Co-hosted with the Shantideva Center

Wednesday, January 7th

6:30-8pm ET

Hybrid | $25

These monthly Buddhist teachings with Ven Robina Courtin include a 90 minute dharma talk on a variety of subjects, including a question and answer period at the end of the lecture. On January 7th, the lecture featured is...

 The Essential Buddhist Teachings of Wisdom and Compassion

The Buddha described wisdom and compassion as being the two wings of the bird of awakening. We need wisdom to understand the workings of our own mind and to discern between skillful and unskillful thoughts. We need compassion to transform our discerning thoughts into generative action motivated by the desire to alleviate our own suffering and the suffering of others. 

Venerable Robina Courtin will discuss how wisdom supports us in developing ourselves to be a “suitable vessel” to embody the Bodhisattva path of compassion. She provides a framework to understand how compassion arises out of wisdom, and within this framework, she also touches on the concept of karma, the importance of self-love, the three poisons, Buddhist psychology versus Western psychology, and the Buddhist perspective on compassion fatigue. Venerable Robina Courtin creates a space for us to consider what our relationship is like with ourselves (wisdom), what our relationship is like with others (compassion), and how these two wings support our bird of awakening to take flight.