Overcoming Clinging
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According to Buddha, attachment – clinging, grasping, craving – is effectively the main source of our suffering in day-to-day life. Big surprise! We usually confuse it with love, which is necessarily altruistic, and is the source of our own happiness and the capacity to help others.
Buddha’s view of the mind describes two distinct categories of states of mind: the deluded, disturbing ones – such as attachment, anger, low self-esteem and the rest – and the virtuous, spacious ones – such as love, compassion, patience, and so on.
A key function of attachment and the other delusions, and the main reason they cause suffering, is that not only do they cause us pain but they actually cause the things, the events, the people out there to appear back to us, as Lama Zopa puts it, in a distorted way. Attachment causes things to look more delicious than they really are, anger causes things to appear more ugly than they really are.
And the problem is we totally believe these appearances. This is what keeps us stuck in our misery.
As we learn to doubt the way things appear to us, we are beginning to loosen the grip of ego-grasping, the root delusion, which misrepresents the very nature of self and everything else.
About Venerable Robina Courtin
Venerable Robina Courtin is a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa tradition and lineage of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.Ordained since the late 1970s, Ven. Robina has worked full time since then for Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). 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 and work with prisoners have been featured in the documentary films Chasing Buddha and Key to Freedom. Visit her website here for more on her life and activities.
Buddha’s view of the mind describes two distinct categories of states of mind: the deluded, disturbing ones – such as attachment, anger, low self-esteem and the rest – and the virtuous, spacious ones – such as love, compassion, patience, and so on.
A key function of attachment and the other delusions, and the main reason they cause suffering, is that not only do they cause us pain but they actually cause the things, the events, the people out there to appear back to us, as Lama Zopa puts it, in a distorted way. Attachment causes things to look more delicious than they really are, anger causes things to appear more ugly than they really are.
And the problem is we totally believe these appearances. This is what keeps us stuck in our misery.
As we learn to doubt the way things appear to us, we are beginning to loosen the grip of ego-grasping, the root delusion, which misrepresents the very nature of self and everything else.
About Venerable Robina Courtin
Venerable Robina Courtin is a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa tradition and lineage of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.Ordained since the late 1970s, Ven. Robina has worked full time since then for Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). 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 and work with prisoners have been featured in the documentary films Chasing Buddha and Key to Freedom. Visit her website here for more on her life and activities.
WOMEN OF WISDOM
Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women
Over the course of a year, Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women will highlight and celebrate women teachers and practitioners in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The programs in this series spotlight the history and impact of women in Buddhism and share the wisdom stewarded by a range of female lineage holders, teachers, scholars, monastics, and lay practitioners.
The series coincides with the 35th anniversary of the founding, by two women, of Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in San Francisco. Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women hopes to contribute to ongoing efforts to support global programming featuring female Buddhist teachers and scholars and presenting topics of importance to women on the Buddhist path.
Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women
Over the course of a year, Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women will highlight and celebrate women teachers and practitioners in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The programs in this series spotlight the history and impact of women in Buddhism and share the wisdom stewarded by a range of female lineage holders, teachers, scholars, monastics, and lay practitioners.
The series coincides with the 35th anniversary of the founding, by two women, of Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in San Francisco. Women of Wisdom: Celebrating the Living Legacy of Buddhist Women hopes to contribute to ongoing efforts to support global programming featuring female Buddhist teachers and scholars and presenting topics of importance to women on the Buddhist path.
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If you're not donating at this time but would like to attend, please email [email protected].