I have started thinking about refuge more deeply, and one of the interesting things is how our minds fool us. I have been a student for a while, so I am like, “Oh yeah, refuge, I take refuge,” I am doing refuge ngondro, where you repeat the prayer of taking refuge in the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha over and over, trying to keep your mind alive and learning something. When these opportunities come up to give a talk or go deeper, it is interesting because I start realising I know things only on a very surface level. As I begin to read deeper and think about it, and deeply meditate on it, it is quite fun and enlivening.

The common meaning of the word “refuge” is quite wonderful. It is “to preserve, to protect, to shelter, or give sanctuary from danger or hardship”. This is what thinking about refuge leads us to. We do not have any reason to take refuge unless we understand that we are in a hardship situation and there is some danger.

Right away, refuge brings up this concept of renunciation or the determination to be free. To be free of what? To get refuge from what? Unless we understand our situation very clearly, we have a very weak impetus towards taking refuge. “I don’t want to suffer anymore and so I’ll kind of take refuge.” When we look deeper at the Buddha’s first two noble truths about unsatisfactory conditions, we ask ourselves, “What is it?” It is to be known. The causes of suffering are to be abandoned. The deeper we look at them, the more our impetus towards refuge rises in a very palpable, realistic way in our lives.

Another definition is, “a source of help, relief, or comfort in times of trouble”. Mostly we are constantly in times of trouble. We might get a little relief with chocolate chip cookies, the hot tub, or a nice movie, and for a little while we sort of forget. But as soon as we are out of there, there is still that long list of things that we have to take care of or that conflict we are in.

Interestingly, the root of the word is “fugere” and it means “to run away or to flee from”. This leads us to think, “What do we need to flee from? What do we need to run away from?” Refuge gives us a place to stand so that we can actually look at those questions and start to find the answers.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!