Tara Brach - Gateways of Remembrance: The Three Refuges (2016-01-06)

Episode Date: January 9, 2016

Gateways of Remembrance: The Three Refuges (2016-01-06) - This talk explores the traditional refuges of awareness (buddha nature), truth (dharma) and love (sangha) that are at the heart of Buddhism, and found in many spiritual and religious traditions. It includes a look at our false refuges - strategies that seek to comfort and gratify, but are temporary fixes - and moves into reflections that help us remember, trust and live from our true nature.  (Concludes with a ceremony tying red cords in remembrance of the refuges.)

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. I'd like to start this first class of the new year with a story that I've always loved and it's about a diamond thief who was an absolute fabulous pickpocket and what he'd do is he'd hang around the diamond district and when somebody would come and buy a diamond he'd just follow them and always managed to get it from them so a very wealthy well-known diamond merchant came to town and this guy said ah he's my target and he bought the most beautiful diamond imaginable and so the thief followed him and he boarded a train and took a three-day journey

and he kept trying to pick the merchant's pocket and a patient's the diamond, but by the end of the journey, he hadn't found the gems. So he was really frustrated because he was an accomplished thief. He had some pride in himself. So he actually confronted the guy and he confessed. He said, look, I've used every skill of my art. How did you hide it from me? Where did you put it? And so the merchant said, well, I saw you and I suspected what was happening. So I hid the diamond in the place you'd most likely look to find it. I hid it in your own pocket. So the teaching is an obvious one, which is that the treasure we seek is closer than we can

imagine. The treasure we seek, what we're all longing for is not in the future, it's not down the road, it's not outside of us. It's in the awareness and heart that's right here. and the perhaps one of the best understandings of the spiritual path is that it's forgetting and remembering that every one of it doesn't matter how long we've practiced and been on the path we all kind of go into trance we forget that's true and we get into kind of our habitual activities and then there's a remembering like oh pause it's here so one of the ways of

thinking about us that we're out trying to chase after the diamond and have to keep remembering it's inside and Thoreau put it this way, he said you spend your life fishing only to realize it's not fish that you're after, you know. So how do we do it? We look at any day and we can see how much time we're planning things and worrying about things and trying to check things off the list and it's so easy in our preoccupation to go through really long swaths of time and forget that what matters to us is feeling connected, feeling at home,

feeling a sense of gratitude, being alive. There's a cartoon I like and it's a graveyard and there's the thought bubble that's coming out of the grave and the thought bubble is saying, I think I know what I want to do with my life. And the captain underneath is Ed pushes the late bloomer envelope to surprising new limits.

So remembering what matters. And I think of it like all of the practices we do, whatever path we're on, all the rituals and ceremonies, are always about remembering. They're always about re-waking us up out of trance so we remember what we cherish. So we get more aligned with our hearts. So tonight we're going to be exploring what are called the Three Refuges. It's also known as the Triple Gem, which are, in the Buddhist tradition, the three pathways of remembering that are really kind of at the heart of the path.

And interestingly, you'll find these same three pathways in many religions and many spiritual paths. And that's because they're archa tippal. And you'll see what I mean by that in a bit. But each of these refuges or pathways has the power to wake us up from our our narrative, our story about who we are that has that kind of limited sense of a self who's separate and usually deficient and wake us up into a much more vast sense of the awareness and love that's here, each one of them. So let me just ask because we're going to be doing a reflection, I'll be describing each of these pathways, we'll practice a little and we're

going to end with a ceremony and I'm curious how many of you have been, been part of this with us before doing this ceremony. Can I see by hands? Oh, great. Good, good, good. So for those of you that are new, I think you'll appreciate it because I think of it as a living ritual and I invite those of you listening to the podcast to join in. And we've also written out some of the guidelines to the reflections for those of you that aren't here. You can get them on my website at Tarabrock.com slash true refuge, no spaces. I'll mention that again. So the three gateways. The first one is called refuge in the Buddha, in Buddhism, and what it means is refuge in pure, formless, timeless awareness. The second refuge is refuge in the

Dharma, and that means refuge in truth. And what's actually happening, this reality of moment-imless, moment experience. The third refuge is refuge in the Sangha and that means refuge in loving relationship, refuge in our experience of connectedness. When I wrote True Refuge the book, I organized it. The architecture of the book is around these three pathways because they in the last decade or so have become so meaningful in my own path that when I started writing true refuge, I was in a period of sickness and in a way that I had no certainty as to being able to recover. So I was living

in a really frightening place, a place filled with grieving. And the question that was so compelling to me was how, when we face the inevitable challenges and losses, how do we find a refuge within our own being of love, of awareness, that really allows us to find some peace and happiness? How in the face of living and dying do we find peace with ourselves? So this talk is really going to explore each of the refuges with that context because if you ask yourself the question,

this is something I ask myself a lot. You know, if I was at the end of my life, you know, in those moments, right at the end of my life, what would most matter? And what comes to me as well, it would matter to really sense that timeless awareness that's beyond this body that's changing and going, just sensing something that's true that I belong to that's timeless, that awareness. And it would matter that I wasn't entranced, that I was really awake to the this precious changing moments. That's the second refuge. And it would matter to feel love,

to feel the sacredness of connection with other beings. That's the refuge in Sangha. And what I've become so clear to so many of us that are on this path and this practice is that what matters to us in the moments of right before we die is exactly what matters to us through our whole life. We don't have to wait. In fact, if we wait, we miss out. So that's kind of one of the invitations of our reflection tonight is don't wait.

Take refuge. And when we say take refuge, we mean take refuge in what's really true and here. So, as most of you know, when we're stressed, we are totally conditioned to take refuge in experiences that give us temporary relief or temporary gratification. And it's natural and I call it false refuge,

but it's not in a derogatory way. It's in a way just to get that it helps just for a little while. It doesn't really bring the happiness or peace that we're seeking. But I'll speak to it a little bit just to sense, so you can just reflect and sense what are the false refuges that you get caught in because as long as we're habituated in these ways, we can't turn towards the light, towards the diamond that's inside us. We tend to go through the day, as I mentioned, kind of busy and on our way somewhere. Lely Tomlin says, for fast-acting relief, try slowing down.

So instead of this false revuge of speeding, slow down. So common ones. Okay, one false, refuges that we try to control others to get what we want. And we try to control them by judging or by demanding or expecting, by withholding our warmth or our appreciation. So there's different ways that what we're doing in some ways in manipulation to get others to cooperate. And I'll share with you my favorite illustration. Some of you'll remember the mom that's preparing pancakes for her two sons, Kevin H5, Ryan H3. And the boys are arguing. So she says, she's an opportunity for a teaching and she said, if Jesus were sitting here, he'd say, let my brother have the first pancake. And so Kevin turns to his younger brother and says,

Ryan, you can have the first chance of being Jesus. Okay, so we manipulate. What other false refuge is? Well, some of them are that we can try to control ourselves or deprive ourselves. I just got an email from one woman who's talking about anorexia and the ways that we're tight on ourselves and judging ourselves and trying to do more and be more. Another false refuge is the way that we chase after sensory pleasures, just wanting more of whether it's food or whether it's possessions or whatever it is. A big false refuge is we take refuge in our mental control tower in our fantasizing and planning and worrying and leave our bodies behind. And we do that even and spiritual practice. We do a lot of thinking about the path rather than, let's just be here.

And one example is of a monk and one of the novices came up to him to the senior monk and said, what happens after we die? And the monk said, I don't know. And this really upset the novice. And he said, but wait a minute, you're supposed to be a Zen monk. And the response was, I am a Zen monk, but not a dead one. So we try to think our way into freedom. But a really big one for many of us, that I'll just, that'll be the last one I'm going to name right now, is this false refuge of always trying to do more to prove ourselves. There's a sense of deficiency that I'm not enough and this ongoing kind of pressure to

to be better. And towards the end of a recent retreat I taught, a woman who was in her 70s said that she'd spent her life striving with the sense of never enough, like always falling short. During the retreat she touched some moments where her mind got really quiet and then there was this sense, a wordless sense of enough. Just right now it's enough. enough, there's nothing missing. And she had tears in her eyes when she shared with me this, she says really sadly, why did I have to wait so long to realize I didn't need to

keep proving myself? And I think you understand how many moments of life we sacrifice in some way in that false refuge of trying to get approval or proving rather than living our moments. So, in the moments that we're chasing after approval or whatever the false refuge is, our moments we're leaving home and moments that we can't discover that diamond, that light, that warmth, that treasure inside us. Zen master Rio Khan said if you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things. So, let's take a moment. it will close her eyes and just scan a bit so we're conscious of what might be the false refuges that get us, that carry us away from home.

And it helps if you take a pause and arrive in your body, feel the sensations and the aliveness and the breath. And as part of arriving, sense your intention to bring an interest and a friendliness as you scan right now, not to judge, but just to bring more awareness to your life. And just ask yourself, so what of these false refuges, these ones that don't work, which are high on my list? Is it being over-busy, trying to prove in some way, trying to check things off the list, trying to get approval? Is it over-consuming or grasping after possessions, pleasure?

Is it mental obsessing? Is it judging? Judging others? Making them into the anime, blaming? Is it judging myself? And some of you are thinking, uh-oh, it's all of them. That's okay. Most of us have multiple false refuges.

but you might take one that you know occupies your energy a lot, the addictive behaviors, codependence, the avoiding, whatever it is. And just sense when you're in that strategy, because they're all attempts to feel better. All of them are attempts to feel better. But when you're in it, look at that. What's it like when you're in it? as if you're looking from the vantage point of a very understanding, kind, older friend.

And just notice, what's the effect? What's it like when I'm inside that strategy? Am I happy? What's the sense of who I am when I'm engaged in a false refuge? What's my sense of self? See how familiar it feels. It's for most of us. When we're engaged in our predominant strategies,

there's a very familiar sense of a self that we don't like so much. Just offer a kind, gentle attention to this. And consider the deep inquiry that is really within us all. What truly brings happiness, peace, freedom? And we'll turn now to reflect on these three portals of awareness, truth and love, and just sense what resonates for you in your life. And with each of these three refuges, we're going to explore both the outer expression, which is useful and meaningful to us and the inner expression. And feel free if you'd like to

open your eyes. I'm going to be having you close your eyes again, but if you want in between have them open, it's fine. Okay, the first of the refuges is described as refuge in the Buddha are in Buddha nature, the awareness that is here. and the outer expression of that is an embodiment of an awakened being. Anybody that's awakened, whether it's a... If you think of the historical Buddha, the story is a refuge because it's a story of a human like us who awoke up and so it gives us a sense of, oh, this is possible.

That's the power of the story. And when the Buddha encountered the shadow side like we do, The shadow is called Mara, the god of greed, hatred, delusion, and so on. So when he felt fear, it's just like we feel it, that same squeeze in the chest and the pounding heart and so on. And the Buddha was a human being that felt this same constrictions, the same unpleasantness. And he willingly met fear with presence and in so doing opened and discovered a kind of clarity and wakefulness and presence that's described Buddha nature, described

as Buddha nature. It's inherently loving and free. So we bring to mind a being that has manifested that, whether we think of it in terms of Christ or the bodhisattva of compassion, a kind of spiritual deity, or it may be somebody that's living, that we feel in some way emanates those qualities of being awake and being heart-centered. And that helps us to connect with how that is seated in us. So that's using an external outer expression of Buddha nature. Now there's the inner and that's where we directly turn our attention to the love and the presence that's inside us. And you might consider

this way that we all have a changing pattern of thoughts and feelings and behaviors like the waves in an ocean. And typically we go through life with a narrative that who we are is a set of waves. You know, I am this kind of combo of feelings and thoughts and actions and so on. And we forget the ocean-ness that really is our essence. So turning and sensing awareness is like seeing past the particular waves to the pure formless essence that's shining through us. that's really our home. And we get a taste of this. Each one of us has had a taste of this.

When the mind gets quiet, when we're in nature and feeling a sense of wonder or awe, there's a sense of that presence in the background, that which is taking it in. Or when we're feeling love, there's a sense of that presence. Any moment that we're really in some way quiet or still we sense it. So, as mentioned before, in the face of living or dying, sensing that kind of timeless presence is a very powerful refuge. It lets us then meet the waves of life with a certain grace

and a certain balance. I mean, imagine how your life would be changed if every day there were pauses where you really glimpsed that background of timeless awareness. How much perspective how much freedom that would give. Okay, let's take a moment to reflect. We're going to reflect on this first of the three portals, which is taking refuge in awareness, in Buddha nature, letting yourself pause, again arriving, feeling the breath, feeling your body.

And we'll begin by experimenting with the outer refuge, which means bringing to mind some being that you feel is, awake, are fairly awake, that expresses love and presence, wisdom. And it may be that it's an archetypal figure like the Buddha or Bodhisattva, great spirit, the beloved, the goddess. But it also might be someone that you know that's a friend or a parent, a teacher, a healer, therapist, that takes some moments to bring to mind someone that you sense loving presence,

very easy to perceive it in them. Bring that being, whether it's the Buddha or the Dalai Lama or a friend right in close. If you can sense the being's eyes, you can sense the kind of loving and kindness, the clarity, the spirit that shines through. And as you sense that, just sense that light and warmth radiating and surrounding you permeating. Sense how that same light and warmth could light up your mind, light up your heart. Sense how it could come from inside you, that same light, that same warmth, sensing the space of timeless presence that's living through you.

own awakened being so we can take refuge by starting with an outer refuge, but you can continue right now, just like the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. He looked into his own mind and saw true nature. You can also look towards awareness. And sometimes I like to practice by first saying, try not to be aware for a few moments right now. Just try not to be aware. You might notice that it's impossible because awareness is primordial. It's always here. It's always happening. So notice the awareness that's here right now. And sense what it's like to notice awareness. Sense into it with your body or intuition. You can't see awareness. You can't focus on it, but you can be awareness. You might listen to sounds right now.

now, the sounds around you. And just be the silence that's listening. You might feel the aliveness in the body. Just be the stillness that's aware of that aliveness. You might notice sounds again, listening. And just ask gently, what is it that's aware of these sounds? Gently turn back, glimpsing. And then just relax and rest as awareness.

That sea of wakefulness that has no center, just receptive, awake space. Again, take some moments to notice the sounds and the sensations that are right here, sensing sound and sensation in the foreground. And then in the background, that alert inner stillness, you can inquire, can I feel my own presence, timeless presence? The poet Hafez writes, one day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you the infinite incandescence that it casts my brilliant image. I wish I could show you when you're a lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

So please take a few breaths and open your eyes. So I hope this is a bit of a taste of taking refuge in awareness. For most people, the other two refuges are the more immediate and actually easier to enter into and refuge in awareness because they're all interconnected reveals itself through the other two. But to first get a taste, even a taste of that background of presence can change your life. So, second refuge, refuge in the Dharma, which is refuge in the nature of reality. refuge in the nature of nature. Like, how is it?

What is happening? What's true? And the outer refuge in taking refuge in truth is sometimes described as the path. It's taking refuge by turning towards classes and teachings and podcasts, turning towards going to retreats. So we take refuge in anything that supports our meditation practice. The inner refuge for truth is present non-conceptual awareness, just noticing moment to moment what's happening

without any judgment. Now, the challenges for most of us in terms of what's really happening because you can't understand reality by reading a book about it. It's a direct perception of it. The challenge is that rather than doing that, we mostly live in a map in our mind and we think we're on our way somewhere else. It's very rare that we fully arrive in the moment and directly contact what's here. We're on our way.

And we're on our way impatiently often. And there's a great story of a family and they're in a desert, they're on three camels. The parents are on one camel, children on another and all their belongings on the And in this, it's a kind of a cartoon thing. You can see that the child just asked his father something, and his father says, well, you stop asking if we're almost there for crying out loud, we're nomads, you know?

So we're on our way. And full presence to really be here, to investigate reality directly, non-conceptually, means we have to get out of virtual reality, which means that while our thoughts are our servant, they can't be the master, we can't be lost in thoughts. So the primary training in Dharma in truth is to unhook from the thoughts over and over again.

And it's challenging because mostly our sense of what reality is is through our ideas of reality. And they can be useful, they can point to things. But as we know, they're not it. And Joseph Campbell talks about religion, all the ideas about how it all is, really as covering a kind of opiate that covers over the mystery. It covers over the mystery.

And it often does it in really confusing ways. One friend some years ago sent me this. This is children with their responses to a test on Bible knowledge. Okay? And I'll just read you a few of their responses. The Seventh Commandment is, Thou shalt not admit adultery. Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption. David fought the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in biblical times. The Jews had trouble through their

history with unsympathetic genitals. One more. A Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony. Anyway, you get the idea. We get distortions when we just pay attention to readings, to the virtual reality. So, coming into living reality. And so the basic practice in terms of the inner practice of Dharma is to unhook from thoughts and to directly contact what's right here with a quality of presence, kindness, clarity. And I just came back from a retreat, a New Year's retreat. And I got to see again what I see every time, which is part of why I love leading these retreats

and also taking them, is that as yogis, the practitioners, encountered the different natural waves that come up, whether it's waves of fear, shame, or hurt or anger, confusion or whatever, they would come out of their thoughts and into presence and in that being with, whatever the waves are, there is an experience, and this is the heart of the training,

a shift in identity. And you shift from that small self who's feeling oppressed by fear or struggling with fear to that quality of that awareness, that wakefulness, like the sea that has room for the waves. And that is the difference between being stuck and being free. So this is refuge in Dharma. So I'd like to do, as we did with Buddha, we'll take a few moments to do a brief reflection,

giving you a taste of refuge and truth. So if you will, again, closing your eyes. And let your intention be to notice thoughts, notice the mental commentary, the judgment, the thinking of the future or the past, and simply relax open and bring a very interested, friendly, allowing attention to what's actually right here.

This is the practice of taking refuge in truth, noticing that you can receive the senses with awareness. You can receive the sounds. letting them wash through you. You can open to the whole play of sensation. To contact reality we simply recognize what's happening and allow it. One Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello, describes it as absolute cooperation with the inevitable,

meaning that the waves of life are right here, inevitably happening, and in the moment that we fully let be right here, right now, We open to that ocean-ness. You can ask yourself, what's happening inside me right now? And then can I say yes to this? And if you want to go deeper into refuge in Dharma, deepen the yes in a cellular way, absolute cooperation, allowing, letting be, in that lack of struggle, we discover flow.

We discover the freedom to rest in awareness of the natural unfolding of life. And in flow there's a real blessing of communion, refuge in Dharma in the truth of what is. You might take a few full breaths and as you feel ready open your eyes. Okay, so we've explored the first two refuges in that pure timeless awareness in the moment-to-moment experience. The third refuge, refuge in Sangha is refuge in loving relationship. And the outer ways of taking refuge are engaging in conscious relationship, whether it's with our friends, with our family, with our partners, and also in formal places like we could be with 12-strap groups.

Our refuge in Sanga could be in the Buddhist communities. We have spiritual friends groups. They're called Kali-Anamita groups. We have in Washington about 30-some of these groups where people, People meet once every other week and they'll do a meditation and then really explore what's happening in our lives. And it's in that field of relationship that the magic happens. Because the gift of refuge in Sangha in relationship is we wake up out of that sense of an isolated

separate self and realize this field of presence that we belong to. of the big misunderstandings on the path is kind of that we're a self waking up, that we're doing it in our own little cave. And again at this retreat that we just came from, I could see how we all arrived and we'd come from a little bit of a busy frenzied world. We were a little bit more in that trance of a separate self trying to get somewhere. And so when we were sitting in the hall initially there was more of that sense of tightness, was more of that sense of just separation.

And then by the end of the retreat, after a number of days of coming back home into the senses and being in some small groups where we have very conscious kind of connecting and sharing of what's going on, the heart space, the feeling of the field was palpable. Refuge in loving relatedness means very consciously engaging with each other.

You know, our brains evolve in our relationship with caregivers. We cannot become a mature person if there's not some field of relationship that's going on. We're influencing each other all the time. So to realize the truth of who we are means really to be engaged with each other. And the challenge is we're so conditioned to feel separate. And when we feel separate, we think something's wrong with us and they go together. So one story to share with you and this is about I think three years ago at a retreat. One friend from our community that are extended community, he's practicing, he's actually

serving up at the Insight Meditation Society right now. We had a meeting and he was very sunk in self-doubt and feeling very flawed and very isolated. So I asked him, is there anything you like about yourself? You know, I was going to go to the meta approach, loving-kindness approach, what can you appreciate about your goodness? And he said, well, at times I can be kind. So I wanted to get more in touch with it. I said, okay, an example, when were you kind recently? He said, well, actually yesterday, you know, across the hall I saw this old woman sitting there on a chair and her legs were dangling because she was too short to reach the ground. So I walked across the hall. And I walked across the

hall with my cushion and I put my cushion under her feet. And it felt awkward. People were watching me but I felt good about that. So I had him do what I often have people do is get in touch with that good feeling and feel it and let it, you know, and then get in touch with that sense of connection with this woman that you helped out and really open to that and sent and he could do that and he could feel in those moments he wasn't that small, deficient self, he felt the truth of being in a field, being in that kind of sense of connectedness. And when he was in that, I asked the question, who are you, you know, when you're in that field? And he could feel the freedom of that.

That's the freedom of taking refuge in Sangha. So before we ended, before I say goodbye, I thanked him for his kindness to that old woman. across the room and I let him know that it was my mother because it was. And of course we both started crying because it was a very touching moment. But the connections are real. I mean, he wove a connection by reaching out and we weave those connections taking refuge in loving relatedness whether we're reaching out and giving or whether we're receiving whether we're appreciating each other or receiving appreciation.

There are so many ways that it happens. So that's the outer taking of refuge. And the inner is just as this man did when I said to him, okay, now just feel that, you know, you offered the kindness, and just feel that sense of, you know, that love, that's presence that's here, the inner refuge is just opening to loving presence, just feeling it. So let's again take a moment to reflect on this refuge in our loving relatedness in Sangha and then we're going to move into our ceremony together, letting yourself feel the

inflow and outflow of your breath. Taking some moments just to let go if there's any tension in your body that's obvious and with a relaxed kind of presence, scan your life and just choose somebody that you feel a sense of love for, a sense of belonging with, perhaps someone that it's not, where it's not too complicated. And of course, if that leads you to pets, that's fine, your dog, your cat's okay. If it's somebody that's not alive, that's fine. But somebody where you can feel, some being you can feel connection with.

Bringing that being to mind, like bringing them close in, so you're really sensing. You might sense the light in that being's eyes when they're animated or happy, or how they appear when they're offering their care to you. And sense what you love about them. You might sense the being's goodness, loving their goodness. And sense what it's like to feel loved by this being. Relax yourself, let your heart sense the quality of togetherness of who you are in your togetherness.

in a visceral way. So you let go of any sense of self and other and just feel that warmth, the radiance of what sometimes described is the empty, open heart, that diamond radiance, that tenderness. This is the essence of refuge in Sangha and relatedness. Sense the field, the heart space sits here. When we wake that up, you can begin to bring others into it

to sense others in your life and just let them float in that heart space. There's the words of Mary Oliver. So every day, so every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. So every day, so every day, I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. And then again, just taking a few full breaths. This is the...

Taking refuge in Sanga in loving relatedness. So, just to again offer the kind of overview, you've been looking at, we describe the natural forgetting we all have, our strategies of false refuge, where we leave ourselves, leave chasing the diamond out there. And then these ways of paying attention that reconnect us with the radiance and the warmth and the love and the awareness that's right here within us

so that we actually can live this precious life from that wakefulness. So we'll be in a few moments exploring this just as a more active engaged ceremony where you'll have a way of reflecting and remembering these three pathways that's more visceral. I just want to say again if you're drawn to these reflections, because I actually use a reflection on each of the refuges in some way in my daily practice, the written version will be posted on my website and all you need to do is go on to tarabrock.com

slash true refuge to find it. So we'll begin our ceremony and I just want to ask you to take your, each of you have a thread and if you're listening by podcast this is a very thin red thread that's about a foot or so long. And in Buddhist Asia and Hindu countries this thread is a symbol of blessing. It's a symbol of blessing of that which can bring us home to true nature. And it's considered like the red thread from the robe of a monk. And it's called a protection cord. And many of us have done the ceremony over and over again,

so we have like hundreds of these protection cords. Many people wear them around their wrist. You can choose whether you want to have, it's going to be, you're going to have it tied onto you, either around your neck or around your wrist. You can choose. But one teacher, Togium Trunkpo, was asked, well, why is it called a protection cord?

What does it protect you against exactly? And he said, why yourself, of course. So it's actually, it protects you against forgetting, the self that forgets, the self-conditioning to grasp and resist and chase down that diamond outside us. So when we wear this thread, it's like we're in the marketplace. It's been described we're a monk or nun in drag. You know, you're just wearing your normal daily clothing, but there's a remembrance that helps you know your true belonging.

So that's the purpose of having the cord, and each of the refuges will be built into the cord, and you'll see how we'll do it in a moment. But I'd like to invite you all. I'm going to lead you through reflection, but it will help if you first have a partner because you're going to need a little help in doing the tying, okay? So if you can perhaps stand up, that'll probably be the best way to do this right now,

and turn to one person, and so that's going to be your partner in the ceremony. Okay, so first you might decide where you want the cord, and some of you might want to put the cord like this around the back of your head so that you'll be tying it around your neck. Others may wrap it a few times around your wrist, and either way is fine that you'd wanted. But for now, just after you've decided you want to keep it loose because here's what we're going to be doing.

We're going to be doing a reflection and after each reflection I'm going to ask you to tie a knot in your cord. Okay? So take some moments now to close your eyes. Okay, the first reflection is to feel the sincerity of your heart as you mentally repeat the words, I take refuge in the Buddha

or Buddha nature, our awareness, whatever resonates for you. So this first reflection, I take refuge in awareness in that timeless awareness, that wakefulness, the light of awareness that's living through this body, mind, and all beings. And as you sense this turning towards that light, towards that timeless, formless awareness, as you sense your sincerity about discovering and realizing this wholeness of your being, please tie the first knot into your cord. I take refuge in awareness. Okay, and the second refuge, I take refuge in the Dharma,

is taking refuge in truth. It's this willingness to arrive in the present moment and really contact and experience and live the aliveness that's here, the moment, moment experience, discovering reality right here and now. So as you mentally reflect, I take refuge in the Dharma. It's really taking refuge in this presence, this awakening right here and now. As you feel that sincerity again begin by just, putting the second knot in the cord.

Okay. And so then we begin the third refuge, because your cord's almost activated. Getting ready. And third refuge, refuge in Sanga, which is also refuge in loving relationship. So you sense your life and sense your intention, your sincerity about waking up in the field of relationship,

discovering that sense of communion, belonging, connection with others, reflecting on these words, I take refuge in the Sangha and loving relatedness and as you're ready please put the final knot in the cord. Then as you complete this reflection to feel this heart's aspiration that these refuges in awareness and truth in love may awaken and free these hearts and rip up. out to be of benefit to all beings that these lives and this awakening may bring healing to this earth, bring peace and freedom to all beings everywhere, feeling that prayer, and then please put your cord either behind your head, behind your neck so it's going to be

around, and it's going to be tied that way or around your wrist, whichever you prefer. And then, if you will, turn to your partner and let your partner do the honors, taking turns, having your partner tie the knot that brings us to completion. And when you've completed, you might just thank your partner however you'd like, a namaste, a hug, whatever feels right, and then take your seats in silence. And we'll just end in a very simple way, if you will, just to close your eyes. Sensing as you enter this new year, your aspiration to remember, to be awake. Sensing the possibility of these three ways of reflecting and opening.

Sensing this background of timeless awareness. Sensing the moment-to-moment experience it's right here. And the heart space of loving connectedness will close, with one of my favorite prayers. This is written by Diane Ackerman. In the name of daybreak and the eyelids of morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs, I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred,

but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace. In the name of the sun and its mirrors in the uttermost night and the crowning seasons of the firefly and the apple, I will honor all life wherever

and in whatever form it may dwell on earth my home and in the mansions of the stars. 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.