Vajrapani Institute
P.O. Box 2130
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
(831) 338-6654 

email Directions Map Subscribe to our email group

Venerable Robina Courtin

Venerable Robina Courtin, energetic and full of wisdom, has been a Tibetan Buddhist nun for over 20 years. She is world-renowned and well-loved for her dynamic, lively presentations. After serving for ten years as editorial director for Wisdom Publications, she created Mandala magazine, a worldwide Buddhist publication. Currently the director of the Liberation Prison Project, Venerable Robina and her staff bring Buddhism into prisons across the United States and in Australia, benefiting hundreds and hundreds of prisoners.  This prison work was profiled in the award-winning documentary, Chasing Buddha.

Robina Courtin has been a Tibetan Buddhist nun for twenty-three years. She was the editorial director of Wisdom Publications until 1987. At the end of 2000 she resigned as editor of MANDALA, international magazine of Buddhism, to increase teaching at Buddhist centers around the world. She is based in the international office of the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition) in New Mexico, USA.

Since 1997, she has run the Liberation Prison Project for Buddhist Practitioners, which works with people in prisons throughout the US, helping them with their practice and studies by writing them and sending books and tapes an other materials. She visits prisons in California, Massachusetts, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, giving teachings to groups and meeting them on-to-one. Several of these men are on death row or have life sentences, and some have been involved in gangs, both on the streets and in prison.

Robina Courtin was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up as a Catholic. She studied classical singing until her early twenties, then went to London in 1967, where she lived for four years. She became actively involved in the radical left, working mainly with a London-based support group for black and Chicano prisoners. In the early seventies she became a feminist and returned to Melbourne in 1972 to work with other radical feminists.

Robina began studying martial arts in 1974 in her quest for a spiritual path, moving to New York where she studied karate. She continuted karate in Melbourne until 1976, when she attended a Tibetan Buddhist course in Queensland given by Lma Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Venerable Robina Courtin, energetic and full of wisdom, has been a Tibetan Buddhist nun since 1978. She is world-renowned and well-loved for her dynamic, lively presentations. After serving for ten years as editorial director for Wisdom Publications, she created Mandala magazine, a worldwide Buddhist publication. Currently the director of the Liberation Prison Project, Venerable Robina and her staff bring Buddhism into prisons across the United States and in Australia, benefiting hundreds of prisoners. This prison work was profiled in the award-winning documentary, Chasing Buddha.

Robina Courtin was the editorial director of Wisdom Publications until 1987. At the end of 2000 she resigned as editor of MANDALA, international magazine of Buddhism, in order to spend more time teaching at Buddhist centers around the world.

Since 1997, she has run the Liberation Prison Project for Buddhist Practitioners, which works with people in prisons throughout the US, helping them with their practice and studies by writing them and sending books and tapes an other materials. She visits prisons in California, Massachusetts, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, giving teachings to groups and meeting them on-to-one. Several of these men are on death row or have life sentences, and some have been involved in gangs, both on the streets and in prison.

Robina Courtin was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up as a Catholic. She studied classical singing until her early twenties, then went to London in 1967, where she lived for four years. She became actively involved in the radical left, working mainly with a London-based support group for black and Chicano prisoners. In the early seventies she became a feminist and returned to Melbourne in 1972 to work with other radical feminists.

Robina began studying martial arts in 1974 in her quest for a spiritual path, moving to New York where she studied karate. She continuted karate in Melbourne until 1976, when she attended a Tibetan Buddhist course in Queensland given by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She went to Kathmandu, Nepal, eighteen months later, in November 1977, and became ordained as a Buddhist nun at Kopan Monastery in 1978.