Venerable Robina Courtin will be back in Santa Fe at The Buddhist Center from May 13 to 24, and you won’t want to miss her incredible in-person teachings!

If you have any friends or family who are interested in Buddhism but are still on the fence about it, bring them to one of her classes—she is a great teacher for beginners with her hilarious sense of humor and engaging teaching style.

*ALL EVENTS OFFERED IN PERSON AT THE BUDDHIST CENTER AND VIA ZOOM*

🕊️ A Bird Needs Two Wings: Wisdom and Compassion

Tuesday, May 13 & 20
7:00 – 8:30 pm

It is said that just as a bird needs two wings, we need both wisdom and compassion. The inner wing of our practice is wisdom, and the outer wing is compassion. That’s the action wing, the political wing, the social-work wing. When you work on your own mind, you are developing the meditative wing, wisdom. The more you do so, the more you will decrease your delusions, increase your positive qualities, and increase your own sense of happiness. Therefore, you will increase your sense of connectedness, and inevitably, you’ve got no choice but to put yourself out there to benefit others. A bird needs two wings. It’s not enough just for us to have internal practice. It’s got to be externalized. It’s an inevitable product of our practice if we’re doing the job properly.

In this course we will come to understand the methods to develop both our inner wisdom and compassion in order to be of benefit to others and ourselves.

🧘‍♀️ Morning Express

Wednesday, May 14 & 21
7:30 – 8:00 am
Start the day off right with a guided meditation by Venerable Robina Courtin.

🪷 How to Develop Bodhichitta

Wednesday, May 14 & 21
12:30-2 pm

This course invites you to explore the rich meditation traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, focusing on practices that develop compassion and loving kindness. Unlike some meditation approaches that might feel abstract or difficult to grasp, Tibetan Buddhism offers remarkably clear, step-by-step instructions that have been refined over centuries. The heart of these practices center around cultivating “bodhichitta” – an awakened heart-mind that genuinely wishes for the happiness and freedom from suffering of all beings.

These aren’t just philosophical concepts to contemplate intellectually. The course provides practical techniques that help transform your everyday mindset. You’ll learn specific meditation methods that gradually shift your natural self-concern toward a more expansive awareness of others’ well-being.

👋 Making Friends with Death 

Thursday, May 15 & 22
7:00 – 8:30 am

Imagine meeting death head on, armed with knowledge and confidence. Buddhism explains that thinking about death is not morbid, but useful, logical, and necessary because to die well (peacefully and without fear) we need to live well by leading lives based on ethics, compassion, kindness, honesty, and altruism.

In this course, we will look at what death is; what happens when one is dying, what one should do beforehand to prepare, as well as during the death process itself, and what happens after death.

☁️  Freedom Through Understanding

Friday, May 16 & 23
12:30 – 2:00 pm

Buddha says that the main source of our suffering is the delusions in our mind, such as attachment, anger, and the rest. They cause suffering because they’re distressing, but they also have the function of misrepresenting the world to us — in other words, we’re not in touch with reality. We will look at the Buddhist approach to how things exist, first conventionally — the view of karma, how the mind exists, how to develop compassion; and then ultimately — the view of dependent arising and emptiness. Getting in touch with reality is the method for achieving our own happiness and our ability to be of benefit to others.

🧘‍♀️ Morning express

Friday, May 23
7:30 – 8:00 am

Start the day off right with a guided meditation by Venerable Robina Courtin.

🍫 When the Chocolate Runs Out—weekend retreat, session 1

Friday, May 16
7:00 – 8:30 pm

“I could tell you about attachment for one whole year, but you’ll never begin to really understand it until you start to look deeply inside.” Lama Yeshe

Getting what we want, like delicious chocolate, a great job or a new partner, is our main method for achieving happiness, and we certainly work hard at it! But what if we lose it? Or what if we can’t find it? What then? Behind the world of attachment lies the origin of all our problems, according to Buddha’s teachings. We therefore need to understand exactly what it is or as Lama Zopa Rinpoche puts it, it will seem that we have to give up happiness when we heard that we have to give up attachment.

Venerable Robina Courtin will teach from Lama Yeshe’s book When the Chocolate Runs out, to explain to us what attachment is, how it promises us happiness and only delivers suffering in the long run and the real happiness we can access when we give it up.

🍫 When the Chocolate Runs Out—weekend retreat, session 2 

Saturday, May 17
10 am – 3:30 pm

Session 2 of the weekend retreat.

🍫 When the Chocolate Runs Out—weekend retreat, session 3

Sunday, May 18
10 am – 3:30 pm

Session 3 of the weekend retreat.

🙏 How to Apply the Teachings on Emptiness in Daily Life

Saturday, May 24
10:00 am – 3:30 pm

We spend our lives being seduced by the outside world, believing completely that happiness and suffering come from “out there.” But “everything we experience is our own karmic appearance,” says Lama Zopa Rinpoche. “Everything is made up by our own minds.”

By understanding emptiness — that everything occurs in dependence upon causes and conditions (in other words, karma) and that, crucially, there’s nothing intrinsic in anything that makes it what it is — we can slowly loosen the grip of ego-grasping and begin to develop our marvelous potential for clarity, contentment, love, and the other qualities that Lord Buddha says are innate within us.

Schedule:
Morning Session: 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Lunch: 12:00 to 1:30 PM
Afternoon Session: 1:30 to 3:30