Venerable Robina Courtin Love or Attachment? 7.3.26 Session 1

To Buddha, attachment is effectively the main source of our suffering in day-to-day life. A big surprise! We usually confuse it with love, which is necessarily altruistic. It’s 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, depression and the rest – and the virtuous, spacious ones – such as love, compassion, patience, and so on. Attachment is necessarily I-based: dissatisfaction, neediness, expectation, manipulating others to get what I want. Love, however, is other-based: open, kind, clear, the wish that others be happy. “I could tell you about attachment for one whole year,” Lama Yeshe said. “But you won’t begin to understand it until you go deeply into your own mind.” How do we distinguish them? That’s the key to practice. Through meditation, becoming our own therapists, as Lama says, we can learn to unpack and unravel our emotions and lessen attachment and the other delusions and grow love, compassion and the rest — for our own sake and the sake of others. We are delighted that Venerable Robina was able to join us again at the centre in March 2026. We are most fortunate that she keeps coming back to teach. If you enjoyed the teachings please do consider making a donation. It helps us to keep the Dharma flowing and be available for all. You can make a donation and find out about all our Buddhist teachings, practices and Wellbeing events through our website www.jamyangleeds.co.uk