Buddhist Talks by Venerable Robina Courtin

Ranjith Daluwatta

Robina Courtin was raised in Melbourne in a large Catholic family. When she was four years old she told her parents she wanted to be a priest. They told her that wouldn’t be possible. But Robina continued to be a seeker. At twenty-three years old, she arrived in London, ripe and ready for revolution and got involved in the radical left, black politics, and feminism. After an accident drew her to Buddhism, in 1978 Robina was ordained as one of the first western nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She began editing Buddhist publications and teaching. Then a young prisoner in a Californian jail wrote to Robina asking her some questions about the Buddha. His letter began an enormous enterprise called the Liberation Prison Project which has helped more than 20 000 prisoners around the world. MORE