Devotion CD by Robina Courtin and Yantra de Vilder – ROBINA

Australian-born Tibetan Buddhist nun Robina Courtin travels the world teaching Buddhist psychology and philosophy. She is well known for her work running Liberation Prison Project for 14 years, helping people in prisons in the US and Australia with their spiritual practice, including inmates on death row.

Her life and work have been featured in the documentary films Chasing Buddha (1999, 2012) and the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Key to Freedom (2008).

Born in Melbourne in 1944, she was educated at a Catholic convent. “From the time I first went to Mass, I knew I wanted to be a priest,” she says. “But everyone laughed and said it wasn’t possible – I’d have to be a nun instead.” When she was 12, she – unsuccessfuly – begged her mother to allow her to become a nun like her hero, St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

Robina left home when she was 23 to continue studying classical singing, in London. “My mother, who was a singer and pianist and my teacher, had great hopes for me. But it was the 1960s and I ripe and ready for revolution.”

Soon she became intensely involved first in the radical left, then working full time for a London-based group that supported black and Chicano prisoners, and finally immersing herself in radical feminist politics. “I was always wanting a view, a way to understand the world.” Back in Australia in the early 1970s, she was deeply involved in the radical feminist movement in Melbourne.

“But I kept moving internally. I wasn’t satisfied and found myself wanting something spiritual again.” In her quest for a spiritual path Robina took up martial arts, continuing in New York in 1974 where she joined a women’s dojo. Back in Australia in 1976, a broken foot stopped her in her tracks and, while recuperating, attended a

Tibetan Buddhist course in Queensland given by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

“Finally I found what my mind had been searching for: a coherent way of seeing the world and practical methods for life.” She was ordained as a Buddhist nun at Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu in February 1978.

Robina had been working with people in prison since 1996. “Such inspiring work. People with nothing and no one: so much determination to work on their minds, change themselves.” A central part of Chasing Buddha is the footage of her visit to Kentucky State Penitentiary. She passed on the running of Liberation Prison Project in 2009.

She now teaches full time around the world at the centers of her teachers, Lama Yeshe and Rinpoche, for whom she has worked since her ordination in their Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, a worldwide network of Buddhist centers and activities. Over the years she has worked as editorial director at Wisdom Publications, as the editor of Mandala, the magazine of the FPMT, has served as executive director of Liberation Prison Project, and continues to edit the books of her lamas during her travels.