Tara Brach - Taking Refuge

Episode Date: January 4, 2012

2012-01-04 - Taking Refuge - This class explores the three classic gateways to true refuge - Buddha (awareness), Dharma (path, truth of reality) and Sangha (spiritual friends, loving relatedness). It includes reflections and a ceremony that supports us in remembering the pathway home. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

It's interesting to me that for so many of us that New Year is just the demarcation of a beginning is a fresh opportunity to remember what matters to us and set our aspiration. And a lot of us make use of that. And I keep track somewhat where people often will tell me what they're committing themselves to. and through the years, and of course I've got a select sample here, many have an increasing commitment to being kind towards ourselves, being compassionate to ourselves, seeing the goodness in others and being kind towards others. But more recently, in these last handful of years,

there seems to be a very growing understanding of this commitment to creating space in our lives, that we end up having a very dense, fast-paced life and that without space it's very hard to be kind or to be present. And so I'm seeing more and more that the commitments are including simplify, simplify, make things more simple, you know, less busy, less active.

And I mean, still people want to lose weight and clean the basement and, you know, get more organized. But there seems to be this sense, sensing that space is necessary if we're to really come home to who we are and be with each other in a way that's really spontaneous and alive. We need some space. The goal being really to realize our deepest nature and live from it. There's a story I've always loved of a woman who was pregnant and spent a lot of time right towards the end of her pregnancy with her five-year-old son. And several times he asked her if when the new baby came, if he could have a few minutes with the child alone.

And she said, sure. And the pregnancy and birthing went all fine. And about a week after the new child was there, a little girl, he asked his mom if this could be the time. And she said, okay, but it was kind of curious, left a crack open in the door. Little boy standing by the cradle. and he just gazed at the infant and then in a very low voice he asked please tell me about God

I've begun to forget and there's something I mean of course it's a beautiful and sweet and touching story and there's something that's so real about this whole path could be really summed up as forgetting and remembering

and we each know it we can see it in a course of a day or five minutes, you know, that we get caught in our trance and our reactivity and getting small-minded or judgmental. And something, if we're lucky, sooner than later, reminds us that this life is too precious. It's a flash. And how do we want to spend our moments? So this sense of forgetting, remembering, and what most helps us to remember is that

the center of the path. One of the basic reasons we start the new year with what I call the refuge inquiry or the exploration of the three refuges is that in many traditions there are key gateways to remembering. And in the Buddhist tradition, the three refuges are considered that. They're considered ways that if we direct our attention, we really come home into that space of wakefulness and presence and tenderness. And the three refuges, I'll name them right now, and then we're going to come back and explore them. The first one, refuge in the Buddha, our Buddha nature,

is really refuge in awakeness and the pure awareness that's here. And the second refuge, refuge in the Dharma, is refuge in the path, which means, and it's not necessarily the Buddhist path, it's the path of teachings about the truth, practices of the truth. And in the deepest way, it's the practice of being right here. So that's refuge in Dharma.

And the third refuge is refuge in Sangha, which is us here and this virtual Sangha, because I know there are so many of us that are listening and reflecting right along with this Wednesday night group. It's refuge in loving relatedness in the truth of our belonging. The understanding with refuge is that a true refuge is a refuge that's dependable, which means it's not something passing. It's something we can really rest our heart in. You know, in Pali, the word trust or faith is Siddha. And that means resting one's heart on what is true.

So these are the three gateways. And I think of them quite simply as awareness, truth, and love. If you want to kind of condense them, awareness, truth, and love. So we'll explore them tonight, and then we'll end with a ceremony that's called taking refuge, which is a way of just making it very personal life for us, that these are ways that each of us in our own day and our own life can remember more readily. And let me just check how many of you? you have done this refuge ceremony before. Can I see by hands high? Wow, great, good. So it's one of

those things you can do regularly and if it's new or first time it can be very fresh but it's a living ritual. It's something that like any meditation you don't think of it like oh yeah I already did that you know it's like it can be quite fresh. Some of you know that I've been writing a book called true refuge and I hit the send button a few weeks ago, which is a wonderful relief. I mean, I still have things to do on it. So it'll be coming out around this time next year. So one of my plans is that through this year I will be doing different sequences that are based on the book that are in-depth explorations on how we find inner sanctuary in the

moments that are really difficult and challenging. You know, when we've forgotten, ways that we come back home. So you'll hear those themes, that languaging a lot over the next year. So I'd like to begin by saying, as many of you know this, that our habit or our conditioning when we get stressed, when we're afraid, there's a sense that something's wrong, something's missing, and we tend to go towards what I've termed false refuge. We go to whatever is easiest, quickest to relieve us, most comforting in that moment. And we develop the kind of groundwork of our false refuges when we're very, very young.

And there are certain styles of thinking, certain styles of behaving that make things easier for us. Now, false doesn't mean bad. False is just a misunderstanding about what really works, what really can heal us and free us. And so the attitude towards these false refuges is key, because if we think of it as a reflection of bad personhood that we turn to some addictive behavior, we turn to judgment or whatever our false refuge is, that only adds false refuge on to false refuge. It compounds it. So the attitude towards false refuges is one of interest and friendliness where we sense, oh, Oh, so this is, I keep trying to do this to feel better. It just doesn't work.

Okay? So let me do what I sometimes do and just review what some of the ones that are most common that we get caught in are. And I often start with busyness because it's so endemic to the culture. And I often remind us that the Chinese script, the word busy, is very close to that for heart killing. it gives us some relief, it's numbing, and it gives us this sense that we're being productive, that there's some meaningfulness going on, that there's some importance, it gives us that. But generally, the busyness distracts us or keeps us from that space that I was talking about. All the moments that we get hooked into emailing when we don't need to be are in some way surfing,

the web are talking to ourselves or whatever it is we stay busy another one that is a false refuge that is is a little easy to mistake is the drive to accomplish because there's a very healthy part of us that's wanting to be creative and to produce and be generative and to help be creative in many ways and there's this place that is trying to prove we're okay and it doesn't matter how much we accomplish. The way the sign that it's a false refuge is within about five minutes, you're already on to what next needs to happen. It's this addiction to checking things off the list, right?

So that's another one to mention. We also have a lot of false refuges in grasping onto pleasantness. Again, this doesn't mean just enjoying, but a kind of a chasing after. Whether it's the pleasantness of owning something more, you know, accumulating material goods, are the pleasantness of sleeping, it becomes an addiction. They say in India that sleep is a poor man's nirvana, which I think is a great line. So this accumulating, this wanting of pleasantness, this sense that doesn't matter almost how wealthy we are, there's some sense we need more of a buffer, just a little bit more. And there's that story. Some

of you know where a young man is talking to God, and he asks God how long a million years is to him. And God says, well, a million years to me is like a single second in your time. Then he asks God, what's a million dollars to him? And God says, well, a million dollars to me, it's just like a single penny to you. And then the young man gets up as courage and he says, God, could I have one of your pennies? And God says, sure, just a second outwitting God, not a good idea. So we take false refuge in these pleasures and seeking after. And when again, I'm talking about grasping after, sight, sound, sensations that feel good. We take false refuge in substances, whether it's sugar or caffeine or drugs, alcohol.

overdoing food. We take false refuge in looking good and in getting approval. We just get addicted to it. That's the only way we can feel good about ourselves and then try to relax. But of course, how long does it last? We just need the same person to approve us again or somebody else to. So we get addicted there. And then one of the ones we're often not aware of is how addicted we are to what I sometimes call

or our mental control tower, the sinking mind, that we just obsess. We spend so much of the day planning and figuring and computing. And one student said, I'm always trying to out with things, whether it's aging or sickness or whatever. It's so hard to just sense that life's happening and not try to find an angle to give us some more safety or comfort.

And we do it in spiritual life. There's a lot of thinking that goes on in spiritual life where instead of just saying, okay, what's actually happening right here? You know, really coming home to the present moment, coming home and being intimate with the life that's here. We spent a lot of time churning in our mind about how it is. And I'm not saying that it's not valuable to have contemplation on deep facets of the nature of reality. that is. But we end up spinning. And one of my favorite descriptions is of a Zen novice going to his monk, his priest, and saying, you know, what happens after we die? And the Zen monk says, I don't know.

And this very much upsets this novice. And he said, but, you know, I thought you were a Zen monk. And the response, I am, but not a dead one. So we get addicted to figuring things. things out and I invite you just to check in your own life like how many moments you're in some way worrying or planning or trying to figure out what's next. Perhaps the most painful is that we get addicted to judging. That in some way it's our, we feel better about ourselves if we're putting others down and then we judge ourselves because we think, well if I judge to myself enough. If I'm down to myself enough, maybe that will strong arm me into being the person I want to be. We get addicted. I want to say that with these false refuges, this does not

mean that things that give us temporary comfort and ease are necessarily unhealthy. And for many, our pleasures, whether it's movies or ice cream or time on Facebook or wine or accomplishing things or feeling competent, it's fine. It gives us some enjoyment on the earth plane in a way that's not at all harmful. So it all depends. This is the criteria for false refuge. Is it getting in the way of us coming home to realize who we are? Is it keeping us in a small sense of self, a fearful self, a striving self, an avoidance self? It's what we're paying attention to that matters. In one story, Sol and Mort are walking from religious service,

and Soul wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying. And so his buddy says, well, why don't you ask Rabbi Schwartz? He goes up to Rabbi Schwartz and says, Rabbi, may I smoke while I pray? And the rabbi says, no, my son, you may not. That's utter disrespect to our religion. So Soul goes back to his friend and tells them what the good rabbi told him. Moore says, I'm not surprised you asked the wrong question. Let me try. So he goes up to Rabbi Schwartz and says,

Rabbi, may I pray while I smoke? To which the response is eagerly, by all means, my son, by all means. So it's what we're paying attention to, really. The bottom line is that a false refuge does not deliver. it does not satisfy our deepest longing to find peace, our deepest longing to feel connectedness, our deepest longing to be awake. So it's for that reason, I think it was Henry David Thoreau said, we spend our life fishing only to find out it was not fish we were after. So that's the reason I often will just have us kind of reflect on these false refuges, not to judge ourselves, because if we're a little bit of.

alert to them, we start recognizing, this isn't bringing me home. This is not taking me to the aliveness and creativity and love that's possible. We just get that. We get that they're interfering. And that helps us to begin to say, well, so what does true refuge mean to me? And again, by refuge, I don't mean escape. I mean, what truly can we bring our attention to? that brings healing and freedom. So this brings us to the next part of our exploration. And the Dalai Lama at a conference many years ago now, it's probably like 20 years ago with Western teachers,

was asked the question, what's the most important thing that we can bring home to our students, that we can remind our students of? And his response was to trust the power of heart and awareness to awaken through all circumstances. That no matter what is going on, including losing your own body, losing your own mind, the loss of another, that we can trust the power of these hearts, of finding loving presence. We can trust the power of awareness to carry us, to keep helping us wake up, to have space to hold, to find peace in the

midst. That's a beautiful promise that there is a sanctuary within each of us that we can discover that can really tap us into our innate intelligence, creativity, and capacity for peace. That's a beautiful promise. That's the same promise the Buddha gave and that all the great mystics have given, that it's not outside us. And that's why we, we practice these three refuges to not because we're trying to find them as much as we're trying to rediscover what's already here. We're trying to find our pathways home to what's already here. So the first one, let's just take a look at each one of them and we'll reflect on each one of them and then that'll lead us, that kind of prepares us for the ceremony of taking refuge.

So the first one, refuge in the Buddhist word is Dharma and a more universal term, would be taking refuge in the path or the path of presence. And whatever teachings wake us up to reality. Refuge in the Dharma is really training us to pay attention to what's happening right here. This is a poem Martha Pasta Wait writes, Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the day

dense forest of your life. Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own cup-t hands and you recognize

and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worth of rescue. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue. So we get this message. Very straightforward. Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life.

And that clearing could mean just take 20 seconds before you enter some situation where you're with someone else and you want to communicate clearly. It could mean that. Or could mean take a week-long retreat and come and touch that silence and that wisdom that's in you so you can re-enter your life. with some freshness. So we create clearings and the pause can be at different lengths. But we need to do that so we can listen to our lives. We can become intimate with our lives.

How do we do that? The training that we do with this mindfulness practice I sometimes think of as we're learning to stay. And then the mind takes off and we go into reactivity and we learn to return coming back. and then we learn to be here, stay, over and over, learning to stay.

And the challenge is that it gets uncomfortable. So we find ways that we start realizing that we can handle it. We come out of our storyline. That's probably the centerpiece of our training. We just notice, okay, I'm telling the same story about what I'm doing wrong or how so-and-so should be different. our antennas go up when we sense should. That's a kind of flag.

Oh, take refuge in the Dharma. Come back to what's actually here. I'll give you an example in my own life in a moment. But there's a few mantras in English that are really helpful in this refuge in the Dharma in the present moment. And one of them, the American monk, Ajan Samado, who's an abbot actually in a British monastery. He has a phrase,

it's like this. And we say it to ourselves gently but firmly that no matter what's going on, if we can say, okay, it's like this right now. There's some way that we just reestablish ourselves, okay, this moment, with honesty, with clarity. I also like the simple phrase, this too. Just try it.

When things are really whacked out, when things feel like they're wrong, like when things feel off, on some level you encompass the whole thing with this too. And you're making room. And all of a sudden you're back here again. And you're really coming back home to your own inner sanctuary. This too. We have the heart and awareness, the power of heart and awareness for whatever arises. Now I use the word yes also.

There's something about when something comes up and it feels we're agitated or afraid or sad. And in some way we send the message inwardly, yes, with kindness. Yes, yes to this. Doesn't mean I like it. It means there's this agreeing to reality, not fighting it. And that creates space. Again, we've created a clearing. We can be more intimate.

Does that make sense? There's these little phrases that are just reminders to just make room because it's like this right now. So my story. I like to share stories that are recent and they feel so I can still feel in my system that it's not so easy. And this one last few weeks, my son's applying to graduate school right now. And of course, you know, he's known he's going to, he's been knowing about this for about a year and a half. but somehow rather with the deadline of December 31st, he came home with these unfinished applications. And I've been, you know, been helping him with editing his essays and so on.

So we've been working together a lot. And he came home. Things got busy at work this fall. So he kept postponing and postponing. So he was doing all-nighters. And I was filled with judgment. here he is he's procrastinated again he had all those summer weeks wide open you know he's just where's his sense of priority if it was me applying to graduate school why you know you and of course

then i flip from blaming him for his priorities and his his approach to blaming myself how could i be this enmeshed in my relationship with my son he's 25 you know he's a grown-up adult you know why can't i just let him have his life and and instead i'm wanting to control it and so on. And so each time I would just, I'd see this kind of growing tendency to blame because I was just plain anxious. And I would say, it's like this. And have to come back to the anxiety. So that became this practice. And I even left for our retreat and he still had not gotten it in. He had until 12 o'clock noon on Saturday to be able to get it to the post office, to have it postmarked right he promised me he text me when he sent it out text didn't come it didn't

come and there i am at retreat you know talking about we're arriving in a moment and you know okay let's and i'm telling everybody about these mantras this too and and i feel this is this uprising and i'd say and i was really angry you know anger anger this too this too okay finally i started getting the knack of saying, okay, it's just anxiety. And then I started just feeling the squeeze of it and just breathing with it until the kind of the blame of him or me kind of fading out. And then as I started really just being with that anxiety, I started finding the space around it because the magic of bringing mindfulness to what's actually here is when you're fully with what's right here, you discover the space that holds it.

In other words, rather than being the fearful self, you become this wakeful space of awareness that's in touch with the waves of fear, but not living inside them. And that's all the difference in the world. So I started finding this kind of equanimity and tenderness, and what was really important is open-heartedness towards my son.

Like I didn't want to go into retreat and be, you know, just pissed off at him. so that was there and this controlling mother energy that was kind of blocking me up just kind of faded out and I found the space that made a difference

so he got it out I just thought I'd share with you since I sometimes tell stories and I don't tell the end of the story was that I got that text at 1130 he had a half an hour before the post office closed you know

anyway So it's out. The application's out. I'll let you know what happens. So the nature of unconditional presence, because that's really what we're talking about, is refuge in the present moment. This is the heart of taking refuge in the Dharma. There's what we call an outer refuge, which is where we study the teachings,

and we do different formal practices and so on. But the inner refuge in the Dharma is exactly. this moment, intimate with the life that's here. So let's reflect together just for a moment on what refuge in the Dharma means to you. Close your eyes and take this as a pause. So this is an example of we'll just create a clearing. The clearing is simply the attentiveness, the space of attentiveness right here and now, a clearing in the dense forest of our lives. You might come home into the moment by feeling the aliveness in your body, maybe taking a few conscious breaths and letting the breath help collect your attention.

If there's thoughts, just to let them move through, and sense yourself belonging to this moment, this one and this one right here. So you're resting your heart in what is true right here. This breath, these sounds, whatever mood or feeling tone is here. It's that simple. We're becoming intimate with a life that's here. If something's difficult, then our practice is to become intimate by bringing kindness to it, bringing interest to it.

The poet Tara Sophia Moore writes, the end, you won't be known for the things you did or what you built or what you said. Because in the end you won't be known, you won't be asked by a vast crater full of light. What did you do to be known? What there is to know can't be written, something between the crispness of air and the glint in her eye and the texture of the orange peel. What you'll want a thousand years from now is this. A memory that beats like a heart, a travel memory of what it was to walk here, alive and warm and textured within. Sweet brightness, aliveness, take me now-ness, that is life.

You are here to pay attention. That is enough. So this is refuge in the Dharma. By the way, I'm doing these not in the traditional order. The traditional order is Buddha Dharma Sangha, but we're doing Dharma Sangha. but we're doing Dharma, Sanga, Buddha. And the reason I'm doing it in this sequence is it's a little more accessible, as I think you'll see.

But ultimately you can do it however works for you. So refuge in the Sanga is our second. And the Sanga traditionally meant the community of monks and nuns, those that were following this particular Buddhist path. That's what it meant in the Buddha Dharma. But Sanga has a larger meaning. And it really means the Sangha of beings that are just waking up together, which ultimately is the all of life. But for the sake of practice, we practice with those that help us wake up.

And in the Buddhist tradition, one of the most famous exchanges was the Buddha talking to Ananda, who was his cousin and his closest disciple. And Ananda said, isn't it true that good friends? are half of this holy life. And the Buddha responded, not so, Ananda. Good friends are the whole of this holy life. And I love that and I wonder, you know, if we really sense, what does that really mean

to say that good friends are the whole of the holy life? When I reflect, for me, it has a sense of that when there's really an enlightened spirit, when there's really awakeness, it expresses itself in loving relatedness. that is the expression of enlightenment, loving relatedness. That's the way we live this holy life. And it's that friendliness with, you know, there's another word for meta, our loving kindness, is friendliness.

And if that's all we reflected on, this friendliness with our inner life and with each other, if we really reflected on this quality of the heart, this open-heartedness and tenderness, the wisdom and the freedom would come. So the whole of this holy life. Now our false refuges, as we know, come out of this tendency to feel separate.

And the false refuges are then to have agendas with each other and to use people for things and to feel either superior or inferior. So we're trying to get our approval and our security from each other. And that's not to be judged. It's just to be acknowledged.

as it comes out of our our painfulness, but we can use this refuge in Sangha to intentionally cultivate a sense of relatedness in our lives. Now there's outer Sangha, which is where we develop our relationships with each other in a very conscious way, and then there's the inner reflections that wake up that purity of loving presence itself. So I want to just speak to this a bit. just a few of the different ways that we can formally take refuge in the Sangha. And one of the things happening here in this community, many of you know this,

I think we have about 28 spiritual friends groups, the Pollywoods Kaliana Mita, they meet about every other week and explore just how to bring these teachings into our life, how to work with relationships and addictions and whatever the conflict, and struggles are. And they're a way of really developing intimacy with other people on the path. And we have affinity sanghas here, people of color sangha.

We have lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning sangha. We have groups that do mentoring where we have mentoring relationships where people work together. And we have a lot of the volunteers find that there's something in when we serve together

that helps us to wake up. It's a beautiful way to experience anga. So for those that are local to explore that and wherever you are, the service, the belonging to others really brings out our sense of strength and creativity that we're not alone.

Short little story. A man was lost while driving through the country and he accidentally drove off the road into a ditch and he wasn't injured enough he could walk, so he went to a nearby farm and asked for help. Warwick can get you out of that ditch, said the farmer pointing to an old mule standing in the field. The man looked at the haggardly mule and up at the farmer

who just stood there. Yep, old Warwick can do the job. The man figured he had nothing to lose. The two men in Warwick made their way back to the ditch. The farmer hitched the mule to the car. With a snap of the reins, he shouted, pull Fred, pull Jack, pull Ted, pull Warwick,

and the mule pulled the car from the ditch with very little effort. Man was amazed. He thanked the farmer, patted the mule and asked, why did you call out all those other names before you called Warwick? The farmer grinned and said,

Old Warwick is just about blind. As long as he believes he's part of a team, he doesn't mind pulling. I love that one. I think that's... Because there is something that's brought out of us when we trust our belonging.

There really is. The deepest experience we can have is to wake up out of that sense of separateness. And it's a very stuck feeling. And I see at retreats. I noticed at this retreat, we came in and I sensed the room and everybody was kind of in their own little bubble

sitting on their cushion or whatever. By the closing of the retreat, It was this field of warmth and community, and this is a silent retreat. And we had some groups where we'd meet and people would hear from each other. What woke up that sense of non-separation? This practice of being present, being present, practicing these heart meditations and including each other, bearing witness as we spoke in groups of what was really true and difficult. It's a beautiful thing when we stop feeling.

so isolated. It's really freeing. We can see it around the world where people sit together and share what's true whenever there's truth-telling and listening. One of my favorite examples took place at San Quentin Prison when the San Quentin Gospel Choir was going to be doing a musical experience singing back and forth with these Tibetan monks who were famous for their multiple vocal chanting. It was called the Giotto Tantra Choir. So you had the San Quentin guys and this choir of monks that were going to sing back and forth to each other. But here's how the story goes. The members of the choir were all African-American, big, big men who'd worked out with weights in their

years of prison. They'd born again touched by the spirit of Jesus. And their songs were testimonials to their depths of suffering and to light of the gospel that had been awakened in them. The organizers feared that the Tibetan monks would appear to be merely foreigners and heathens to these newly awakened Christians. When the heathen monks arrived, quotes on quotes, the contrast was even more apparent. Dwarfed by the African Americans was a group of small Asian men wearing maroon skirts. The question was how to bridge the gap. So this sponsor came up with an introduction that was beautiful and I want to read it to you. Almost all of these Tibetan men who have joined us today have spent years in harsh prisons. The Communist Chinese Army not only imprisoned them for expressing

their beliefs, but tortured them as well. Somehow they were released or able to escape from prison. Then to find freedom, they walked across the Himalayas, the highest mountains on earth. Some tied rags on their feet because they had no good shoes. But even now, they are in exile. They are forced to live far from their home, apart from their families and community, and they don't know if they'll ever be able to return. What has kept them going through all of their struggles have been their songs and prayers. This is what they will sing to you today. In an instant, the gospel choir and the Tibetan monks looked at one another with eyes that shared the vulnerable depths of human sorrow, and they found understanding.

Each group sang to the other from the heart, and when their music was finished, they came together to hug and embrace like long, lost brothers. something quite beautiful that happens when we recognize that these vulnerable humans that we are, we struggle with the same fears and same longings. And we also live with the same beauty, the same light of spirit shining through our eyes. And when we spend time with each other and take the chance to be real, those truths really emerge. That's Sangha. So the there's a real basic shift in identity when we take refuge in Sanga, that we go from this separate self that's either better or worse to the sense of here we all are together. And there's real freedom in that. So I invite you to reflect again as we did with refuge in the Dharma just

to take a moment. And again, we pause and we sense, okay, let's just make a clearing again. clearing in the thoughts, clearing our space in our lives, this time to pay attention to loving relatedness. And I'd like to invite you just to bring to mind someone who you love, someone who you feel belonging with, you feel connected with. And ideally an uncomplicated relationship. And it can include pets or someone that's no longer alive because the love is still alive. And as you you bring this person to mind, just sense energetically the person's right here and get in touch with what you love about this person. This person's goodness or humor, this person's way of expressing love. Perhaps the look in this person's eyes that lets you know they care about you.

And just feel that invisible but true bond or connection in a very visceral way. to see if you can feel it in your body as warmth, as aliveness in the heart area, this feeling of living love, of who you are in relationship. You can sense that some of the borders of skin or personality dissolve. You inhabit something larger than the separateness. You can in that space of loving presence, just bring others in now. Just sense who else is. Who else is included. Ultimately, it's all of life, but just sense other beings that you care about, that they live in this field of connection, this field of loving. To take refuge in Sanga, to find this inner sanctuary of loving presence, we intentionally bring our attention

to relationship, to connection, to love. takes a purposefulness to have that pathway greased and woken up. Okay, the last of these three refuges to this inner sanctuary is a refuge in what's called Buddha nature. The word Buddha means awakened nature. And there are two ways, two primary ways that we open up to this awareness. And one is by reflecting on an embodiment, some being that in some way, exempt, amplifies and can kind of get us in touch with the spirit, in touch with awareness.

And it could be the historical Buddha or Christ, the bodhisattva of compassion, some living being that really expresses wisdom and love, points us back to our own awakened heart and mind. The second approach is to experiencing this inner refuge of awareness is to really reflect on turning our mind and attention to the nature of awareness itself. And that's this exploration really of who we are. I remember one of my first retreats, one of the teachers asked, do you believe or trust that you're a Buddha, an awakening Buddha?

And I remember in my own mind saying, well, sure, sometimes. You know, and having it be, you know, something in me knew, yeah, we're all awakening Buddhas, but how many moments my self-perception was caught as a, you know, struggling yogi, trying to be trying to do a good job or as a mother that was in some way, you know, not enough or whatever it was, how I got caught in smaller identities. So on some level we sense that there is this basic awareness here, and then we get small. And there's that story of a man at a bar And he's confessing, you know, I know I'm nothing,

but I'm all I can think about, you know. We keep thinking about this self here, you know, And miss the empty, open radiance of being. So this homecoming, I find that the phrase, a very simple phrase to remember that we're not humans or we're not this personality that's on a spiritual path. We are spirit.

We are awareness that is discovering our nature through this human incarnation. You see that flip? We are awareness awakening to ourselves through these bodies and hearts and minds. So just imagine how your life would change because this is refuge in Buddha nature. If many times a day something you went, wait a minute, this story about who I am is not the truth.

It's a narrow sliver that there is awareness here that is waking up to itself, that's having an experience right now. How that would shift things. We begin to explore these pathways by reflecting on enlightened beings and by doing as the Buddha did, you know, looking under the Bodie tree, just looking into our own minds. And I'd like to just do a brief reflection right now as the final reflection, and then we're going to move into our ceremony together. So again, we pause. And this time our pause is to create that clearing, to pay attention to, in the deepest way,

this very essence of awareness, of presence. And you might begin in this way, just to imagine, imagine that you're the Buddha. You're the Buddha this moment inhabiting this body and you're the Buddha that's experiencing and receiving the experience of this body right now. And notice what it's like through the awareness of the Buddha

to be experiencing this body. Notice what it's like through the awareness of the Buddha to be experiencing this heart with whatever emotions, whatever moods are here. You're the Buddha experiencing this living heart. You're the Buddha listening to the sounds that are here. Listening to the whole moment,

sensations, feelings, sounds, and turning towards your own mind, just sense what is it that it's aware? And just let go into this openness, this mystery, this wakefulness that's right here. taking refuge in Buddha nature in the stillness and silence. In this space of radiance, it's our own deepest nature. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the invitation is this.

Remember the clear light, the pure, clear white light from which everything in the universe came, to which everything in the universe returns, the original nature, of your own mind, the natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home. Remember these teachings, remember the clear light, the pure, bright shining white light of your own nature. It is deathless.

No matter how far you wander, the light. light is only a split second, a half breath away. It is never too late to recognize the clear light. In this last little bit, we're going to be, in a moment, I'm going to be asking you, you can do it now just to find your string and take it in your hands. This is a ceremony that has to do with the nature to forget and remember. And just as that five-year-old that I mentioned, just had this longing. to not forget, to come back home again.

It's in each of us, this longing to find that inner sanctuary. We're really at home in that light, in that wisdom, in that loving place and space. In Buddhist, Asia, and Hindu countries, this thread is considered a symbol of blessing and a kind of a remembrance. And it's read because it's from the robe of a mom. or a nun and it's taken from the robe. So it said that in the marketplace, in other words, in daily life, when we wear this thread either around our wrist or our neck,

it's like we're a monk or nun in drag, you know, but we're using this to remember our true home, okay? So we go into the marketplace, every one of us, every day, we do our thing, but this is a reminder of what we really belong to. It's a reminder of truth. of truth and love and awareness. So one of the questions that Chogim Trunkpa, the Tibetan teacher, was asked, was what exactly these threads are protecting us from, you know,

and the response is why yourself, of course, you know, that it's just a self-conditioning to grasp and to forget. So it's a remembrance. So what we'll be doing is we'll be meditating on the three refuges and each will be tying a knot with each reflection. This will be the time that as you reflect, you'll feel your own commitment very much from within, your own dedication to finding this inner sanctuary

through these three gateways. So I invite you again to close your eyes, holding the two ends of the blessing cord in either hand. And please begin to sense what it means to you to take refuge in the Buddha, to take refuge in Buddha nature, to take refuge in awareness, because that's this first refuge.

What does it mean to you to really feel that dedication to resting your heart on awareness itself, realizing this consciousness this pure light that is your own deepest nature. And as you feel your own intention or aspiration to take refuge in awareness, to turn towards awareness, to remember it, then please tie the first knot into your blessing court.

The second refuge, I take refuge in the Dharma, is sensing for yourself what it means, to really take refuge in the path of freedom, in the teachings and practices that wake you up. In the deepest way, it's your commitment to take refuge in presence itself, in the living reality that's right here, this moment and this moment, and now this one. And when you feel your intention to take refuge in the Dharma,

in a sincere way, then please tie the second knot into the court. And the third refuge, refuge in Sangha, just to reflect what that means to you. Refuge in the outer Sangha, in relationships being intentional, to wake up the loving, the intimacy, through service, through giving and receiving. And in the deepest way to wake up this heart in a way that, that embraces all beings. As you have a sense of your own intention to take refuge in Sanga and relatedness,

then please tie that final knot into the cord. As part of completing this process and as part of Refuge in Sanga, we're going to be needing the help of one other person to tie the cord onto us. And you have two options. There are probably more options than that, but I'll just mention two. One is that you can put the cord around your neck by just putting it behind your head and neck

and then having the two ends in front of you, and then your partner, whoever it's going to be, can tie the knot like that. Or alternately, if you'd like to have it around your wrist, many people find that works. Just wrap it around your wrist a number of times until the two ends are ready to be knotted again by someone else. and then when you're ready it's probably best to stand up and turn to somebody nearby try to stay on silence because this is part of the space

that can hold us taking refuge with each other so finding a partner and just take turns completing each other's refuge blessing cord by doing that final knot that keeps it on the body

body. When you're done thanking each other, bowing whatever works for you, when you're done, come sitting down and have your chant sheet nearby because we're going to be chanting together as a way of completing the ceremony. Bringing the attention to your heart, to presence. We'll begin together. Namotasa, baguato, arahato, sarahato, samarato, samasas. Sama Sambudasah, Namotasa, Bhagawatu, Aarhatu, Sama Sambudasa, Namotasa,

Bhagawata, Aarhatu, Arahato, Sama Sambudasa, Buddha Serenam Gau Chami Dham

Sarenang Sarenang Gau Chami Sangangang Sarenang Gau Chami Duttiampi Budam

Sarenang Gau Gautami Duthiampi Dhamp Damaan Sarnamu Kha'ami, Dutiyan pi Sangha, Sarenam Gautchami,

Tatiampi Bhudam Seraanam Gaucemi, Tatiampi Dhaman Seraanam Gauami, Tatiampi Damaan Seraanamai, The words in English, which were repeated three times, I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha. Namaste. Thank you.

The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, are about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.