True refuge in one sense is knowing that there is no safety to be found in the changing conditions of life.
Think for a moment about what makes you feel secure. Financial independence, a well-maintained home, wholesome food, good relationships with family, friends, and community, a low crime neighbourhood? These are all helpful strategies.
Sometimes we turn to things that are not that helpful: junk food, alcohol, mindless entertainment. These might temporarily take the edge off of a stressful day but in the long run make us feel worse.
In Buddhism, security is generally expressed as taking refuge in the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. These can be seen as three distinct expressions of liberated mind.
In taking refuge in Buddha, it is not that we are taking refuge in something external to us, some external cosmic power, for example. We may ask for and receive external assistance but what we are actually taking refuge in is our receptivity, our potential to awaken and be free from mental suffering.
There’s a story about a man in a flood who is standing on the roof of his house. A rowboat comes by the rescue him but he shoos it away, saying “God will save me.” Later, a motorboat arrives and he again refuses help, saying “God will save me. The water keeps rising and a helicopter appears overhead but the man waves it away, insisting “God will save me.” Eventually the man drowns. When he meets his Maker he asks God why he didn’t save him. And God says: “I tried. I sent two boats and a helicopter.”
If life was easy, we wouldn’t have to take refuge in anything. But as we know, life in a human body is full of peril — illness, the frailty of old age, the loss of loved ones, and the inevitability of death. Indeed, we live in a time of eroding security, a time of upheaval in the form of climate change, environmental collapse, political turmoil, the breakdown of civilized behaviour, and war. Where is there refuge from that?
True refuge in one sense is knowing that there is no safety to be found in the changing conditions of life. As Helen Keller said: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
The historical Buddha of 2,500 years ago — Siddartha Gotama — come to the same conclusion as Helen Keller. He saw clearly that there was no refuge to be found in the changing conditions of ordinary life. Moreover, he saw how it was that we blindly cycle through unhappy states of existence — moment to moment and as well as life after life. The good news is that he was able to see that this cycle of suffering could be broken. There is a way, a path that we can take that leads us out, that liberates us. The Buddha was able to teach others the path of liberation.
The path doesn’t liberate us from the changing conditions of life — the conditions will still be there. The difference is in how we move through those conditions. Helen Keller became deaf and blind as a young child and spent the first six years of her life in what she described as “dark, soundless, imprisonment.”
Then she encountered a teacher who led her to understand the associations between the tactile sensations she was experiencing — such as water — and the words that were being written out on her hand. Suddenly she woke up to life: “That word ‘water’ dropped into my mind like the sun in a frozen winter world. The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there were hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?”
For Helen Keller, refuge was expressed in words like hope and love and God.
She was describing a liberated heart and mind, uncluttered, free of , free of afflictive minds states like greed, hatred, and delusion. Imagine for a moment if your heart and mind were completely free of any sense of craving, of insufficiency, of lack. What if you felt like what you are and what you have and what you are experiencing in this moment is enough?
There’s a story that Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, both famous novelists, were once at a party given by a billionaire. Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.
Heller responded:“Yes, but I have something he will never have — ENOUGH.”
Just that word — enough — can have a liberating effect on the mind. Enough. Try that on sometime when you feel you want something. Try saying to yourself instead: “What I have is enough. What I am is enough.”
Take refuge in enough.
The Buddha set a good example. Born into a wealthy and powerful family, he discovered he didn’t actually need all the trappings of wealth and power. In fact, it seems these were making him unhappy. He walked away from all of it, stripped his possessions down to nothing, and ultimately attained great happiness.
Taking refuge in Buddha does not necessarily mean giving up all your material possessions and becoming homeless. But we can take refuge in simplifying our lives, not consuming so much, not grasping so much after things and experiences. We can take refuge in the knowledge that grasping after shiny objects only makes us want more. It’s like drinking seawater. Our thirst can never be satisfied.
Taking refuge in Buddha can mean viewing the historical Buddha as an inspirational figure. We can contemplate the fact that he was a human being, like us. If he was able to liberate himself from suffering, then we can too.
We can also remember that we each have Buddha nature within us. It’s the purest part of us, the part that shows up when all of the mental obscurations have faded away. It is in a sense emptiness, being emptied out of greed, hatred and delusion. It is being emptied of egoic self.
Egoic self takes refuge in the objects of awareness, such as thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and fixed views. These only serve to imprison us. When emptied of egoic self we no longer take refuge in the objects of awareness. We instead take refuge in awareness itself. This is Buddha nature.
—Nelle Oosterom