Tara Brach - The Three Refuges - Gateways to Belonging and Freedom

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

We all need ways to guide our attention that allow us to find wisdom, love and freedom in the midst of our lives. This talk reviews three archetypal gateways—Buddha/awareness, Dharma/truth, and Sangha/loving community. Through teachings, guided meditations and a traditional refuge ritual, we engage together in bringing alive these pathways to healing and peace.   In this video, Tara explores: Spiritual practice as a journey of remembering our inherent goodness and reconnecting to what truly matters. The Three Refuges—Buddha (awareness), Dharma (truth), and Sangha (community)—as pathways to peace and belonging. The difference between false refuges, like seeking approval or blame, and true refuge found in presence and self-compassion. How the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) transforms challenging emotions into spacious awareness. The power of widening our circles of belonging through vulnerability, active listening, and embracing shared humanity.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends, and New Year's blessings. A mom sent me a note a few years back. I want to share it with you. She was thanking me for teaching the loving kindness meditation and she wrote, I cherish it so. When my daughter was very young and she often cried for her father bedtime during a difficult transition of divorce, I began this practice with her. I will always remember the first loving kindness phrase she sent to her dad. May you have cupcakes. So that's become my favorite

meditation, loving kindness phrase. May you have cupcakes. One of the realizations for many as we enter 2025 is that we need to nourish the pathways to an inner sense of open-heartedness of peace and balance and well-being. And this is true just in navigating personal challenges and more broadly that our world's polycrisis are not going to quickly resolve and our earth will continue to express its dis-ease in ways that have violence and pain and suffering for all of us, all species. So as the master Ajan Cha put it, if there's a flood, don't let it flood your mind. And if there's a fire, don't let it burn your heart. As some of you know, I taught an in-person weekly class for decades in Bethesda, Maryland. And right at the beginning

of each year, I would share a living ritual. And it's based on three archetypal pathways of homecoming, of coming back to a sense of our loving and open heart, a sense of our awake and clear mind. And you find these three pathways in many spiritual traditions. It's described in Buddhism as the three refuges. And I love these three refuges. The first is moment to moment. and presence. The second is loving relatedness. And the third is the spaciousness and wisdom of awake awareness itself. So for today, I chose a favorite talk on these three refuges. And I hope it serves you as you enter 2025. I'm wishing you all blessings friends for this new year and beyond. May you have cupcakes. I'd like to begin this talk with one of my

favorite stories from the old days. I heard it many years ago about a diamond thief who used to hang around the diamond district to see if any big dealers were coming in to buy diamonds. And one well-known merchant came in and bought one of the biggest, most beautiful of the gems. And so this thief decided to get it from him. So he followed them onto a train. And for three days, There was a, this merchant was traveling on a train, and he did every trick in the book to try to find the diamond and steal it from the merchant. And this is a guy who's really clever at his craft, and he was very frustrated because as accomplished as he was, he could not find that diamond. So he, at the end, he actually confesses. He confronts the merchant and says, you know, I've been tracking you for three days, and I just want to say, I just really baffled.

And so the merchant looked at him and said, well, I saw you and it was suspicious. And so I put it in the one place you'd never find it in your own pocket. And what I love about this is, as the Tibetans put it, that the treasure you seek, the treasure you seek is closer than you can imagine. It's really in the eyes that are looking, the ears that are listening. It's in the heart right now that's feeling. It's within. It's the core of your being. And so I was interested when one gentleman at a recent retreat came up to me and he said,

you know, and this is towards the end of the retreat, I said, you know, I really haven't learned anything new at all. But he said, I was, they said, I'm remembering. He said, everything that's going is I'm remembering. and remembering what's most precious to me. And so it is really on the spiritual path we're not getting anything new, we're not learning, we're not building up anything much, we're actually in a process of remembering, reconnecting, rebe belonging to what's always in a ready here.

And daily life and spiritual life is really a process of remembering and then the forgetting and then remembering again and forgetting. And you've probably noticed it. You've probably noticed how you can get really caught up on what we call the trance, the stressed-out trance where you're in reactivity and just in some way moving through the day trying to get through the day. You're on your way somewhere else and you're just, you're trying to kind of like in some way check things off a list or in some way, you know, protect yourself, defend yourself. There's a lot of judgment going on. and forgetting what matters.

And then you know those moments where you kind of remember and sometimes it comes just because you've had a pause to breathe or sometimes it's because something much more poignant has happened that has kind of shaken you. Thoreau says we move through our life where it's like we're spending our life fishing, not realizing it wasn't fish we were after. So, the purpose of spiritual practices and the purposes of creative rituals and ceremonies like we're doing together at the end of this gathering is remembering. It's a way that we collectively can remember what's really important.

And in Buddhism there are three classical gateways to remembering. We'll explore them. But they're actually archetypal. You'll find them in most spiritual traditions, ways that we can pay attention that bring us home. So, in our ritual tonight, as I've mentioned, I'm curious how many of you have participated in our blessing ceremony, our refuge ceremony in the past? Just raise your hand high. Okay, good. Good, good, good, that's fun. If you're listening online and you'd like to join us and do the ritual, and even if you're listening at another

time, you need a 20-inch or so red cord or string. And ideally, you need another person to do it with. So, the three refuges, these three gateways. I think of them in terms of ways that we rediscover our belonging. And the first refuge is refuge in the Buddha are really Buddha nature, which is refuge in awareness. We're remembering our belonging to formless, pure awareness. Refuge in the Dharma are the truth, we're remembering our belonging to our moment-to-moment experience, the path, what's true, what's the reality that is arising and passing away moment to moment. And the third refuge, refuge in the Sangha are the spiritual community, is really this refuge

in relationships, we're belonging to love, belonging to awareness, belonging to truth, belonging to love. going to take each one of them and just to know they're embedded in each other, when you wake up through one refuge, you discover the others. But we each have ones that are more natural and fit more our lifestyles, so we might pay more attention to one than another. Before we move through them, I'd like to talk about what I call false refuge. These are the true gateways to spirit. But what happens to the true gateways to spirit. But what happens is we are happens is that when we're in trance, when we're reactive, instead of turning to truth,

let's say, which is the present moment, you know, if let's say we realize that in some way we have messed up on paying a bill and we've gotten penalized and this and that, we start going into our, you know, stress response and we try to fix things and we start moving too fast and then we forget something else or offend somebody or spell something. Instead of just pausing and even taking three breaths and saying, okay, stressed, let's see if I can reconnect again to a bit of balance. Instead of taking true refuge and truth and what's happening, we immediately are in our trance of reactivity.

We're inevitably we make more of a mess of things. So I just want to speak a little about false refuge because every one of us kind of regresses into what I sometimes call it like a limbic hijack where we take false refuge, a substitute, trying to feel better but it doesn't work. So again, a false refuge isn't bad. It's not like you're doing a bad thing. It's like you're thirsty and you're drinking down salt water just because you're trying to quench your thirst and it just doesn't work.

So what are the false refuges? Well, they come out of a sense when we're in trance that something's missing or something's wrong. In other words, when you have a sense that there's a problem, unless you're practicing a lot of mindfulness, the tendencies to then go and take false refuge. So, obvious examples. When we're feeling something's missing, we sometimes use food to fill that missing feeling. Are we fixate on drugs or buying something for ourselves? So there's this false notion that we just need a fix to make us feel better.

One man described going to his doctors in the 60s and his doctor said he was doing pretty well. So the guy kind of got nervous and he said, well, you think I'll live till I'm 80? And the doctor started asking some questions. He said, well, do you smoke, smoke tobacco or drink beer or wine or heart? Oh, no, and I'm not doing drugs either. And he said, well, do you eat cake, cookies? Oh, no, not much. My former doctor said that, you know, sugar is really bad, so I don't do any of that. She spent a lot of time with the sun playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, biking. Oh, no, no,

sun, dangerous skin, you know. Did you gamble fast cars? Do you have a lot of sex? Oh, no, no. He looked at me and he said, well, then why do you even give a damn? So that casts a question about what is a false refuge. But the biggest way false refuges I think play out are often in relationships where the sense of something missing is something's missing in me. I'm not enough. And I can share in my own life, I actually became aware of the major false refuge of kind of grasping after approval.

And I was really aware of it when I was a teen. and became even more aware of it when I was in my 20s that on some level I was really attached to trying to impress people. And it didn't really matter whether it was being knowledgeable about something or my grades or I remember when I started doing yoga. It was like, and I taught yoga very early on. I started doing it and teaching it when I was 20, like 60, I mean 45 years ago. And I remember that a part of me always, you know, there's always a part of me watching and

thinking, hmm, boy, I'm pretty flexible and I hope they're all noticing, you know, it's like, we even had in our spiritual community, I lived in an ashram, yoga Olympics that I competed and I remember competing and doing this back stretch, you know, wheel pose where you're kind of flipped over in a wheel and how long could you hold wheel pose? and I remember holding it for 15 minutes. And I remember just watching in my mind saying, you are nuts, you are vain, you are crazy, why are you doing this?

But it was the approval thing on some level. Being approved of meant I was worthwhile, which meant I was lovable. And I came to two major insights around this false refuge in my life. And one is, it did not matter how much I got approval for what. It never, never satisfied. Even as a fix it might last two and a half minutes or two and a half days, but I always had to keep going for more. So it never, never worked no matter what it was for, which brought up the question, what

does it really mean to be enough? is a really interesting question because I found there was no such thing. And the second insight was the moments when there was an intrinsic feeling of enough, true worth and belonging, had nothing at all to do with approval, zip. Nothing. In fact, the moments on track of seeking approval obscured the sense of enough and it would emerge in moments of presence, of gratitude, of intimacy, of quietness. So, false refuge is not a bad thing. In fact, if I did a hand-raise, probably many of us would say, yeah, I'm after approval.

I name that one because I realize I'm not the only person that has gotten caught in that. One woman at a retreat, elderly woman, like, elderly woman. my age. It's happening more and more. At the retreat she touched some moments of really deep peace and deep feelings of just, you know, contentment enough as I am. And she shared really sadly, she said, why did I have to wait so long to realize I didn't need to keep proving myself?

That the moments of trying to prove ourselves actually block that in intrinsic work. So, false refuge, when there's a sense of something's missing, we go grasping and it could be for food or approval or whatever and it keeps us actually from feeling fullness. We also, when we have a feeling of something's wrong, we go into reactivity and go for false refuges. And the biggest one is aggression. When we're afraid, we blame and we lash out. And it's either mental judgment or with words. I know one woman I was working with, she described chronically blaming her partner. He was busy and he was not communicative enough and he didn't spend enough time with her and she didn't feel a sense of specialness.

And so we did a little bit of rain which is recognized. allowing, investigating, nurturing. And she found out underneath the blame when she investigated was fear that if I stop blaming, he'll never change and I'll always feel separate and rejected. So then I asked her, well, does the judging and blaming help? And she knew right away, of course not. Of course, it just creates more distance. But it had a function, this false refuge of blame helped her in the moment. a temporary fix where she wasn't feeling powerless, at least if I'm blaming I'm doing something to try to fix things. Do you know what I mean by that? That in blaming, at least

we're engaged doing something rather than feeling powerless, feeling helpless, feeling like I'll never get what I want. So we begin the path of true refuge by honestly and bravely recognizing, well, where do I take false refuge? What am I habituated to that actually keeps me from truth, love, and awareness? That's the first inquiry. And we look at this, I'm talking individually, but if we look at it are our society right now. We're watching a society that is completely caught in fear and trauma. It's a total limit. Olympic hijack, and it's reacting, taking all the false refuges of aggression, of destroying our earth.

When human society takes false refuge, it's, in other words, when we act out of unprocessed fear, it's horrifically destructive. So the need for true refuge is most clear when we're in global crisis. We need leaders and humans that know how to do that. not to do a flinch reaction, know how to pause, know how to get quiet and contact a deeper place of wisdom so that you can find an intelligent way to try to move towards understanding rather than disrespect, contempt, and violation. We also note in our own lives individually and you have probably each experienced us at different times that when we hit a real wall,

whether it's a divorce, whether something really terrible is happening to someone we love, whether we lose somebody we love, whether our own lives are in danger, those are the times our false refuges actually don't work anymore. They just don't. It doesn't help to eat the food, it doesn't help to buy something, it doesn't help to get approval, it doesn't help to blame. We're stuck with the edginess of reality. And those are the times really when we're facing the deepest losses, when we start naturally turning to the kind of belonging that goes beyond time, space, these particular forms. It's when people start facing the truth of mortality that they get serious about looking

at what's past this changing body. friend who's ill could die at any time has described it this way, that it's more clear than ever how this changing life is a dream. It's quick, it's passing. Buddha's described it like a flash of lightning in the summer night, to sense it's a dream. And also she's discovering that the false refuges like, and I'll just name gossip, more, hate, they have not so much hold. Because there's something when you realize, truly realize, the truth that this life is changing,

that there's no longer holding on to the false refuges, there's something deeper that we seek to take refuge in. And that was what the Buddha looked at 2,600 years ago. 2,600 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama faced the predicament we're in, that these bodies are going to go, these minds are going to go, everything we hold dear is going to go. And how in the face of mortality, how in the face of our natural wants and fears do we find freedom in the midst? How do we find freedom in the midst?

And what he then came to and taught about were these three ways of belonging to a greater reality through the present moment, the Dharma, through awareness itself, Buddha, and through love, asanga. So we're going to now take each one. I'm going to start with Dharma because a lot of our meditation practice has to do with taking refuge in the Dharma. When we take refuge in the Dharma, and again, Dharma means truth or path, we're talking about taking refuge in presence. Now, with each refuge, there's an outer refuge and there's an inner refuge and our name both of them. And reflect on what of this

touches you in your life because when we do the ceremony, it'll be an opportunity to deepen your intentionality, because intention is what will carry you. It's a beautiful thing to do at the beginning of a new year or at the beginning of any day or a moment in your life. In an outer sense, taking refuge in the Dharma or the path means any activity that helps you to wake up to presence. So for some of you would mean signing up for a retreat, for others coming regularly to a class, an online class. For some, it's books. It might be reading a very certain book right now

that you're feeling called to and I'm being... I put aside the commercial business here. I'll share with you that actually for me, I am reading a book for like the 20th time right now and it's called I Am That by Sri Narcara Data. And literally I have almost every page, you know, marked and so on. But I have a kind of of part of my sadden or my practice right now is before I go online, before I do anything, I do my exercise and meditation and I read something from that book. Because every time I read from that book, it helps me remember I'm not exclusively identify with this living form personality that there is a timeless, beautiful presence that is really true nature.

It just helps me remember it. That's taking refuge in the Dharma in an outer sense. So again, it's whatever is serving you to wake up on the path and experiment, find what serves you. In an inner way, it's the practice of presence. refuge in the Dharma is paying attention of what's right here and now and learning to stay. The whole deal is we are deeply conditioned to leave the present moment, we're either trying to chase after something more, the next moment we hope will contain what this moment does

not, or we're pushing away what we don't like, we mostly want life different. We're very restless as a species and each body. So, Charlotte Joke-back, one Zen teacher, says, return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment, return to that which we spent a lifetime running from, that vulnerability, that quakiness, that restlessness, the fear, the feelings of loneliness. to be brave and willing to be with that. That's taking refuge in the Dharma.

And part of that is recognizing how much we have in some way a problem with how it is in the moment. One of the classic stories is a novice entering a monastery and she's introduced to herself and she's told this is a silent practice, there's no talking here. Once every five years, you'll have an interview with Mother Superior, and you can only say three words. All right, see you later. I don't think they lock the door, but, you know. So, five years go by. Mother Superior says, how are you doing my child?

And the novice answers, bed too hard. Oh, keep practicing and praying, says Mother Superior. Five more years pass. Again, the question, how are you doing it? Navist says, food is bad. This time, Mother Speer says, well, keep practicing and praying and practice and pray, you know, more. 15 years, next interview. Mother Speer asks how she's doing, and the novice responds, I quit now.

And Mother Superior looks at her and says, I'm not surprised you've been doing nothing but complaining. So it's fun. And the truth is how many of us know that much of the time there's some wine or complaint going on in our mind, that in some way life isn't matching how we want it in the moment. We have an indigestion and we don't like it. Somebody else isn't behaving the way we want them to. So taking refuge in the Dharma is bearing witness to that that it's going on and having the courage to stay.

to be with those waves. It says, Swami Satchadhananda says, and there's a poster where you see him, this guru with a long beard and everything, and he's on a surfboard. He's in tree pose, riding the waves on the ocean. And the byline underneath says,

the caption, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. Come meditate with Swami Satchadanaan every twos and get the idea. So we train to take refuge in the Dharma and we often use the practice of rain that we learn here with that acronym because it's a way of bringing mindfulness and compassion, nurturing to the present moment to really stay. For one woman, she entered a new job highly qualified, really skilled in her

profession, she found the CEO really harsh. He was a kind of take-no prisoners, critical guy, and she was really intimidated. So every week she'd go to the meetings with him and kind of go into brain freeze and really couldn't contribute. So that's when we talked. And I asked her some questions, I said, well, before the meetings, you know, what do you do? And her false refuge was to get over-busy and organize her papers and try to write little messages to herself. And of course, it didn't work, it didn't help her really bring what she could to the meeting. So, I invited her to do rain instead. And so when she, we practiced, you know, as if, and she imagined going into the meeting,

she imagined beforehand and she recognized, okay, anxious, anxious, A is allow, which means you don't try to fix it or get rid of it, just let it be there. You're just kind of pausing with it for the time being, allowed it. Then she started investigating and feeling where it was in her body, which is the most important thing of investigation and feeling the clutch of it. And she asked the question that is so powerful when you investigate, which is, how does this want me to be with it? This anxiety.

And the response she got really surprised her, which was she was, she was, she was, that this part of her wanted to be okay that it was there, just to let it be okay, not to try to get rid of it. So that's what she did in nurturing and as nurture. She just said, okay, this is okay, this belongs. That was her language. This belongs. It's like saying, you know, in the ocean this wave belongs.

Okay, it's here, it belongs. And what she found was when she nurtured with its belongs. still anxious, but there was more space. It was like she, instead of fighting the wave, she became the ocean that included the wave, which is the whole idea here. And that leads to after the rain, which the big mistake is to skip after the rain, where you pause and you just sense that increased sense of space and freedom, that you're no longer the anxious self, you're more of the space that is aware of that. This is refuge in the Darwin. This is refuge in the Dharma. So she practiced it and she found she went to the meetings and even in the meetings

she'd feel tight and inside herself she'd be going, okay, this belongs, it's okay, you know. And the anxiety was still there but she had a little more space. She started becoming more resource, more able to contribute, more able to be part of things. So I share that story because the essence of refuge in the Dharma, is to let what's happening here be okay. Just be with it. And in that being with, you discover a presence that really has room. As the saying goes, if you trust you're not going to be afraid of the waves. But if you don't, you'll be seasick every day because you'll be fighting the waves. Elizabeth Lesser has a beautiful prayer. She says, my prayer to God every day, remove the veils, so I might see what is really happening

here and not be intoxicated by my stories and fears. That's refuge in the Dharma. Refuge in the Sanga, and that's refuge in the field of relationships. Traditionally, Refuge in the Sanga meant the spiritual community of a particular spiritual faith. but it's expanded. So really refuge in the Sang is all those that we participate with. And it's in widening circles. So the outer refuge is where we very consciously participate

with groups and communities that help us wake up our hearts, that help us get in touch with truth. So it might be a spiritual friends group. and many of the Vopasna communities have spiritual friends groups or maybe eight people and they'll meet every other week and sit together and then talk about what's going on in their lives, the divorces or the addiction, are there fears for the world but it comes from a place of presence. I think we have about 36 of them now or something here in Washington. Affinity Sanga as groups of people that have natural

interests or identify in a similar way. We have our people of color group, LGBTIQ, we have a therapist, people that have different commonalities. We have people that do rain together, rain partners. And that's a beautiful way. So it's finding people that you can wake up with. It's also the outer refuge in Sangha means intentionally waking up with the beings of your life that you're living with, even if they don't feel like your formal spiritual friends. One woman described time with her dying father. He had been a larger-than-life figure, he was a well-known architect and designed buildings and urban centers and so on.

They'd had a distant relationship through most of her life because he was very work-focused and that had caused her a lot of pain. She had to do a lot of inner work around that. Towards the end of his life they were spending more and more time together. One night she asked him to recount what of his accomplishments he felt most proud of. There was a long pause. And then with tears in his eyes he looked at her and he said, why, you of course, which of course for her were the words she had always wanted to hear.

But at this point in his life he was learning about refuge. He was learning that maybe his chasing after the next gold ribbon wasn't as valuable as the love with his daughter. So the message for many of us as we go deeper on the spiritual path is not to wait, not to wait. to remember that if they're at the end of our lives looking back, love is going to matter, not to wait with those that are close in even if they're edgy relationships. So how do we deepen our conscious relationships?

And I'll just name a few things and as you listen, even bring one person to mind that you, that's part of your circle, that you'd like to have more of an awake relationship with. And the first step is the intention to know that you want to connect and understand more fully with them. The second is to commit to listening, to listen with the same interest and passion that you want to be listened to, that you want others to listen to you. Try that. It's really powerful with the same interest and passion that you wish others would listen

to you. Listen like that. Pay attention and sense, where does it hurt? Just see the vulnerability and pay attention and see the goodness. And the last piece is take the risk to be vulnerable. This is Mark Nippo. He says, we waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed.

and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness, which if not put down, diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something and then forgetting we chose to put them on. We complain that nothing feels quite real. In this way our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to un-glove

ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold, the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable. Taking refuge in the Sangha. Taking refuge in loving relationship means the risk to be vulnerable and it also means intentionally widening the circles. And by that I mean going beyond those that were comfortable with, easy with. you know, most people spend time with the people that are like them. Most people spend time with people that vote like them. And our world will not begin to heal until those that have a longing to wake up,

widen the circles, to spend time with and to sense our relatedness with widening circles of beings. I often use the phrase, we are friends in my own life, whether it's out on walks, I'll stop in front of a tree and just say we are friends because something in it wakes up my relationship with the tree. And I do it out in the world when I'll see somebody that's just, I don't know and is a stranger, but let's say somebody behind a counter at a retail store or whatever, because it brings up a truth that was already there that I wasn't paying attention to, that in some deep way we are

friends. I do it with people I disagree with in the political world, people even they get me scared and angry, because ultimately it's our capacity to include others in our hearts that's going to help our world find its way to more peace. We've got to do it. Winding the circle. St. Teresa Vavella says, Only at the shrine we're all are welcome, will God sing loud enough to be heard? Only at the shrine we're all are welcome. Will God sing loud enough to be heard?

So we let that shrine be our hearts. And again, I mentioned earlier the Radical Compassion Challenge. And for those online, it's come to my home page to find out, about it. One of the goals was I wanted to do something to start this year and decade where we could together try to widen circles. And that's one of the goals of it as each day has, in the outer way as a way to like do things, like they have assignments or tasks you have to do each day to widen the circles, including the circle of including your own being. Now, the inner gateway of Sangha is any reflection or meditation that helps to soften

and open your heart. Anything that helps to bring a sense of loving, kindness, care, forgiveness, tenderness. Okay. So taking refuge in the Buddha, in Buddha nature. The outer way is often that we bring to mind a being, could be a living human being in a form that's right now or a human from the past or it could be a non-human being or it could be a spiritual figure. But we bring to mind some being that expresses the qualities of Buddha nature, that expresses compassion

and wisdom and freedom. And by bringing that being to mind, that helps us remember that the diamond that we seek is right within us. Just by bringing that being to mind, we get into that resonance field. We're going to do a little reflection that gives you a sense of that as a way to close, but just to say that the outer way of taking refuge in Buddha nature is in any expression of Buddha nature in this world to reflect on it and that helps to bring it in. And the inner approach is to turn our attention back on our own mind and heart, to bring awareness to awareness itself so that we begin to look back at what's looking through our

eyes and what's listening through these years, look back into that stillness that's aware right now of all that's happening. So I invite you to close your eyes for a moment. We're going to reflect a bit. And we're going to touch on each of the refuges and then we're going to begin our ceremony together. We begin by taking refuge in the Buddha. And again, the Buddha means the awakened nature within our own being, but we'll begin with an outer refuge.

I invite you to call on some figure that to you expresses the qualities of an enlightened heart mind and it might be the historical Buddha or Jesus, Mary, might be divine mother in some other form, it might be the natural world, you might sense that in, it might be the Dalai Lama, you might have some figure that really represents, or somebody that's alive that has those qualities. You might have a grandmother, teacher, healer. And see if you can, whoever comes to mind, it can be semi-enlightened, it does not have to be fully enlightened,

but whoever has those qualities living through them, imagine the mind of this being, just sense the vastness of it, the lucidity, clarity. Imagine the heart of this being, that tenderness, sensitivity, the warmth, and imagine and allow that loving presence, that wisdom to surround and soak into you. Just be available and takes a certain kind of courage and interest just to let it soak in, be bathed in it, and direct your attention inward to see how that tender, radiant awareness lives inside you, feeling your body and heart and mind light up as if the sunlight sky is

suffusing every cell of your body and shining through the spaces between the cells. Sense the presence, tenderness, openness of being. Some traditions they call this the clear light. In the Tibetan tradition the guidance is this, to remember the clear light, the pure light, the pure, clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns, the original nature of your own mind, the natural state of the universe unmanifest and let go into the clear light. Trust it, merge with it. It's your own true nature. It is home. No matter where, how far you wander, the light is only a split second, a half breath away.

It's never too late to recognize the clear light. So we sense with this Buddha nature, awareness, taking refuge in that. And then we sense the Dharma from this awake awareness, we can become aware of the changing experience. It's like the ocean aware of the waves on the surface. What's happening now? Aware of the sound, aware of the vibration, sensation, energy in the body. This is taking refuge in the Dharma, fully allowing and inhabiting this whole river of changing experience. Refuge and truth of the moment, true belonging to the life that's right here. And then we open to refuge in the Sangha bringing to mind someone in your life was easy to love who you care

about, not complicated. From this awake presence, sensing as if you could see their eyes right close in the goodness of that being what you love about them, brightness, creativity, humor, how they love you. imagine letting them know their goodness, letting them know your love. And as you do, sense in a visceral way the feeling of belonging, of connection, the warmth and openness of heart space and know that in these moments this is Sangha. This is the gift of taking refuge in Sanga. So we look at our life and know it's natural to forget and that these three pathways of homecoming of remembering awareness, truth and love, give us the grounds for living

in an aligned way that our actions, our life emerges out of this presence. This presence is what allows us to live in the world in a loving, creative, kind way. And with that, we will do the formal practice of taking refuge, of the blessing ceremony, and want to invite you all to stand up. So holding your string, holding either edge like this, and for a moment you might close your eyes and just listen to the background in Buddhist, Asia, and Hindu countries, this thread is a symbol of blessing. It's red. It's a thread from supposedly the robe of a monk.

And it's a protection cord. That's what they're called. And one teacher was asked, well, what do they protect us from? And the response was, why yourself, of course? Because it's protecting us from our forgetting, from our false refuges. So, one friend describes it that you are now a monk that's back in the marketplace, a monk or a nun in drag, and you're back in the marketplace, and you've got a way to remember with this cord.

You might choose to keep it on you as long as you'd like. And we're going to reflect on each refuge and then reflect on bringing them into our lives and each time we'll tie a knot into the cord. So the first, again, is to reflect on taking refuge, our belonging to Buddha nature, to our awareness. And you might ask yourself in the kind of outer realm, what will help remind you? Is there a figure that inspires you in this world? Is there a Buddha or a spiritual figure? Maybe it's your own high self, your future self.

And you might sense as we did before that you could just let that be a mirror, that being to the light and the love that's right here inside you, that diamond in your own heart. So that even now in these moments you sense the silence that's listening inside you, the stillness that's feeling, the openness that everything is happening in, the light of awareness. And as you feel your longing and dedication to wake up to that awareness, to be at home in that awareness, in that mystery, please tie the first knot into your cord, taking refuge in Buddha nature. The second reflection is refuge in the Dharma, the path.

And you might sense for a moment as you deepen your dedication, what will most support you taking refuge in the path? What does it have anything to do with classes or books or podcasts or trainings? For some it's deciding to teach what they love. And for most, taking refuge in the dharm is a deepened dedication to our own practice of presence, that inner refuge bringing attention and you can do it right now to this moment, to the waves that are right here, the breath, the sounds, the sensations, letting everything belong.

This is refuge in truth, sensing who you are when you totally letting the moment be as it is, sensing that diamond, open-hearted awareness. And as you feel your dedication to take refuge in the Dharma, in the path, to deepen that, to let it be your true belonging, please tie your second knot in the court. The third reflection, refuge in the Sangha and spiritual community, and you might sense in an outer way ways that you might deepen that. Conscious relationship with people in your immediate circle, ways that you might widen the circles very consciously

so that you're not pushing any way. one, including yourself, out of your heart. And as you feel that dedication to Refuge in Sanga, to deepening your caring, to deepening love, please tie the third knot into your cord. Now the cord is now alive but it needs a final energizing knot to bring it fully to life. And this is the final reflection that when we've taken it, in refuge in the truth of the moment and in the awareness that's here and in the love that's here, that enables us then to move through the world and live from love, live from

compassion, live from a creative and generous heart. So as you feel your dedication, this is the life of the Bodhisattva, to really live from that sense of belonging to each other in our world, to serve our world, please tie the final knot in your cord and then it's fully charged and fully energized. Now, in silence, if you will, you can help your partner get their string on them and you can choose between your wrist or around your neck. Either way, first wind it around, if it's your wrist, wind it around a few times and so the ends are available and then your partner can help by nodding it. Similarly, in the neck,

show your partner where you want the nod. Budam Serranam gauchami. Damam Serranam gauchami. Sangam serranam gauchami. Dutti ami, budam serranam gauchami. Gautiami Dutiam Dhamamang Seralam Gaucemi

Dutiam P Sangam Seralam Gau Gajami Tatiampi Budam Surnam Gau

Chami Tatiapi P, Damaamangang Suralam Gautrami. Tatyampi Sangam Salaam Salaam Gautchami. Namaste and thank you.