In this episode, Robina Courtin speaks with Prison Mindfulness Institute's Executive Director, Vita Pires, on her correspondence work with prisoners and her experiences with the Liberation Prison Project.
Knowing the nature of the mind: the path of dharma inside
The power of learning dharma through the mail with a prison pen pal
“You could sit through a month of fiction films and not come across a character half as interesting as Robina Courtin”- Jake Wilson, Urban Cinefile
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Since being ordained as a Buddhist nun in the late 1970s at Kopan Monastery in the Kathmandu valley, Ven. Robina has worked full-time for her teachers Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and their worldwide network of Buddhist activities, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. Over the years she has served as editorial director of Wisdom Publications, editor of Mandala Magazine, executive director of Liberation Prison Project, and as a touring teacher of Buddhism. Her life, including her work with prisoners, has been featured in the documentary films Chasing Buddha and Key to Freedom.
Liberation Prison Project Transcript
Vita Pires:
Okay. Welcome to the Prison Mindfulness Institute Summit. I'm Vita Pires, the executive director of Prison Mindfulness Institute, and I'm happy to be here with Rubina Courtin, who is going to talk to us today about her experience working in prisons.
Robina was ordained as a Buddhist nun in the late 1970s at a monastery in the Kathmandu Valley. Venerable Robina has worked full-time for her teachers, Lama Tipton Yeshi and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and the worldwide network of Buddhist activities, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.
Over the years, she has served as the editorial director of Wisdom Publications, the editor of Mandala Magazine, Executive Director of the Liberation Prison Project. She's a touring teacher of Buddhism. Her life includes her work with prisoners has been featured in the documentary film Chasing Buddha, and the other one is called Key to Freedom. And she also has quite a following on TikTok, which I just discovered.
Robina Courtin:
Oh, really? Okay.
Vita Pires:
You have like 54,000 followers or something.
Robina Courtin:
Oh, really? I didn't know that.
Vita Pires:
Yeah.
Robina Courtin:
Good. Okay.
Vita Pires:
You've given some little zappy wake-up moments for people.
Robina Courtin:
Yeah, we just decided. Like, you know, minute two-minute videos kind of. We like short little things. It's good. Good for the mind, I think.
Vita Pires:
It was great. I listened to a bunch of them. I was like, "These are fabulous."
Robina Courtin:
Okay.
Vita Pires:
You're the only person I follow now on TikTok, so. Okay, so you've been around for a long time. And you've probably been working with prisoners for a long time. What got you started on this path?
Robina Courtin:
Oh, yeah. Exactly. I was based in California. I came to America, and I'm from Australia. I came to America in '94. I, at some point, about '94 - '95 when I was editing the magazine of our organization, Mandala. And I got a letter in '96, I think, a letter from this young Mexican American guy who'd been in gangs. He told me he'd been in gangs since he was 11 in Los Angeles and in juvenile prison since he was 12. And he was now 18. He was in this top security prison in California, just kind of well known, called Pelican Babes with, you know, three life sentences.
I mean, he hadn't killed anybody. It's just that the sentencing was pretty severe for gangsters, you know. And so there he was in his cell, 23 hours a day, and bored, but this intelligent boy, you know, with his good heart, and he's Mexican, so with a good heart. And for some reason, amazingly, there was a good librarian at these in the security housing unit library. And so, Arturo, his name, found a book of Lama Yeshi. And he's very moved by the talk of compassion. That triggered his interest in Buddhism.
He wrote, and that's when we started. I mean, he wrote a letter, I sent a book, and I wrote back, and within a year, word of mouth, you know, 40 prisoners, and then there's what we called it the Liberation Prison Project and just grew from there. It was a very specific thing because, I mean, prisons in America are so many, and the country is so vast, you know, and so we really focused on one particular program, which is still going. I gave it up running 10-12 years ago, and it's receiving letters, giving them a mentor, and then sending books, you know, because I mean, most of the people are working class, no family, no money, no resources, bored to tears, depressed.
So to have something and those who were interested would write it and then we make them have a friend, you know, that was like a miracle to have one friend, you know. So that's how it started. And that's what it still does. And it's now in other countries as well. Different ways. In Italy, they do visit a lot. In Australia, it's going. That's it.
Vita Pires:
So I saw your film on Chasing Buddha, and you went into prisons in Kentucky. That's the heart of America there.
Robina Courtin:
Exactly. One inmate there wrote to me. I don't know where he found our address. And then, I went to visit. There, in particular, is one fellow on death row. I just got an email from him this morning. Literally, he's on death row there. He's been the man I've known most, the last 25 years there since '97, I think, I first visited him.
As he says, he's ready for that electric jolt. I think he met the Dharma through some Korean Buddhists in the mid-90s. He's been there since the 80s. And then we connected, and he's got a really devoted practice. And just anything for me is just so inspiring. I mean, not trying to make them special human beings, but they are human like the rest of us. But then the Dharma they listen to is the same Dharma we all listen to, but their condition is so kind of fraught. And their backs are against the wall, you know.
And so, what I admire are those who do practices they really sincerely practice. They don't have much choice, you know, so I find that very moving. And I mean, just yeah, just know, I visited Mitchell a few times and a couple of other people there. And yes, we had a group in the movie. Yeah, it was my nephew who made that film 20 years ago. Yeah.
Vita Pires:
Great. You mentioned a choice. And so, we feel that the Dharma offers them another chance to make a different choice, maybe?
Robina Courtin:
No, I think that's the thing, but I think it's really if we really get the essence of Buddha's teachings. We all know what Buddha's deal is, but, you know, he has found from his own experience that if you work on your mind, if you listen to your neuroses and your anger and your depression and your jealousy, then you're going to be happier. I mean, that's the bottom line, really, what Buddha is saying is almost so simple, it's embarrassing.
And so here we are in this world with seeming to have a choice. But if you think about it, you know, being brutal, we basically if you've got a lousy job or a lousy relationship, you basically have two choices. If you want to do something, either you leave or you say, "Okay, I'm not going to leave. Something is worthwhile here. But I'm going to change my mind about it, I'm going to read, and I'm going to reinterpret this and see if there's something good in it. But we can do neither, you know, so we might as well be in prison.
My friends in prison and our friends in prison only have one choice: go mad or work on their minds. And that's what I find so admirable. I've got so many amazing examples of just ordinary human beings just like you and me. When you're really up against the wall, you know, you either go nuts, or you change your mind, you reconfigure the way you see the world. I mean, that's the essence of what it gives us, you know, we really get it down to earth.
Vita Pires:
When we go into, like, weekly classes, you know, now we're going in on Zoom to teach classes on Zoom. And, you know, in different jails and prisons, and actually, some of them are in the south, and, you know, because now that it's opened up to Zoom and tablets and all this stuff, it's like a whole different kind of, you know, something or other.
People want something. They obviously want something. They get a hint that there's something there for them. They want to practice. But then, a lot of times what happens is when they're practicing, they go into this kind of dissociative state where they're like, off in dreamland, and you know, and then during the "Oh, okay now. I'm back here. I'm back here in prison." But I've got, like, you know, it was so mellow, just because I was over there on a beach or something like that. So there's some kind of, like, habit to go and get. It's totally understandable to get away from the brightness. Have you worked with that?
Robina Courtin:
I mean, that's what I found. I mean, as you can see, I'm a bit of a Buddhist tradition. I'm gonna look for as long as you said, we look to squeeze their brains, it's kind of like meant to be, it's like joking, you know, but I do find for myself, I mean, happens to be my style. But I really find that studying the Buddhist philosophical view of the universe top, not just that your year things change, but really analyzing it, really drilling down. And then really also studying the Buddhist model of the mind, which is pretty amazing. And coming from these genius Indians.
It was the Dalai Lama, who said it was amazing Indians more than 3000 years ago, who were the ones who really began the investigation into the nature of the self. And so the precision and clarity of the Buddhist view, when you really drill down into it, of how the mind works, and therefore how you can work with it. I find not just giving someone a meditation technique but enabling us to confront the way reality is, which is Buddha's deal. We're living in la la land, thinking that things are permanent, thinking that handsome boys will make me happy, you know, blaming everybody for making me unhappy. So we really do understand we know how to work on them by studying them. I find that also really helpful.
So this one I found was the people I know, in prison, giving them books. I mean, many don't even know how to read and write. But this is just their way of also educating themselves because they are brought to tears and have nothing. One book is so precious. It's unbelievable. So then, this enables them to really read and think about the way that Buddha said, I think that's really helpful and that really backs up your practice. And then you can confront reality. I mean, Mitchell is in this garbage dump place, you know, in this blue stone building, boiling hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, waiting for his death date, you know, so he's very down to earth, and he's very approachable.
And so also, he helps others. He has his arm in this death row guy like that. In the movie, they were all together, but some guys escaped. And so they started getting strict. And now the death row guys do it all together in their red jumpsuits. So he's got 40 roommates, you know, but he just becomes this friend to everybody. He does his job. He gets a lot for his practice. He does his study, and he's now got a tablet because it makes the prisons money, you know, it's so evil, but he's happy to have a tablet now to listen to podcasts. He is the teacher. I think that's important. Then you can confront it. We all have to confront reality. And we have to look at what rate it is not always depressing to see reality. It brings us down to earth, then we've got some courage, I think. So I've found that's really, you know, and the people I know who I mean, yeah, I find that's helpful.
And that's why books for me also, you could visit a prison. And then when you don't come back after two months, what are they gonna do for two months? Would you give them one book that's a most precious friend, you know. One book can be unbelievably powerful when you have nothing else to do. So you can really energize the mind, energize your thinking. I find that very helpful. That's one of the main programs in our prison project. We give books. We've given hundreds of thousands of books over the years. That's one of the main tools we use because we understand.
Well, I mean, because if you have nothing, to have one book can be so precious. The visitor is marvelous. They are going to be so moved. Or even a letter is so marvelous, but having a book that you can work with on your own in your own cell that's pretty special.
Vita Pires:
Yeah, you know, our founder Fleet Maull, he found out in prison. That's what he founded, the Books Behind Bars program because all these prisoners were writing to him and saying, "Can you help?" and suddenly got Shambala to send books. And so, we've continued that on and he was like, "We sent hundreds of hundreds and thousands of books."
When I first started in 1999, Nick contacted me and said, "We'll send you some Lama Yeshi books." I was like, "Okay." We were way up on the top of this building. And then one day, all of a sudden, this UPS guy came, and he was so annoyed he had to walk all the stairs up with all these books, and they had donated like 3000 books to us.
Robina Courtin:
Oh my god. People love loving him because he's just damn worth it. I mean, he just touches people's hearts. I've really seen that.
Vita Pires:
They really, really loved him. Sometimes, people would look at the books, "Oh, these aren't as good as Joseph Bolton." You know, this kind of thing. I was like, "No, no, these are really good." You've got to realize these are so helpful to people.
Robina Courtin:
That's right.
Vita Pires:
When I go into the classes, I usually ask things like, "How are you doing?" and everything. "How's it going with anxiety?" And people here experience anxiety. The 100% always raise their hands. And then I said, "Well, is it a big problem?" 100% of people raise their hands. So, anxiety. What do you say to people that are experiencing this? Of course, it's anxious, you know, like you're unsure.
Robina Courtin:
The thing is, I think these things we all experience, we call it depression, we call it anxiety, whatever. But if we look at the Buddha's analysis, I find, even just theoretically, understanding the Buddhist analysis can at least help us understand it more than if we understand. You know, Buddha tells us in the Four Noble Truths that attachment is the main cause of all our problems. It sounds acute because we use the word differently in our culture. But the more we look into what that is. It's this constant emotional hunger to always have something more. So, of course, when you're in a garbage dump, and also you're the lowest in society, and no one's praising you, it's very painful, then clearly attachments are not going to be getting what it wants.
And then what anger is, I mean, the Buddha talks about attachment and aversion. He sounds so cute to us, you know. You don't go to your therapist and say, "Oh, I've got some attachments." I mean, it's almost too simple. But the Buddhist view is so profound when you do, and you dig deep into things. So if attachment always wants something more, which means never satisfied with what I've got, which also means never satisfied with who I am, which is a big suffering we all have. I mean, the Dalai Lama, when he heard about low self-esteem and self-hate in our culture, that's a mental illness. I mean, it's true. And that's all a function of attachment, never getting what it wants. So, of course, if you're a volatile type of person, when it doesn't get what it wants, this attachment, you're going to get angry and shout and yell and go crazy, or it's more mild, and you'll experience it as kind of distress and anxiety.
So really, it's attachment and aversion up and down like a YoYo, you know. And so, I mean, we've got to have the analysis. And then you just have to do the work and have some confidence that every tiny little bit of work counts for you moving one step forward. And part of that, I mean, there's so many techniques, as we're very well known, but one of them is we have to learn to live with these. I call them my crazy roommates, you know, the angry roommate and the anxious roommate and the worried roommate, the jealous one, and the depressed one, that may never end. That is constant. We know that. But we need to learn not to be afraid of them.
I think the other thing is to learn to listen to the conceptual story that informs that feeling. I mean, we aren't even looking. We only notice what it does. This is our tragedy in the West, I think. We only notice what's going on in here when it becomes emotional. The real school, I think, we get from the Buddha is techniques you learn to listen to the thought processes or the conceptual stories that inform those emotions before they become emotional.
I think we have to have the courage to know that it's not gonna go away overnight. And then, if you really have that courage, you're prepared to look at it and hear it and not hide from it, not push it away, and learn to change your views. I mean, this is really what being a Buddhist is. It takes courage to do this. I mean, we all want it all to go away, but it doesn't. But if we can confront it and not be afraid of it, I think that's part of the battle. I certainly find that anybody's really tried to practice.
And then also the other thing is to try not to buy into these negative stories so much. I mean, for some reason, we know 27 people can tell you, you're not a bad person after all. You're really quite good. But we won't believe it. One person even indicates something bad about you, and we believe it. We'll run like a magnet.
So this is the irony of ego. This is the force of detachment we are never satisfied with. So we have to kind of change that to learning to be satisfied with who we are and trying to praise ourselves and even some of my friends in prison. It's too rude for me to say it. "Well, why don't you see some good things about prison?" It's very rude of me to say that, but the ones who are working on their minds are doing that, you know.
I mean, I tell one story. I always tell this one. This is the woman I know. She's out of prison now. She's an old lady. She's living in Ireland. She's not even Buddhist. She's some hippie Jewish girl hitchhiking in Florida with a hippie husband and hippie kids. Her name is Sunny. I think she wrote a memoir.
They got picked up by two guys, and then the two guys got stopped by the police, and they killed the police and blamed the hippies. They are on death row. I mean, it's like the most nightmare story you could ever imagine. And if you're on death row, and you kill police when you're the worst scum of the earth in this world.
So, there she was, 17 years in this utter hell, but she somehow had this extreme. I don't call it emotional intelligence. She did yoga. She wasn't a Buddhist. She's still not a Buddhist. She's talking about karma. She has these things. But she's had this ability to know that she had a choice to change her view of her nightmare. I mean, even her husband got executed while she was there, she went to it, and his head burst into flames. I mean, it's not gonna be livable. This crazy country, you know. I'm allowed to criticize. I've got an American passport.
Somehow, Sunny was able to keep her sanity. She was in solitary for years with a Bible. She learned to know. She said I knew I had a choice to change the way I think. And even at some point, she said, ''I'll never forget, you know.'' She said, "At some point, I realized I couldn't change anything, but they couldn't take my mind from me. So I decided I was not a prisoner. I'm a monk. I am not in a cell. I'm in a cave."
I mean, that's straight from the mouth of these, you know, alums who talk about transforming problems. She had this ability. The consequence is she didn't lose her sanity. She never stopped working on her freedom. And she finally got out, you know, but when you meet her now, I've met so many people who have come out of prison who have broken emotionally, you know, because it's such a hideous place.
But you'd never know from this little old lady in a wheelchair that she's had this living hell for 17 years because she was able to work with it. And that means changing the way she interprets and seeing the good in it, learning to use it, and knowing she didn't have to go crazy. That's what's incredible. I find that so admirable. I mean, unbelievable. Such an example.
Vita Pires:
Wow! That's fabulous. That's really inspiring.
Robina Courtin:
She wrote a memoir. I think they are going to make a movie out of her. Her name is Sonny Jacobs. You read about her. She's amazing.
Vita Pires:
So, it sounds like the people that you've worked with have been able to develop a path quality. I think when this world of mindfulness, mindfulness, lots are actually missing. What I find is when it's just going in with mindfulness, the path quality is kind of lost. It's like a technique. You learn the technique, but there's something. I noticed a lot of resistance sometimes with prisoners. "Okay, I don't want to do that." You know, whatever. I don't want to do the minor thing. Yeah. But then I thought, what was it about my life that I had 17 or whenever I started this because it was a path quality?
Robina Courtin:
What's your background? What's your background? What is your background?
Vita Pires:
I was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner in the Karma Kagyu lineage for 30 years.
Robina Courtin:
Okay. Okay.
Vita Pires:
I've been studying with Theravada Teachers.
Robina Courtin:
Okay. Wonderful. So you're taking in all the truth? No, I think that's really true. I mean, this is why I continually try not to separate religious philosophy from the rest of the world. Like, there's something weird. I mean, when you learn anything, if you commit to music, and you have a path, and you have teachers, you know where you're going, if you commit to anything, you know, where you're going. And this had happened to be there called the looper. And, you know, I didn't know I wasn't looking for that. And clearly, karma took me there. But having a path and a way of studying and analyzing it, for me, is kind of clear. It's helpful.
I mean, I've got Sakyu teachings and Kagyu teachers, and everybody, I mean, because they all come into the same thing, but you find your own way. That's me. Personally, I find that helpful, not just having a mindfulness technique. That's a good start, I think. But then, of course, I think the other thing is, though, isn't it true not everybody wants a Buddhist path? So we can take 1% from it, and you can take 5%. But there's plenty there that if you want it, you can get it, you know, and that's why I find the books very powerful.
And also not just that, but a lot of the prisoners would write, and then they'd be Muslim. And then they'd write and say, "Well, I've gone back to Islam. Thank you very much. I learned a few things." "I've become a Christian again." We were happy about that because I think we tried to encourage people to think and to use their intelligence and think about things and think of the meaning of things. Because when we use our intelligence and use our mind, we taste our own potential, you know, and then you find your own way, you find your why somewhere. No, I think it's very important.
Vita Pires:
Yeah. The path quality also, you know, I noticed that you'd call just the Liberation Prison Project. The program I developed is called Path of Freedom. When you say freedom, the person then goes, okay, that means I'm gonna get out and do whatever I want.
Robina Courtin:
And the name came from Lama Zopa. You know, his classic transforming problems. And, of course, he talks about the inner prison all the time. Recently, he asked me to put together a book, which I did, about a hundred, a couple of hundred of his letters from prisoners over the years who write to him, you know, and commit to him and all the rest. His teachings are unashamedly classical Tibetan Buddha's Hello John teachings. You learn to like your problems like you like ice cream.
What's amazing about all these businesses who have got nothing else, and who they really can really come to the party with all this stuff, you know? So this is, yeah, so the inner prisons. I think no one was ever going to call this book and enjoy life liberation from the inner prison more than the outer prison, which becomes the real prison. So it's pretty intense teaching. We really want to know if Buddha is you, you know.
Anyway, there's a website for it. Go there. He raises money for the Prison Project. Life liberation from the inner prison, then the outer prison won't become the real prison. Nick Rebo should love me and see if she moves to America. Have you published it? But it's really kind of an intense, full-on classic Buddhist approach of, you know, the whole path, actually. It's all been structured to the whole path, really.
Vita Pires:
Great. I was just talking to somebody yesterday, and she was talking about how she was a classic kind of youth at risk. She's not a youth anymore, but she was saying back then she had this idea. The consequences meant absolutely nothing. Because she'd experienced all the hell in life and every kind of abuse you can imagine every kind of for and so she felt like she had to do what she had to do. But when it was over somebody, she was willing to fight him, stab them, kick them, do whatever robbed them because she had to do it, and she didn't care about the consequences. And if you feel me bring it on, that was surrounded by here's, and so it's kind of like what? What in the world changed that attitude?
And she got a book by Anne Sexton, the poet. She got this book, and it was called Life: Live or Die. The message she got from that book was live or die, just don't poison everybody along the way.
Robina Courtin:
Okay, that's interesting. Okay, very good.
Vita Pires:
Whoa! I think I have to stop living this way.
Robina Courtin:
That's amazing. That's incredible. When you see the thing I find about the business of consequences, I find this is what Buddha's teachings for me are so marvelous. I mean, we've got to really think it through because it's not evident to us. But when we hear about karma, we realize that you know, Buddha's uses, this is a natural law that runs a universe. And basically, as the Dalai Lama calls it, it's like creation, but we hear it as punishment and reward, just like if you're a Christian or a Muslim, so you just replace it. But actually, when you realize this, my point about consequences, the first level of karma, is to forget about past lives.
When we start to realize that what we think and do and say produces me, that's the real consequences. I mean, otherwise, were the schizophrenic person who thinks I can do what I like. And as long as I don't get caught. I mean, that's kind of, like, really quite mentally ill. But that's how we live our lives. And we live like punishment and reward. And we really realize that we produce ourselves, you know. I'm sitting on my own at home, and I'm shouting and yelling at my iPad on the news and the Mr. Trump of the world, but nobody hears me. I haven't harmed anybody except myself.
If we get that, that's the real essence of karma. That's the real consequence. I mean, my mum, my Catholic mum, used to say virtue has its own rewards. I mean, that's really what Buddha's saying. When we get that, I think we will grow up. Then we realize that we produce it ourselves, and who wants to become a crazy person? Who wants to become a crazy person? Nobody.
I mean, why would you want to be angry all day, anxious and depressed and jealous when you know that you can change? That's why this woman, Sunny, was no part of the evening. But with just some incredible inference, she was able to see that she had the choice to change her mind because she didn't want to go crazy. I find that admirable. It's quite astonishing. It's hard. It's rare that we get that even good little practicing Buddhists, we still have to blame everybody else and feel hopeless. We reduce ourselves. That's the real consequences, in my opinion. That's the real meaning I think of it.
Vita Pires:
Yeah, that girl said she went to the bookstore after that and looked for self-help. The first book she found was the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I was attracted to that book, so I got it. And I read that.
Robina Courtin:
My God. She had something.
Vita Pires:
Yeah.
Robina Courtin:
That's amazing.
Vita Pires:
You talked about aggression. You talked about two of the three poisons. But what about the confusion and delusion of ignorance?
Robina Courtin:
Yeah, I know. Well, I think I'm because, I mean, I think if we look at it, at the surface level, that's the most primordial one. There's a misconception of a separate new universe, a separate pointable findable set in stone self in the first place. I mean, attachment is the main voice of that one. And that's a really subtle one, isn't it? I mean, the subtlest level of it.
So I know when I talk about the mind a lot, I touch on many things. And then really, if once we can understand attachment and aversion and know that the main voices of this unhappy separate bereft self, then I think, once you get going, you can start to begin to taste that one is necessarily more subtle, you know. I think. But I think the really powerful one is getting a sense of how that fantasy self doesn't exist. But I mean, that's pretty tasty. But I think the more we start with attachment and aversion and see this intimate relationship, the more we can start to get deeper. I think inside it leads to that. That's my feeling.
Vita Pires:
Because there's something about ignorance, it's like you can't. It's not really palpable because if you're if you have it, if you're caught in ignorance, you don't know.
Robina Courtin:
By definition, you don't know. Really good to say that. I think in the modern world, you know, we have these marvelous therapists and marvelous systems. But I think there's no view that would say that you can completely reconfigure the way you see yourself and completely change the sense of self, to be connected to others, and have no attachment and aversion. That almost seems too radical, you know.
I think almost in modern psychology and neuroscience, we assert a separate concrete self, you know, really a bit we can easily misunderstand the Buddhist one because then we can hear it about as if it's giving up the chucking out of the baby with the bathwater, but we understand it properly.
It's kind of liberating. I think it takes time. I think I heard the emotional hunger first. Everybody recognizes that I'm never enough, and I never have enough. It's just automatic. But that's the main voice of his ego grasping the root one, the ignorance, you know, that's the way I like to talk about it.
Vita Pires:
I mean, Buddha was like an amazing psychotherapist.
Robina Courtin:
Exactly. Precisely. The best! You're absolutely right. The best. That's lifting psychology to where it should be. Not dragging Buddha down.
Vita Pires:
They'll discover something, and they'll be like, Yeah, but I've already heard this.
Robina Courtin:
He's like an energy-based cognitive therapist. We're changing the mental constructs. You can completely change yourself. I mean, it's amazing.
Vita Pires:
I mean, I think that one of the things that were really helpful for me was learning about teaching somebody, you know, dependent origination. I mean, even though it's very complicated, and all this kind of stuff to understand the whole thing, it's just this idea that all these causes and conditions are coming together to create any given moment. It's not so overwhelming as it is liberating.
Robina Courtin:
No. It's true. It really is true. But I think that's where the skill is. I mean, I know when I first heard the teachings in the 70s in Australia and listened to Lama Zopa, it was as if he had come straight from the Middle Ages because, I mean, the irony of Tibet was kept in isolation, which was a good thing. But I mean, he was speaking straight out of the mouth of some copper in the 14th century.
So I mean, I sat there for one month, not knowing what the hell he was talking about. Knowing there was something there, I persevered. But so I think this is why it was, and this is why someone like me on any issue from the beginning, even though his English was chaotic, he just couldn't he just had this wisdom which was what these any practitioners wisdom and sees the mind, he could see the way we needed to be talked to. He just had this incredible ability to talk in a way that made sense to us.
I mean, every time, Lama has been given the intention to teach all day, every day. And then Lama Yeshi would come along at night and talk for an hour. And I would sigh with relief. I knew there was something there because of him, you know because it's psychological.
And this is where any of these Lamas when they speak all the languages that the West love, speak psychologically. They speak experientially, not just the theories, and we need that badly. It gives us courage, you know. We're gonna unpack that.
I knew them back in the 70s when I first met the lamas. That is sort of our job. We're the bridge. For whatever reason, we, you know, whatever, Americans, Australians, now like this to Buddhism in general. And it's our job to some modern kind of throw out the baby with the bathwater and then reinvent your own. You have to internalize it first. You've got to practice it. And then, you can express it in terminology that's digestible.
And that for me, I also find the one that is, I mean, you can say, Oh, we've all got Buddha Nature Sounds so theoretical. But if you say we've all got this marvelous potential, we're not set in stone. That's encouraging. And that's really what Buddha is telling us. But to use modern language is so important. Because if it's not universal, that's when I found when I first heard the teachings I was a radical feminist.
I've been a political activist for ten years. And I've felt if this was not for me if this actually was not universal, what the hell am I doing there? But if so, we've got to strip away all of our packaging, not chuck the essence out but strip away the packaging, and find the essential universal truths in this stuff if it's there. If it's there, then it's fantastic.
Vita Pires:
What would you say to somebody who was just getting started in this and they wanted to go in and he had good intentions like, I want to go in and help prisoners and volunteer? What would you say to them as advice?
Robina Courtin:
What I found over the years, even just mainly the programs we had in Serbian America because America is so vast, I would go, and when I started, I would go into prison, but then I'd travel for hours to Sacramento, from San Francisco or whatever it was. And then, because the Mexicans had a fight that day, there was a lockdown. So you have to drive for hours back.
And it was just for two hours, you know, so we found the program to really focus on was writing letters and sending books. And that's still amazing. But still, the number of people who we would have had to, at some time, might be a couple of hundred mentors, but it would change a lot because, in the beginning, people get all excited and rather patronizing. All these poor people are so "Oh, I'd love to help them." then they get bored after a while.
So really, the people who persevere. The other also what I'd say is that really, you know, want to help but not be patronizing. But then second, I mean, to even think that people in prison are different from you and me is a bizarre concept. They happen to live in a pretty disgusting house, that's all. So I found the teachings that I give in prison are not a fraction different from anything that anybody else gets because we're all the same, all human beings. So that's one. We're all human beings, and we all need to show them.
The other one is if you're going to write, you don't need to be a great scholar, just speak from your heart, and be authentic. Don't think you know more than you do. But just be authentic and be a friend. Because 99% of the people who write to us might become Buddhists, they want a friend and a mentor and a person to encourage them to show them some love. I mean, that's the thing. So just have some humility. We're all the same. And if you practice, you can help others. If you don't practice and you forget, you can't help anybody. So, if you don't practice, don't even bother.
Vita Pires:
What are your takeaways? What did you learn about yourself from working?
Robina Courtin:
I mean, for me, the main thing is the inspiration I have. I'm not trying to say that all saints. I mean, hundreds of thousands have written to us over the years. I mean, maybe that's exaggerating. 25-30-40,000, maybe over the years, written letters. And 90% don't stay. So first of all, even if we help just one of them, just think you can change your mind. I'm happy with it. First point.
But second, for me, it was learning to have admiration for people with these disgusting conditions to learn to really work with it. That's what I find so admirable. That's what I found so admirable and worthwhile. So just now, I had an email from Mitchell on death row in Kentucky. This is a White dude. Been there 35 years. He happened to have guns, and he was dealing drugs.
If you have guns and drugs, honey, people are going to die. You know, when he's on death row getting close to his death date. He's just a working-class boy, you know, man, Grandfather now. And here, he had now finally gotten his tablet for the first time, and he was able to listen to podcasts. And he heard me and the nun who's at the moment, the director of the Centre of Prison Project, Venerable Choki. She and I did a podcast with Wisdom Publications.
It was on his little machine. He could not believe it. He said, "I was in tears." It's because he was one of our moving stories. He had never heard me talk this way. He just thinks of himself as a civil dude in his own prison cell. He was so moved that he was such an inspiration for other people in the Prison Project. He was so moved by this.
That's the thing. I mean, the stories, some of this, I mean, even just talking about Sunny. He's not even a Buddhist. When you talk about people in difficult circumstances, people are moved by that. So it's the inspiration that I find. I'm not trying to patronize them. You see inspiration. When you really have nothing else and no one to turn to, you've got yourself. Buddha is telling us that, but they know that. They know that.
The food is disgusting. The house is disgusting. Your roommates, too, are probably, you know, psychopaths. It's not as if psychopaths are running in prison. We know that. But somehow, you can deal with this garbage dump environment and find your own self. How can you not be inspired by that?
Vita Pires:
Really. I hope he gets to listen to this. This will be put on a podcast. The system that puts it in.
Robina Courtin:
The last time I saw him was a couple of years ago. We were discussing it. He was getting close to his death date because he did one more appeal then he got two more years. That's how it works. That's fine. We were discussing how you would be when they executed him because he was tried and sentenced in the 80s. And even though it's now illegal, he has to be electrocuted. I mean, it's like medieval days, you know.
He's got to be tied to this chair. He said he's got to have this guy, I forget exactly, in front of him. And this guy's gonna be like one foot in front of his face six inches. He's gonna be putting, you know, electrifying his body, putting things on his head, then putting in a wet cloth, and he's been on what should I do? Should I do my own practice? Or should I try to look at him and have compassion at that time? I mean, who thinks about that when they're going to die? Do you know?
So, we talked about that, and I said one thing, just mind your own business. Let him do his job. Keep focused on your own practice. Keep focus internally, you know. That was the discussion we had. I mean, how often do you talk about how you're going to die? We don't have to think about it
Vita Pires:
In such a horrific way, with someone else doing it to you, you know.
Robina Courtin:
I know. I know. Incredible. This is the thing too. He really comes to terms with his life. He's regretted his craziness, whatever he did. He's now accepting his own reality. He's not angry. He's not resentful. He does his practice every morning at four o'clock. He does his practice every day. He does craft.
He helps the other crazy, crazy guys, you know, and he's just this relaxed, easygoing guy who's accepting his life and dealing with his reality and not looking forward to getting out. That's the thing. I mean, for many people in prison, the suffering is because they look forward to it, but he knows he's got nothing to look forward to, so he accepts his own death. He makes the most of his life.
And so, how could you not admire that? He's putting into practice what Buddha's been telling all of us. We still live in the fantasy that the next cake we'll make, the next nice book we'll make, the next holiday we'll do it. He's got none of that. It's our very rule practice. I'm not trying to make them saints. But when you're up to it, and you have anybody who's really dealing with their life and suffering and is making the most of it, you can only admire them. You can only admire it.
Vita Pires:
And so, would you be willing to lead a short meditation here just for him because we're going to play this as a podcast?
Robina Courtin:
Sure. Why don't we just do a little five-minute Chenrezig meditation? Keep it a really simple visualization. Will that do?
Vita Pires:
Great.
Robina Courtin:
Okay, I'll just make it really simple. So, okay, everybody. True meditation is something completely natural. Don't get all kinds of fancy about it. Just close your eyes, and sit up straight. Close your eyes and sit in the chair, you're not off to sleep, so we don't want that. So just do five minutes. Just sit up straight, relax, put your head steadily forward, and have your hands in your lap.
And then just for one minute, so start with just focus the mind for one minute, one minute focus the mind. So just simply pay attention to the sensation at your nose. That's it. Just focus your mind there. Do your best. Pay attention to the air going in and out of your nostrils. So just get your mindset steady for one minute. No expectations. Just watch the breath in and out for one minute.
If your mind wanders, just bring it back to the breath. Just pay attention. Okay. So now we just do our best and use our creative imagination really. Imagine in front of us the embodiment of compassion. We'll call that a Buddha. If you're familiar with Tibetan Buddhist imagery, but if not, don't worry about it. Just imagine this sort of subtle light body to radiant white light, a very blissful, very beautiful person that happens to be male, but you can't tell sometimes.
They look pretty similar. And it's just the embodiment of compassionate qualities, all the qualities of a Buddha, infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite compassion, the aspect of compassion, loving-kindness, and think of it as a mirror image of your own, showing you your own potential.
If you look at the pictures and the statues, you'll see them sitting cross-legged, anyway, but keep it simple, beautiful face, radiant. Think of it as just the embodiment of compassion. That's it. So now imagine. He sends from his brow radiant beams of white light and enter your brow, and fill you completely and completely purify, and remove all the pain and heaviness of this body of ours. But also merge and purify all the imprints in our mind, leftover from the harm we've done to the sentient beings with our bodies, you know, the ants we've killed.
I mean, the people we've harmed, the boyfriend we cheated on. Even just in this life, you know, because everything we think and do and say what Buddha says leaves an imprint on the mind, kind of programmed us. So think, you know, I'm sick of this suffering. I don't want this. So imagine full of this
blissful white light. And all these imprints, all this nonsense, the harm we've done with our bodies, and all the sickness of the body, completely annihilated this radiant white light, just imagine.
And then imagine now that whoever sees you, hears you, smells you, touches you, tastes you, but can only be benefited by your presence. Can you imagine this? Whoever sees you has contracted ants, the dogs, the birds, the humans. That can only be benefited by your body. How incredible. Imagine that. It's a marvelous potential, this white light. No longer harmed. Not possible.
Now, imagine the rising Buddha, the Buddha of compassion. He sends radio beams of red light from his throat that penetrate your throat and fill you completely. This time annihilate all the nonsense of our speech, you know? We often don't know what to say. We say the wrong things. We get confused. We don't think. And then also, the harm we've done with our speech as humans especially, isn't it? Was it our true harsh speech, bad-mouthing people behind their backs, just rabbiting on about nothing? All this nonsense that kind of drags us down, not to mention harming others.
So imagine all this completely annihilated this radiant white light fully. Also, red light, radiant red light, fills us. All the nonsense purified. Then, whoever hears me, whatever sound I say can only benefit. They say this is the kind of the main gift of the Buddha, you know, the holy being is their speech. We need speech in our daily life. It'll be a benefit to others to get the things we need to be useful. So imagine full of this blissful red light, this powerful speech, this ability to be a benefit to others, even just saying good morning. You know, subdue the emotional pain of other human beings, other sentient beings, for this power to red light.
Now, the Buddha's compassion is from his heart and the center of his chest. Radiant beams of blue light. Blue, like the sky, penetrates us and fills us. And this time fixes the mind. Annihilates all the pain and hopelessness and depression and anxiety and fears and jealousy and low self-esteem and attachment and anger. And the primordial misconception of this separate sense of a rift lonely eye. All of this nonsense, the Buddha says we've made up. This source of what we do with our body and speech harms others and therefore harms ourselves. All of these neuroses were eradicated. Imagine this radiant blue light. What he has found, these are not at the core of our being. They can be removed. They're not our true nature.
So if all that nonsense is gone, what's left? Well, that's who we really are. The wisdom that sees things as they are. The sense of connectedness with others, empathy, compassion, self-confidence, courage, and the bonus, joy. Misery comes from all those ridiculous states of mind; joy, courage, and contentment come from these positive ones. These are who we really are. So full of this marvelous, marvelous potential, our true nature, this blissful blue light.
Now, imagine that this Buddha just comes to the crown of your head. Imagine just coming to the crown of your head facing the same way as you. Just imagine. Buddha's body, speech, and mind this is my true nature. For like one minute, just kind of expand to fill the universe. Clear, vast, blissful. Just imagine my true nature. No thoughts for one minute.
Allow us to finish. We now imagine. Imagine as if we are the Buddha. We now say the mantra a few times, the Sanskrit syllables of the Buddha of compassion. They're like the sound version of this energy. And this we've seen a few times in imagining all sentient beings, and we imagine that we have the courage to never give up one to help but every single one of them. Imagine the sound going out blessing them all.
[Chanting in Sanskrit]
We just decide we're going to never give up working on ourselves, developing ourselves second by second. We're a work in progress. Never give up. One, for our own sake. Never forget that. But two, so that we can help others. That's it. Thank you.
Vita Pires:
Thank you so much for all the work you do and continue.
Robina Courtin:
Oh, you too. You're doing amazing. I love it.
Vita Pires:
It's a delight to meet you.
Robina Courtin:
Me too. I love it. This is so successful. You're doing great. Thank you so much for having me.