Tara Brach - Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering - This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn (to participate you will need a 20" red string.) A verse from Ryokan, an eighteenth-century Zen poet, came to mind: "To find the Buddhist law, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves."

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. A happy new year to all that are here and all that have joined us on the live stream and all those that are coming in at some other point in time through the podcast. I thought maybe I'd begin with one of my favorite of the Zen stories where a novice approaches the Zen Abbott and asks the question that's been plaguing him and the question is, what happens after we die? And the Zen Abbott said, I don't know.

And the monk is very upset by that and he said, I thought you were a Zen priest, a Zen abbot. And the response was, I am, but not a dead one. And it's a person. And it's a Zen priest. And it's, It's such a universal that we try to figure out our lives. We try to control things by having some clear, solid understanding of what's going on. And as we know, our best laid plans, and how much we figure out and arrange and plan and anticipate, these bodies do what these bodies do and these emotions play themselves out and my God, other people do what they do. it's out of control, right?

And this is true, it's out of control even for those in the most dominant positions in the dominant culture. And I was thinking of this cartoon, I saw some while back of these two metal bedecked generals and they're striding down the hall of the Pentagon and one's turn to the others and he says, it really shook me up. I dreamed the meek inherited the earth. I really like that cartoon. So no matter the apparent power or control, no matter who's on top, whether it's, you know, the dinosaurs or the pharaohs in Egypt or the Ottoman Empire, it all passes.

Our childhood has passed. It all passes. There's another cartoon where the Grim Reaper is a patient and the psychiatrist is sitting there and the Grim Reaper's on the couch and the Grim Reaper is saying, I'm sorry, Doc, but it's your time that's up. So it all goes and we can't control it. And I think William James summed it up in a wonderful way when he said that the beginning of all religions,

the first words of all religions were really help. You know, we're these vulnerable beings that anticipate our mortality and on some level we're trying to figure out how to make it through, how to deal with things. So we navigate uncertainty, every one of us, whether it's the divorces or our own body's illness or someone we love, sick or betrayal's wounds, we're navigating and I think we have inside us this deep inquiry of what really helps, you know, what really, really helps. And in Buddhism and in most religions, what really helps and when I'm using the language

of true refuge, what's our true refuge, has three expressions. And when I wrote the book True Refuge, I was fascinated to find these kind of three arctipal gateways to refuge existed in so many places. And one of the arctipal refuges is awareness, that we turn towards and we occupy awareness. And that is a refuge, that pure wakeful awareness. Another refuge is described as truth. We take refuge in the truth of the moment, what's really happening. A third refuge is thought of as love.

take refuge in our relationships. And in Buddhism this is Buddha, which is awareness, Dharma, truth, and Sangha love. So we're going to explore these three pathways and how they're relevant to us in our daily life when we're stuck. And we'll explore them and then at the end as I mentioned earlier to those of you right here we'll do a ritual that allows us to move through in the days and weeks to come with more remembrance of true refuge because we forget. And I often think of the spiritual path, like one of the ways we can most elegantly understand

the spiritual path as remembering and forgetting. I mean how many of you noticed maybe even today that you got caught in something and you're kind of in a trance and in us more small-minded or grim place and something reminded you and things opened up a little and you don't have to raise your hands but you get the idea. We lose it, we lose ourselves in a smaller identity in stories and reactivities and then something reminds us. It might be beauty or it might be something really sad. You know, it might be that we just got quieter and there was a little more space but in some we reconnect with a larger, more awake perspective.

So one of the things I find very helpful in exploring the path of true refuge is to shine a light on that trance when we go into forgetting and at those times we're taking what I call false refuge and what I mean by that is not we're doing something bad but But the activity of forgetting, the ways we try to get away from ourselves or make things feel better or take care of our feeling of insecurity, that part of us crying help, prevents us from the path of remembering. It keeps us stuck. So we shine a light on it and the signs of false refuge.

You'll know you're taking false refuge if you feel contracted, if you feel contracted, if you feel separate if you feel like you're in some kind of small self that you really don't like and doesn't feel okay. That means you're taking false refuge. That means you're caught in the forgetting, the signs of true refuge. It's a kind of homecoming that we intuit when we're experiencing it where we feel in integrity, we feel sincere, feel more open, more connected. that too, we intuit and we know. There's a resonance that we feel.

So how do we take false refuge? Well, it can often be described as there's the grasping, the false refuges of grasping and the false refuges of aversion and that's more Buddhist psychology, that dichotomy. But it's a useful one that we're taking false refuge when we're doing any of our addictive behaviors of kind of trying to consume, to numb or taking what gives us certain types of highs to get us away from the feelings in our body we don't like. We're grasping when we're seeking approval, which most of us do. I mean if you think of some interaction in the last few days and you actually slow down

and look closely at it, you can begin to sense how much of what you were expressing was for the sake of having a certain response versus that real spontaneity. We do a lot to get approval. That's part of the grasping. We do different things to get attention. I saw another cartoon. I'm big on cartoons right now. This guy is sitting on a cloud in heaven with his angel wings on, he's on his cell phone,

and he's saying, hello, Doc, this is the hypochondriac. Guess where I'm calling from? One of our false refuges is striving for perfection, just this idea of how we're supposed to be and grasping after it. So you might take a moment to scan. So we're going to keep checking in tonight and just for yourself close your eyes and just sense in these last few days and know that we all have until we're free, have ways of seeking refuge that are actually from the forgetting part of us, part of being in a trance driven

by our limbic system. So just notice for yourself when you were chasing after a certain high or food or attention, chasing after accomplishment, chasing after being right, proving yourself. And for now just notice the signs of false refuge of forgetting. What's the sense of yourself? when you're chasing after, when you're grasping for something, wanting something more, wanting something different, do you like yourself? So we begin to get to know our false refuge is the other whole domain of false refuge is

the false refuge of resisting and aversion, all the different ways that we judge, the different ways that we avoid things, the mistrust, the aggression. And we'll scan also, but it's both in our individual lives and of course it's in the culture, the false refuge of being aggressive and attacking and so on. I'm recalling an alleged radio conversation between a U.S. naval ship and a Canadian authorities. This was off the coast of Newfoundland many years ago. And here's how the recording went. Americans, they're saying, please divert your course 15 degrees to the north

to avoid a collision. Canadians. Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Americans. This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Canadians, no, I say again,

you need to divert your course, Americans more sternly. This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15 degrees north, and that's 1.5 degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Canadians, this is a lighthouse. Your call. So much for aggression. So again, let's do a little quick.

scan for ourselves and just sense, just notice today, yesterday, when your false refuges, your ways of trying to control things were in the form of aversion, resistance, judging, aggressing, some way lashing out, keeping in mind that part of it is done against ourselves. So when you turn against yourself in a critical way, that's a false refuge. Again as you reflect, just to get familiar with the sign of it, just another, okay, so this is forgetting, this is the forgetting trance. What does it feel like? What's the sense of yourself when you're pursuing false refuge?

Can you sense how you feel contracted and separate? okay. Just to keep note of that, it will keep going, you can continue to sit with your eyes closed if it feels more contemplative to you or your eyes open either way. When I wrote True Refuge and my motivation to writing the book was because I was in my own version of help. I was spiraling downhill in an illness I am much better now but at that point it was total of six years of really losing a lot of.

of physical capacity and my false refuges during that time were obsessing on how I, how could I fix myself, judging myself for not being a good patient like I was, here I was a spiritual person but I was being impatient and I was being irritable with people around me and so on. I was constantly trying to fix what was wrong rather than just be with what was there and I I remember at one point really pausing and getting touch with a lot of vulnerability and my prayer was no matter the circumstances right now, may I love fully, may I awaken this heart and mind.

And it was a prayer for refuge. It's like there was an inquiry in there as how can I love fully, how can I awaken through this? And for me the motivation in writing the book was it became so clear. clear that yes, do whatever I could medically to take care of myself, but in a deep way, if I wanted to really love life and wake up, I needed to know how to remember to turn towards the awareness that's here, turn towards the truth of this moment, refuge in the moment, and turn towards love. I needed to do that. It was the only way I was going to answer that cry

for help inside me in a way that was liberating. So that motivated me to write the book and one of the metaphors that most appealed to me as I was thinking of these three refuges was really of awareness as this ocean of our being. It's vast, depth beyond telling, open, includes all awareness. And that Dharma the truth is these waves that come and it's a living reality. It's like moment to moment can we be aware of the waves that are here. And love or sangha was really the ocean cradling the waves. It was the relationship between the waves realizing it's all water, it's part of the same oneness,

that love that comes up with that. That metaphor helped me is like really taking refuge in living, loving awareness. That's the way I was thinking about it. We're going to take them one at a time and practice with each of them. And I'm going to shift the order around because when we are learning to meditate, when we're learning to take refuge, we begin usually with the waves. You have to be somewhat quiet to start with refuge in awareness. It seems really abstract if you haven't practiced being with the waves.

So we start with what we call refuge in Dharma are the truth of the moment. And with each refuge, you'll find it useful, especially if you want to go deeper into this, to think of it as if there's an outer refuge and an inner refuge. And I'll explain the difference. The outer refuge, if you're taking refuge in the Dharma or the path, the outer refuge are all the different ways that help you come into the present moment, all the teachings, all the books, all the practices, whatever it is, the retreats, the podcasts, the podcasts, whatever helps you, oh yeah, remember, let's be right here in the moment.

That's the outer refuge, whatever helps to remember presence. The inner refuge is this pausing and really coming into the moment in our body right here and now. And the key step if you want to authentically take refuge in the Dharma in the truth is to wake up from the stories in your mind, to wake up from the stories and come into the aliveness that's right here, right in the body. It's the willingness to feel and it can decondition decades and I mean decades of habits of addiction, habits of reactivity, habits of avoiding intimacy.

If you take refuge in just this moment and say, okay. What's happening right here and now? You can begin to heal. The key is self-compassion. You can't take refuge in the waves if you don't do it with kindness towards the waves. So let me give you an example. For one friend, this is a woman with tremendous amount of childhood trauma and abuse and then addiction that came after that, she thought the path was very bare bones, that as much as possible

every time she'd have a story of, and usually the stories were what could go wrong around the corner, why she couldn't trust things, what was wrong with her, no matter what the story was, the practice was come out of the story, come in as much as possible to just breathe with and feel what's here with, and when I go like this with my hands, it's with kindness. It was that basic over and over and over again, out of the story, into my body, breathing with kindness. This is refuge in the Dharma. This is right coming into the present moment.

I want to read to you something she wrote, I think about two years ago. 14 years ago today, I sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser in blazing Texas heat, trying not to vomit and praying that God would just take me on the spot because I knew my life was over, finished, ruined. I did not get sober by choice and this path of recovery certainly hasn't been easy and sometimes has been quite imperfect. But the view is very different today than it was on that hot August day in 2003. and I'm very, very grateful for it, for all of it, it's all beautiful.

This is what's possible with refuge in the Dharma. It can radically rearrange our life and it's challenging. It takes a real courage, it takes a willingness to feel. And if there's any takeaway about this refuge of Dharma, it's willing to feel. and a lot of us are dissociated so it takes patience in coming into our bodies. But one woman writes, I'm an example that you can teach old cats new tricks. At almost 80 I'm finally learning how to live above the line.

She means above the line of unconsciousness to consciousness. I'm becoming more at peace. As a widow of many years, I am finding joy and happiness in being who I am. refuge in the Dharma. So let's practice, okay? To close your eyes. Taking a moment to bring to my recent pattern of reactivity where you got angry or hurt or frightened. It might have been with others, might have been at work. And notice what you were believing, what stories might have been going on around it,

who's right, who's wrong, what's happening, what it means about, what it means about. out you or your value, just anything you can sense on the level of story and then consciously choose to wake up out of the story and come into this body and breathe and feel, sense the throat, the chest and the belly, the Dharma, the waves, the truth are a very embodied experience. One teacher said, meet your edge and soften. You just breathe with and you might add a hand on the heart and offer some kindness as my friend did because unless we have that heart space we really can't be with the waves.

The heart space gives us room meeting our edge and softening and just notice even as you begin to take this refuge of Dharma, coming into the present moment, the sense of your being when you start remembering, breathing, meeting your edge and softening and being here. Can you sense more space, more tenderness, more presence? You can keep your eyes closed for a few moments and I'll share that when I did this practice when I was sick because this was taking refuge and presence was really, really essential. It was very hard because I was coming into the waves of a sick body so it did not feel good and I remember being at the hospital for a week at one point and that phrase meeting my edge

and softening really helped. Every time I would come out of my thoughts, and come into my body and feel the fear of what was going on and the grief about it. I just tell myself, meeting my edge and softening, hand on my heart. And it was really like I went from this forgetting place where I was avoiding and obsessing into a quality of presence that really felt like I was coming back home to who I was. During that time another reflection I had was from the Zen poet Ria Khan who writes that to find the truth drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves, entrusting yourself to the waves.

The last few moments as you sit, whatever's going on inside you right now, you might sense, okay, refuge in the Dharma and the truth of this moment, can I entrust myself to the waves? Can I just let go into the waves just for these few moments? The second of the refuges, first is Dharma or the truth of the present moment, the second is described as Sangha or the relational world in love. And the outer refuge in love is turning towards all those relationships that help us actually experience connection and love and open-heartedness and oneness. And in our alienating society, as we know, there's very few modes of natural intimacy and connection. We so often have a sense

of the others as an unreal other. Somebody just handed this one to me recently. A grasshopper walks into a bar seeking some contact and some community and the bartender says, hey, we have a drink named after you." And the grasshopper looks rather pleased and surprised and asks, you have a drink named Steve? Not much intimacy in this world. So then we have a story from Andreas Shah and he writes this about the Sufis. He says a certain Bektashi Dervish, a Sufi was respected for his piety and his holiness and whenever anybody would ask him how he had awakened in this way he would say,

I know what is in the Quran. Well, one day a newcomer came to the coffee house where he would hold forth and he wasn't familiar with all of them and how they did their ritual but he said, okay, what is? What's in the Quran? And the response was in the Quran there are two press flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah at the very center of spiritual life is friendship, his kindness. is a heart openness towards each other. And so refuge in Sangha or in love is consciously bringing our attention to our relationships.

And for some of us it's to relationships in a meditation community or it might be a 12-step community or another form of healing community or church. In our Buddhist Sanghas we have what are called Kaliana Mita groups, our spiritual friends groups that meet every other week and share about their lives and it's all grounded in the teachings and the practices. And most intimately it's with our friends and our colleagues that are awakening together that remind each other of our goodness and support each other. As at a retreat recently and one woman described how over the holidays she was with her

now adult child who said to her at one point, you know I have to say, I always knew you loved me and I feel like that's why I know I'm basically okay. And for this woman who had the normal self-doubt about was I a good enough mother, it melted her, melted her self-doubts. That was Refuge in Sanga and we need to tell each other because we forget. I mean if we knew how powerful our words were and our touch and our expressions when we're in some way sending care, if we knew, we just wouldn't hold back our love, truly. One friend of ours of the community here, fellow teacher, had major heart surgery about three

years ago, very much knew the wrist she was entering in on and reflected on what she wanted to communicate to dear ones as if it was the last time she could ever share with them. And so she said, inquiring within at this time of stillness, I'm asking myself, what's the most important message and it's this, simply this, be kind, be kind to yourselves, to one another, to all living things and to our dear Mother Earth, and let that kindness bloom into action. This is refuge in Sanga in love and it's an important inquiry. what would your last message be?

You know, if you were at the end of your life looking back, how would you want to be living today or tonight? How would you want your next interaction with a human to be if you knew or an non-human animal, if you knew really the power of your words, your expressions, your touch? What would matter? So at our refuge, we bring more consciousness to our relating. A number of people now are forming rain partners. It's something that people are getting a lot of benefit from where we bring our challenges and process them in pairs

in a way that helps each other remember I'm not alone and feel supportive. I know in workshop groups whenever we explore this, we explore our fears, there's this waking up realization of It's not my fear, it's the fear, which is so freeing. So the outer refuge, conscious relating, the inner is the reflections in any moment that directly wake up loving presence. So let's take a moment again as we have and we're going to reflect now on the second of the three refuges. Refuge in Sunga.

And as you close your eyes, you might listen to the words of Henri Nguyen, Catholic theologian, priest, wise being. He says when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find it's those who instead of giving advice, solutions or cures have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with warm and tender hand. the friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness.

That is a friend who cares. So can we be that for others? Can we let others hold that space for us? And can we be that for our inner life? So as you reflect on refuge in Sangha, in love, you might bring to mind someone you love where the relationship's not too complicated, someone that you can feel a sense of belonging with. And this could include that someone could be a pet or someone who's no longer alive, a very young being, a very old being and sense what it is you love about this being.

In other words, let yourself sense their goodness, sense yourself feeling loved, what that being looks like when they're expressing their goodness, their love, their care, their aliveness, since the quality of togetherness you feel, that being with feeling, who you are in relationship with and feel it in your body. Feel the goodness and the warmth in your heart. You might imagine reminding each other of your goodness what it would be like if you let that person know how they would feel if they knew how you felt. Feel the connections, the warmth and know that this is refuge in love.

You might sense who you are, your sense of your own being when you're feeling it, sense a sign of true refuge. Enlarged, open, tender, Mary Oliver writes, so every day, so every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. We're exploring refuge in the Dharma, truth which is entrusting to the waves, love, sensing We're all waves connected, belonging to an ocean. We'll move on now to the third refuge we're exploring together. This one is awareness or Buddha nature. You can listen with your eyes closed or open.

So the outer refuge is any expression of awareness or Buddha nature through others. It could be the historical Buddha or Christ or some bodhisattva of compassion, the divine mother, or any wise, loving teacher, friend, healer that to you expresses Buddha nature. You can kind of see that spirit and that luminosity shining through. So that in the outer refuge they're reminding you. Like we would bow before a statue of the Buddha and sense that spirit just because it reminds us of our own awake awareness. That's the point of the outer refuge.

The inner refuge of taking refuge in the Buddha is really directly turning back and sensing this awareness that's right here inside of us in this moment. Now when we're stuck, if you're moving through your day and you're caught in feeling jealous or caught in feeling judgmental or caught in feeling angry at somebody, it's very hard to say, okay, I'm going to turn my attention and sense the luminosity of my own, unbound awareness. It just doesn't work like that. You're already contracted and fixated outward. So you need a bridge. And that's why the outer refuge is really a very powerful and beautiful pathway to the inner experience of Buddha nature.

I'll give you one example of a woman that very much inspired me in terms of using that bridging to the inner refuge of awareness. And this is a woman whose daughter for a number of years was addicted to heroin and in and out of treatment centers and each round she'd get cleaned up and then she'd relapse and her mom would save her again with the money and just housing and so on, very amashed and for this woman her false refuge was trying to control it by saving her and making it easier for her and it just wasn't working. And so she, instead of doing that, she decided that she had to take true refuge by really surrendering this into the hands of something larger.

I mean her ego self could not control her daughter's fate. So her way of the outer expression of Buddha nature was her sense of the divine feminine, the mother of the universe. And she would kind of go like this with her hands and say. say take it, I can't, I'm too small, just take this, all of this and not like getting rid of it but hold it, calling on something larger to hold it all, the wisdom and the love and the deep, deep, radiant space of the divine feminine. So she would do that and kind of hand over, surrender herself into that until she felt

a sense like she was belonging to that. She was belonging to the goddess of the universe. She had more space and in that space all the grief that had been plugged up could begin to surge up and be felt and she wept for several weeks but there was space for it. She was belonging to something larger. There was a remembering of a bigger truth of who she was. She was more than that totally panicked mother that was trying to control things. So there was still fear and still currents of grief but she was resting in a larger space

of who she was in a larger awareness. And from that place she could be very compassionate towards her daughter but absolutely hold the kind of boundaries that were necessary and because I know how the story unfolded her daughter had to hit a bottom when her mother did not do the flinch response and and it actually has found her way out and is working with young women who are struggling. This is refuge in the Buddha, meaning refuge in Buddha nature in awareness using that bridge but then finding out actually that's who we are. We can all take refuge in Buddha nature and when our minds get quieter and there are times

we get quieter and you can start sensing the same. space between the thoughts, you can sense in that space a certain luminosity so that even as you sit here right now you can sense that there is a presence that's listening right now. There's an awareness that's looking through these eyes. There's a dimension, a formless dimension in the background, a kind of inner stillness that's listening. And the more you get a glimpse of that, the more you kind of turn the attention and sense that space of awareness itself, the more you're remembering really the empty, awake essence of who you are. So you might just take a moment now to close your eyes again

and we'll just explore this refuge in Buddha nature and then we're going to actually do the refuge ceremony. You might call on a few people. figure that expresses to you what the enlightened heart mind of a Buddha is. And it could be the figure of a Buddha or bodhisattva or spiritual figure. It could be someone you know who you sense their wakefulness, their open-heartedness, their wisdom. You might imagine the mind and heart of this awake being filling you. Just imagine that the spirit, the awareness,

is the awareness that's filling you and just sense its vastness and its lucidity. Imagine the heart, letting that warmth and sensitivity fill you. So you're really allowing that loving presence to surround and soak into you and feeling how that tenderness and that radiance that all-inclusive awareness can be living inside you right now. You might feel your body and heart and mind light up as if you're all-inclusive awareness, you can be living inside you right now. if the sunlight sky is suffusing every cell of your body, shining through the spaces between the cells, rest and awareness. Just be the silence that's listening right now.

The stillness that's receiving a sensation, the openness that everything's happening in. This space of awake awareness is your home. the waves that are occurring, the experiences of sound and sensation, the truth, the Dharma, the tenderness that can include all of them, that can sense your human beingness and the others in your life, that vast tenderness, that's Sanga, love. So keeping these in mind, these beautiful pathways of homecoming, of remembrance, We're going to begin now with our ceremony. You might open your eyes for a few moments just to give you a little bit of background to

this. First of all, you might start feeling this string in your hands. So in Buddhist Asia and in Hindu countries, the thread, this thread is a symbol of blessing. And blessing is anything that helps you come home to love, truth, awareness. And it's considered to be this red is the thread from a monk's robe. That's the way it's imagined. And it's described as kind of a protection cord. And one Tibetan teacher was asked, well, what does it protect you from?

And the response was, why yourself, of course. So you're really being protected from the forgetting, from the ego or trance state of forgetting. And that means all the ways of grasping and resisting. Another way it's described that is when you wear this and we'll be wearing it, you can either choose to wear it around your neck and then you'd be putting it like this but don't do it yet, or you can wear it around your wrist and then you can have to wrap it a bunch of times. Either way you do it, it's considered that rather than being in the monastery you're in the

marketplace and you're basically a monk or a nun in drag wearing your cord. So this is a way of taking refuge and remembering and what we're going to do is reflect on each of the refuges more briefly than we did just now in our reflections through the talk and with each reflection we're going to tie a knot in the cord but you're going to need to tie the final knot to have it affixed to your body you're going to need somebody else to help So I'd like to invite you to do this standing up, so come standing up, if you will.

And if you could, before you start, find yourself a partner so you know who's going to be tying the final knot. And so you just want one person nearby and if the people near you are in partners, just join a pair. You can join a pair. Three is okay. You just have to take turns. Okay? Okay.

Is anybody missing a partner? Because remember, you can do it in threes, but not fours. That'll take too long. Okay, good. All right, so bring your attention inward again. We begin and we're going to do the traditional order from the Buddhist path, which is, I take refuge in the Buddha and sense what that means to you. Taking refuge in the examples of Buddha nature.

those luminous beings through history from all traditions everywhere that have helped pass on the light, the teachings, those that are living today, that are very awake and help us wake up, and most basically that inner refuge of Buddha nature, you're taking refuge in your own awakening heart mind in that awareness. that's becoming more and more conscious, lucid, and free. And as you feel your dedication to taking refuge in the awareness that's here now and always, your natural awareness, please tie the first knot into the cord. The second of the refuges is refuge in Sanga, a refuge in loving relationship.

And here we reflect on our intention to bring increasing consciousness to our relationships that they might serve us, serve each other, in awakening together, awakening our hearts and minds, reflecting our goodness and holding a space when there's difficulty. In the deepest way we sense taking refuge in that loving awareness, that experience of tenderness and openness, that all-inclusive heart that really embraces our world with love. And as you feel your commitment to taking refuge in love, to taking refuge in loving relationship, please tie the second knot into your cord. For all my good intentions I got the order mixed up anyway.

We've just done Sangha so we're now going to do Dharma. makes it more authentic when it's like this. So now we reflect on taking refuge in the Dharma and the Dharma is known as the path, the truth, very living reality of this moment-to-moment experience. So we take refuge in the Dharma in an outer way by committing ourselves to the classes and the reading and the practices that help us wake up presence. And you'll be taking refuge in the deepest way in Dharma as you dedicate yourself to deepening presence right here and now in your moments. So sensing that dedication towards presence as you're ready, please tie the final knot

into the cord. And with the tying of the three knots, the three, our typical pathways home, we've charged these cords in some way. They're alive. These are living reminders for us as we move through our day. And you might gently put the cord if you'd like it around your neck, put it behind your neck so that the outer edges are available to your partners or else you might, alternately as I mentioned, wrap them around your wrist.

so that you can have it more like a wrist bracelet. And then turning towards your partner or your two partners, first one person will, this is all in silence. One person will tie one person's final knot and then turn and just take turns until everybody's knots are done. When you're done silently thank your partners and take your seats for the very final part of our ritual and once you've taken your seat you might close your eyes and sense how you want this refuge ceremony and this protection cord to serve you in the days and weeks to come. Some people don't keep the string on but they put it down an altar somewhere as a reminder when they get home. It can be done in many ways and to in our final way honor

our process here. We'll chant the, and you have the sheets here, we'll chant the three refuges in Polly and don't worry at all about pronunciation. Just chant along. It's really your sincerity that counts. So please join me. Namotasa, Bhagawatu, Arrahatu, Samasam Budasa. Namotasa, Bhagawatha, Arhahatu, Samasam Bhudas Budam Seraanam Gaujami, Damang Serenam Gaucemi,

Sangam serenam Gaucemi Duttiampi, Buddha's seranam Gaucemi Duttiampi Damaan Seraanam Dukami Dutiampi Sarenam Gautiampi, Bhudam Seraanam Gauti, Tatiampi Dhaman Seraanam Gautchami, Tatiampi Sangam Seraanam Gautchami. May we be blessed to remember

the awareness that's always and already here, this luminous presence. May we be blessed to remember the present moment, this living wave of experience, and may we be blessed to remember the love that holds our life. May all beings be blessed to remember this loving presence, to live from loving presence. May all beings be peaceful. May there be peace on earth. May there be peace everywhere. May all beings awaken and be free.

Namaste and blessings. Thank you. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.