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Ven. Robina Courtin leading a Vajrasattva Retreat at Peter Canisius House, Pymble, New South Wales, Australia, September 2018. Photo by Vajrayana Institute.
Vajrayana Institute, a FPMT center just outside of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, organized a Vajrasattva retreat with Ven. Robina Courtin that took place at Peter Canisius House from August 28-September 2, 2018. Anna Carmody, a long-time FPMT student who attended the retreat, shares the story.
“Listen to these teachings as if you are hearing this for the first time,” Ven. Robina Courtin instructed the thirty-six students gathered for a six-day residential and non-residential Vajrasattva retreat at a Jesuit retreat center in the leafy outskirts of Sydney, Australia.
Most of the students were able to take this as a residential retreat, a chance to get away from the responsibilities and pressures of everyday life. Students enjoyed relaxing indoors in the lounge and dining hall. Outside—it was spring in the southern hemisphere—students relaxed on the lawn, wandered through the gardens, walked the labyrinth, and contemplated in the garden’s holy nooks.
Discussion groups meeting outside of Peter Canisius House, Pymble, New South Wales, Australia, September 2018. Photo by Vajrayana Institute.
This was a gathering of old and new friends. Many of the students had attended other teachings offered by Ven. Robina, in person or online. Several had been on pilgrimage with Ven. Robina.
Even so, there was work to do. This was a Vajrasattva retreat, a chance to uncover, understand, and do something about our negative emotions. It was an opportunity to purify our negative deeds, and learn how to stop creating negative karma, or at least make a start at it.
Ven. Robina shared a Tibetan saying, “Nothing gets more difficult with practice,” as as she navigated students through each of the topics of the lamrim, meanwhile explaining its connection to the powerful Vajrasattva practice and the four opponent powers.
Apart from the wonderful teachings and guided meditations, there was morning meditation with Ven. Gwen Drolkar, who worked tirelessly as Ven. Robina’s attendant. We also had discussion groups that wrestled with the task of applying these topics: the law of cause and effect, so fundamental to the Buddha’s teachings; dependent origination; and the role of the delusions in our everyday life. This was a time to work out how these teachings applied to us, and to see our life through Buddha’s teachings, not through any other theory or philosophy.
Students engaged in discussion at Peter Canisius House, Pymble, New South Wales, Australia, September 2018. Photo by Vajrayana Institute.
And then there were inspiring stories of our teachers and their dedicated students. Although we were in the large, quite formal teaching and meditation hall, it was like being a child again, sitting around the kitchen table listening to your aunties, laughing and wondering at life itself.
To inspire us further, Ven. Robina also read from Lama Thubten Yeshe’s book Mahamudra: How to Discover Our True Nature. Advice was offered for daily practice. Many students took the opportunity to avail themselves of private sessions and Ven. Robina’s generous and insightful advice.
At the very last teaching, after offering a thanksgiving mandala, Vajrayana Institute invited Ven. Robina to return to Sydney in 2019 for another residential retreat. She graciously accepted the invitation.
For more information about Vajrayana Institute, visit their website:
https://vajrayana.com.au/
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