The ultimate goal of the Buddhist path is enlightenment – the ultimate happiness. If you are new to Buddhism, during this weekend course with Ven. Robina Courtin you will get a good idea of what the Buddhist practice is all about and which elements of it you could use to bring more joy and balance into your life. If you are a more experienced student, use this course as a way to get the big picture of the path and to understand, where you are at the moment.

Buddha’s teachings have been nicely packaged by the Tibetans, in particular Lama Tsong Khapa’s tradition, into a graduated path called the lam-rim. In the lam-rim the essential points of Buddha’s extensive explanations of psychology and philosophy are extracted and presented from A to Z in such a way that they can be internalized, experienced as something relevant to one’s life – which is the point of all the teachings.

By meditating on Buddha’s views again and again and from many angles, we are compelled to reassess at ever deeper levels the fundamental assumptions that we hold as truths and that Buddha has shown to be completely untrue. Buddha says that the extent to which these assumptions are out of sync with how things actually are is the extent to which we suffer and the extent to which, therefore, we harm others. Thus, a consequence of practice is the ending of suffering, nirvana – a psychological state of total, never-ending happiness and peace for the benefit of all beings.