. So now I’ll just sing two other little prayers, the ones we’ve been doing here and there. And oh yeah, we should have it one more often, so sorry.
So many prayers we should have done. So sing these two little prayers and they’re basically just dedicating again, thinking the first prayer is thinking that from the energy, from the karmic imprints that we have put into our minds, the so called meritorious energy we have planted in our minds from listening to these teachings, thinking about them, meditating. May they ripen into the fruits of our own Buddhahood and may all beings be benefited by that. And the second little prayer just says, May compassion grow and grow. That’s all.
Okay, I really should have said something about how to set up a daily practice. So basically just quickly, I’ll give you a minute of advice. There’s a book called How to Meditate which is a good start, so you can learn to just do something. But the essential thing about practice is to do something in the morning, like we did here, and something at night. The ideal is the four opponent powers at night like we did, and that’s in How to Meditate.
And something like Chenrezig or Tārā or Buddha in the morning, like we did. And then have some kind of maybe altar with something on it if you feel like that, or an image, kind of fairly high, don’t point where you point your feet. And then maybe have some kind of offering on it, like fruit or a bowl of water or something, and you do your practice. Then at night you do your four opponent powers. If you do this, this is a really amazing start, just like a whole day, the infrastructure of a really good practice.
And then if you have interest, you go further, you go to Buddha house, read books, you check things out. That’s all. Thank you very much. Everybody, thanks a lot, really, very much.