Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 52-minute session, Ven Robina Courtin uses Tārā visualization to teach equanimity and loosen the grip of attachment. She opens with meditation posture and nine-round breathing to purify anger, attachment, and ignorance. She then guides a visualization where colored light from Tārā purifies body, speech, and mind. The teaching’s heart emerges next: how we distort perception through attachment and aversion, seeing friends as beautiful, enemies as ugly, strangers as negligible—solely because they serve (or thwart) our needs. Robina demonstrates how to shift from conditional to equanimous love: recognizing that enemies and strangers want happiness just as much as friends do. The practice radiates this love outward through Tārā emanations. For practitioners with Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 09 11 01 – Session1.mp3
UUID: c99e75a8-4f2d-4973-b37c-dcb0c2360d1c
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: z Robina Courtin 2011 – too hard (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2011-09-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 52.6 minutes
Words: ~3,961
Straight. Totally up and down. Nothing is bent. Completely straight. But then think of all the flesh and the muscles hanging on those bones, and they are completely relaxed.
So just check your shoulders, your abdomen especially, we hold a lot of tension there. Relax the muscles, let them flop. But the bones upright. So it’s a really good combination of relaxed but upright. Hands, you can different ways to have, you know, some one way is the left in the left palm with the right palm on top, the thumb’s touching, and there’s something about two subtler channels in the body that connect through the thumbs.
There’s something auspicious there. But whatever you like on your lap, your knees as you wish. Then the head, this is important, to have it slightly tilted forward, the chin tucked in a bit. If you have it thrust back, this agitates the mind slightly forward. Chin tucked in.
Your jaw relaxed. Lips slightly apart. And then the tip of the tongue, curiously, but it makes sense, tip touching the palate behind the back of the top teeth, the tip there. They say this when you meditate a lot, this prevents you from dribbling and from having to swallow a lot of spit. Just behind the top teeth, near the palate, resting there.
Breathing through your nose. And finally, the eyes. All the yogis, all the meditators say actually best to have them open, because it’s during the day, the light coming in helps the mind stay sharp. But of course, of us get too distracted, so the eyes may be lightly closed, but your eyes should be looking down along as if you were looking along your nose towards the ground. Now that’s the posture.
So settle into that, and then forget about the body. Like I said, the body doesn’t meditate. Okay. So one meditation that the Tibetans do to prepare one for other meditations, which is a good way to purify the mind and to stabilize the mind, is called the nine round breathing. Have you all done that?
Some you’ve done that? No? Okay. We’ll do that today. Maybe there’s different ways of doing.
We’ll do that now. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna breathe three times out through the right nostril, imagining doing both, but you’re visualizing all your anger energy completely disappearing like yucky smoke into the universe through your right nostril three times. In the next three breaths, you’re visualizing all your attachment, all your neediness, all your expectations, all your possessiveness, all your fears of losing, all your bottomless pit of dissatisfaction, which is attachment. All of this leaving like yucky smoke through your left nostril. And then the third three breaths, you’re imagining all your ignorance and indifference and uncaring and kind of the ignorant part of our mind, the ignorance through both nostrils.
We’ll do the nine round breathing they call. There’s even a way you can do it. We can hold the nostril, the opposite one, but you don’t need to do that. You just imagine. So the first three, you breathe in, and you imagine the air going all the way in, and then out all the way out through the right, all the anger, all the way out through the left.
This next three, attachment, all the way out through both ignorance. A couple of rounds of those. Take complete deep breaths, not loud, not not too strong, forced, but all the way down, all the way out slowly, steadily, and not loudly. Imagining all the anger gone, all the attachment gone, all the ignorance gone, couple of times at your own peace. Breathe in the air, you breathe it in through the opposite nostril, and you imagine breathing in through the left, out through the right, and then the other time out, in through the right, out through the left, and then both.
And now with a steady, calm mind, let’s imagine in front of us all the enlightenment, all the qualities of the mind fully developed, which is labeled enlightenment, which is the potential of every being, our own potential. Imagine it manifesting in front of us is this radiant green light body called Tārā. It means liberator. It’s just this psychological kind of state, that’s all. Power, action, the enlightened mind labeled Tārā, female Buddha, female form, is just it’s like a mirror image of our own potential.
Think of it this way. So visualizing this radiant light body, female form Tārā, sitting on a lotus. If you’re not familiar with the image, it doesn’t matter. Just if you are, great. Imagine in front, like a mirror image of one’s own potential.
It’s like if you want to be a, you know, a cyclist, you have a poster of, you know, Lance Armstrong. He shows you what you can become. It reminds you. This radiant green light form sitting on a lotus. Everything’s made of light, kind of dressed in silken clothing.
Green is like action energy. She represents action, success, cutting through the obstacles, making things happen, fearlessness. We all need these qualities. So if you have a spiritual teacher, you imagine that she’s the embodiment of the mind of your teacher. If not, that’s okay.
It doesn’t matter. Sitting her left leg is drawn in, like if you’re sitting cross legged. Her right leg is out, resting on a little multicolored lotus. She’s sitting on a multicolored lotus. Don’t worry if you can’t see, just think, you know, think it.
It’s okay. Imagine. Her right leg in this posture, sitting on a little lotus in action pose like she’s ready to leap up quickly to help others, to act, to make things happen. Radiant green light. Very blissful face.
Long black hair, partially held up on a top knot like you can see in the pictures. This crown, five pointed crown on her head. Her right hand is on her right knee holding a blue flower, the stem of a blue flower that blooms at her right ear. Her left hand in the mudra of granting realizations, fingers pointing up at her heart, thumb and ring finger holding the stem of another flower, a blue one that blooms at her left ear. It’s like a visual language.
She represents all the perfect qualities of wisdom and love, but particularly the aspect of power, action, success, we all need. Fearlessness, courage. So now you imagine, from her brow she sends very powerful beams of white light, like laser beams of white light, that enter into our brow, forcefully filling us, instantly, instantly purifying all the pain of our body, all the hurt, all the inadequacies of our bodies, and all the harm we’ve ever done with our bodies to sentient beings. Absolutely full of this radiant laser light, white light, filling us. Again from her brow she very happily sends these powerful beams of white laser light entering our brow, filling us completely, and this time filling us with our own potential for blissful light body that’s only capable of helping others, only capable of benefiting.
Imagine this, full of this radiant white light, light body, blissful, relaxed, clear, and only capable of benefiting. So we think whoever touches us, hears us, smells us, tastes us, they can only benefit from my presence. Full of this radiant white light, this potential. And now from her throat chakra. Throat, she, Lama Tārā, sends powerful beams of red light, laser beams, entering our throat, instantly filling us, and this time completely purifying all the uselessness of our speech, all the rubbish speech, inappropriate speech, our inability to express ourselves clearly, angry speech, harsh speech, the lying speech, the speculative speech that’s confused and misleads others, all the talk we do behind people’s backs criticizing them, all the harm we’ve ever done with our speech to sentient beings.
Absolutely eradicated, annihilated by this radiant laser beams of red light filling me. Imagine this. Again, Lama Tārā sends these powerful beams of red light from her throat that enter ours, filling us this time with our potential, our natural potential for appropriate, compassionate, wise, beneficial, useful speech, such that every sound we utter can only be a benefit to whoever hears it, the dogs, the birds, even if it’s just saying good morning. Can you imagine the power of this, the benefit of this, how full of this radiant red light, our own potential manifesting. Now Lama Tārā very happily sends this time powerful laser beams of blue light, blue like the sky that come from her heart in the center of her chest into our heart chakra.
Again, instantly filling us. And this time instantly eradicating all the fears, all the ego grasping, the root of our problem, this fearful neurotic sense of self that then experiences attachment, craving for things to make me happy, dissatisfaction, possessiveness, manipulating others, expectations, and then all the anger and the fear the anger and the depression and fears we have when we don’t get what we want, all the jealousy, all the depression, all these things instantly eradicated, instantly. Imagine, full of this marvelous blue light. Again, she sends us blue light, laser beams powerfully entering into ours through our heart, filling us instantly this time with our own potential, our natural, our innate potential for clarity, wisdom, compassion, joy, contentment. These qualities that are at the core of our being, that define our actual being, full of this totally manifesting, infinitely joyful, imaginative, All the positive qualities fully manifesting.
This radiant blue light filling us. Now imagine Lama Tārā sends the three lights together, white to the brow, red to the throat, blue to the heart coming together, entering us powerfully, these rainbow lights, filling us completely. And this time, imagine removing even the subtlest imprint, even the subtlest imprint of all delusions, all suffering, and filling us absolutely effortlessly with all our perfect qualities, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion, perfect ability to benefit others, perfect speech. All of this, indestructible, our own true nature manifesting, imagining this, wanting this, the three lights simultaneously, filling us completely. And now imagine the lotus that Tārā is sitting on, multicolored lotus, just dissolves up into her body.
And the little one that her right leg is resting on dissolves into her body. Now you imagine, she comes and sits above our heads facing the same way as we are. And then you imagine, she very happily dissolves into green light and enters through your crown, and imagine that this energy of of enlightened body, speech, mind, all your own potential in the aspect of powerful courage, courageous action, success, to remove the obstacles to everything, all the problems in our lives, the fearlessness and courage that she represents, all of this energy dissolving into you and merging with your body, your speech, your mind, thinking that this is now me. Tārā’s qualities, my qualities, same. So now I think, well this is fine, now I’m enlightened, I’ve completely cultivated all my own potential, fully developed qualities of wisdom, the capacity to benefit others with my body, perfect mind that sees things clearly, fully developed in love, wisdom, compassion, my natural potential, fully developed.
Now what? Well, now my job, from all my wish of bodhicitta, compassion, is to now benefit others, to show them how they can remove their suffering, develop their happiness, and cultivate their potential. So now let’s imagine in front of us sentient beings. First of all, right in front, our enemies. We mightn’t use this word too much, but what that means is the people who hurt you, the people you don’t like, even just mildly irritate you.
Perhaps in the past, people have really harmed us, whom we haven’t forgiven especially. But even the creatures, can think even of the creatures, you know, the ones you’re fearful of, the spiders, the rats, the snakes, the cockroaches, whatever. And see them all in the form of human beings, which is the form that they can get enlightened in. So imagine them even just represented by one or two in your mind’s eye, right in front of you. The ones you don’t like, the ones you have aversion for, anger for, right in front of you.
Then to the left, in front of you, your dear friends, the ones whom you have attachment for, and whom, of course, you love as well, but the attachment. So you’re drawn towards them. The ones who do what you want, who make you happy, for whom therefore we are attached. You know? Just imagine them right in front of you to the left.
Your friends. And now to the to the right in front of us, the strangers, but that’s ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the universe. So the whole of the world full of them. So imagine to the right, all the way to the horizon, behind us, above us, below us, to the left, to the right, as far as we can imagine, surrounding us, all other sentient beings. All in the form of human beings, which is a form they can get enlightened in, but all kinds of beings having their own suffering.
Imagining this, just imagining this. Doesn’t matter if you can’t see it, but just think it. Well, Buddha says there’s not an atom of space where you won’t find sentient beings. So imagine the universe full as far as we can see, all in the form of humans. Now let’s just think for a moment about equanimity.
So think. You know? This is how the world divides others. It’s just the natural categorization of every sentient being. Because we have ignorance, which then sees strangers who have neither harmed nor helped us, and therefore for whom we are completely indifferent.
Then there are those who have harmed us, whom we have a aversion for, and then those who’ve helped us, for whom we have attachment. This is the way of the world. Giraffes have this, dogs, ants, fish. This is the there’s no fourth category. Those we’re attached to who do things we want, those we have aversion for who harm us or do what we don’t want, and those who do neither, for whom we are we completely indifferent, about whom we could care, we couldn’t care less.
This is the world. Friends, enemies, strangers. In other words, we see them through the filter of our own attachment. We see this through the filter of our needs. Every everyone is seen in terms of what they do for my needs.
If they help me, I like them. They appear nice. If they don’t, I don’t like them, and I want to harm them. If they don’t do either, I just don’t care. This is saṃsāra.
And all Buddha is saying is it’s not valid. There’s no valid basis objectively for this. So let’s step back out of this. Let’s get ourselves out of the equation. Step back.
See them objectively as if each of them has nothing to do with me. See them objectively. And so think, you know logically. They want to be happy. You ask your friend, do you want to be happy?
Yes. And then we want them to be happy because we love them, because we do have attachment, but we love them. As long as Oprah says, though our love our love is, you know, is unstable. Or as we would say, it has strings attached. But if we’re stepping back, we’re taking ourself out of it, and we check this person who is an enemy.
If you ask them, do you want to be happy? If you forget that they’ve harmed you, and you ask them, of course they’ll say yes. The same as your friend. There’s not a fraction of difference. A stranger, exactly the same.
It’s just that we don’t wanna think this. Who wants to think even that the enemy wants to be happy That makes them human. We don’t wanna go there. But you can’t disprove it. It’s logical.
Trouble is the ego grasping, and then the delusions, they concretize these three people. Because that person has harmed me, maybe once, twice, even twenty times. We then paint the whole person with the brush of anger. We see all of them as ugly. We think of them as ugly all the time.
We exaggerate. Aversion, anger exaggerates their ugliness. Because a friend has done some good things to us, we paint them with the brush of attachment, which causes them to look beautiful all the time. Well, that’s not true, but you understand. These delusions exaggerate.
They distort the real picture. So we concretize them. Real friend, real enemy, real stranger. You know yourself. You’re the enemy for some people.
You’re the friend for others, and you’re a stranger to most. But you know yourself in yourself. Three people look at you, you can see by their eyes how they see you. One looks with daggers, one looks lovingly, one looks bored. But you’re the same person.
You want to be happy every second. You want to suffer, not suffer every second. Well, same with the enemy, the friend, the stranger. Can’t deny this. It’s just that we don’t wanna go there, but we have to.
It stabilizes our mind unbelievably. Stepping out of the equation, so crucial. They’re equal, absolutely identical in their wish to be happy and their wish not to suffer. So this doesn’t mean you have to leave your friend and move in with the enemy. If you’re a Bodhisattva, you would.
They prefer their enemies to their friends, cause they’re trying to get rid of their rubbish. But we’re not brave enough. Even keep away from that enemy. It’s fine. Maybe they’re a maniac.
But in our minds, we see them differently. So you be with your friend. You go back to your boyfriend, your husband, your kids. But you step back. You see them separate from you.
Attachment sees them as mine. It’s not true. They’re not yours. It’s just some temporary relationship you’re having now that links you. You’re repaying a karmic debt of kindness that’s excellent.
We have to stop seeing them through the filter of our needs. See them as separate people. They wanna be happy from their side. They don’t wanna suffer, and that’s why we should love them. Change the reason for loving them.
We love them now because they do what I want. So instead, think about your your your lover, your boyfriend, your husband, your your children. Think. Even if you leave me tomorrow, I want you to be happy. That’s scary.
Think it. That’s love. May you be happy. The enemy really has harmed you. Some people do terrible things to us.
There’s no question. But there’s this karmic relationship with this person. Even though they’ve harmed me, think, may you be happy. Because the harm they’ve done to me is torturing them, and will cause them suffering in the future. May you be happy.
Keep away from them, doesn’t matter. But in your heart, see them differently. And now all the strangers, the rest of the universe. Whom we usually don’t care about, you know. You hear about these strange countries with names we can’t even pronounce, and a thousand people die, and a thousand people in Tanzania now, and it’s something else.
And you look at it, and because they’re not your country, and your people, your friends, oh, that’s interesting. You know, you go to the go to the football scores. That’s what I did this morning. Two thousand people died in Tanzania in a ferry, and I thought it said Tasmania. And I leapt at the heading, cause Tasmania is my people.
Then I saw Tanzania, I watched my mind. I didn’t care so much. It’s very interesting. It’s what we do. Distant from me.
Don’t touch me. They’re not my people. Indifferent strangers. They want to be happy too. Just look in the eye of a stranger for one second longer, and you’ll see a human being in there with a beating heart just like yours, just like the enemy, just like the friend.
So think, may you be happy. All those boring and different people. So now imagine that I’m Tārā again. Imagine from my heart, trillions and trillions of tiny green Tārā’s emanate out from my heart and enter the hearts of the enemies, taking away their pain, their suffering, their fears, giving them so much happiness, transforming them into their Tārā nature. All the friends, all the strangers.
Just kind of use your creative imagination and think this, imagine this for a few minutes. Millions of Tārā’s going out, entering their hearts, taking away their pain, giving them happiness, transforming them into their Buddha nature. All the ones above, behind, below, as far as you can imagine. Each one transforming, transforming, imagining this, wanting this. Now for just a minute or two as we nearly finish, we now singly say the mantra of Tārā.
And all that is is the sound representation of the same energy, the same qualities. One is a visual representation of the psychological qualities we’re trying to cultivate. Wisdom, compassion, in the aspect of this power, success, action, courage, and this mantra, Om Tare Tutare Ture Svāhā, just sound, that Sanskrit sounds. And it represents the same thing. So imagine a few times, you don’t know it, just listen, it’s okay.
But imagine as the sound goes out, it rains down green light, blessing all these beings, enhancing even more brilliantly their Tārā nature. Join in if you like. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Imagining all these millions of transformed terrors pervading space, they all dissolve into green light from above, below, behind, and they all then the light just dissolves into you, enhancing even more brilliantly your own Tārā nature, your own Buddha nature, your own perfect qualities, thinking this, imagining this. And then now think, you know, as I get up, open my eyes, walk around, think that my mind, which is mine, you know, back to who I am now, at every moment watching it, checking it, assessing what’s there, adjusting it, not following the negative, growing the positive as much as I can.
And then my body and speech is which is what others see, and think this is what a Buddha thinks, this is for them. I exist for others. Your body and speech are for others. So you think whoever sees me, hears me, touches me, smells me, tastes me, may they benefit just by my presence. And in this way, every moment of our day becomes useful, becomes practice.
Let me dedicate just thinking this one hour, few thoughts we’ve had, focusing the mind a little bit, imagining purifying, imagining all this entire path to enlightenment. Actually, in this little visualization, it’s the entire path to enlightenment. First, it’s me imagining purifying, imagining becoming enlightened, imagining benefiting all sentient beings. Every single one of these thoughts counts. Don’t just think thoughts don’t count.
Everyone sows a seed in the mind just like the thought. Whatever that thought is, the seed is like this, and that seed will bring fruit like that. Every thought we have sows a seed. Every thought is an intention. Intention means karma.
So delight in this one hour of these marvelous, marvelous seeds we’ve planted in our mind. May they ripen as quickly as possible in exactly the way we imagined so that I really can benefit sentient beings. May compassion, bodhicitta, grow and grow.