The Meaning of Refuge

The theme for the talk tonight is refuge. Every day in probably countless places around the world, in different places around the world, probably millions of people say Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, I go for refuge to the Buddha, Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, I go for refuge to the Dhamma, Saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, I go for refuge to the Saṅgha. And for many people, that's kind of what defines a Buddhist is if you do that or say you do that.

I'm not particularly interested in defining what a Buddhist is or if you or I or anyone here considers themselves a Buddhist. That, to me, is very much secondary. But it's more looking into the principle of that whole movement, of that whole practice, and is there something at the core of that that might be potent for us, helpful for us, alive for us, real for us? So clearly the words themselves and saying the words in that ritual are actually, relatively speaking, meaningless, but maybe there's something at the core of it, whether or not one says those words, whether or not one has that ritual. And this is really what I want to explore: what might 'refuge' mean for us in our lives, in our practice?

This notion of refuge was around before the Buddha, quite a while before the Buddha in India. And basically, at that time, it was common for people to proclaim a kind of allegiance with a particularly powerful person or one of the many gods, kind of in exchange for a protection from danger. And so this practice, this way of going about things was alive at that time, and the Buddha, as he did with many things, took it and rechannelled it, channelled it in a slightly different direction. He said, "Take refuge not in these things, but in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha." And he had certain meanings in mind when he said that. As the tradition has grown over the millennia, there are different meanings and different aspects, so I want to explore one way through this.

A big part of what I want to get at tonight is a question that I want to throw out to everyone, including myself, including all of us: what am I taking refuge in? What do I take refuge in in my life? What am I taking refuge in? To me, this is such an important question, such a central question for us, whether we consider ourselves Buddhists or not. As human beings, what am I taking refuge in, and is what I take refuge in helpful or not? A really, really central question. The Buddha said, speaking in his time, "People of the world, threatened with danger, seek protection from the gods of mountains and forests, shrines and offering groves and sacred trees. But that's not the secure refuge. That's not the supreme refuge. That's not the refuge having gone to which you gain release from all suffering and stress."^[1]

Nowadays, of course, we live in a predominantly secular culture, and for most people, the religious affiliation to God, etc., is not really at the core. And secular refuges have taken the place of what used to be religious refuges. So how much am I in my life, are we in our lives, going [for] refuge to money? We might not say that. How much is money my refuge? How much is my house or my home or my sense of home my refuge? How much is my career or my career plans my sense of refuge? How much am I planning a future based on what I want? This is just the normal way that human beings go about life. We plan a future based on what I want. So normal, it's almost unquestioned in our culture. 'What I want' is the guiding principle. It's a kind of refuge in there, this plan, trying to set up situations for a projected future self, and it goes unquestioned a lot of the time. And when it falls apart or when it doesn't come together, we're very insecure, often. There's a lot of insecurity.

A friend right now trying to set up a situation of a certain kind of living situation, a certain kind of career move as well. It's not coming together -- very insecure. It's almost as if the foundations of the life feel totally rocked. Or again, very common, we place our refuge in relationships. Again, we might not say we're doing this. We might not be aware we're doing this. We place our refuge in relationships.

So there's a Mahāyāna sūtra: "Parents are not your refuge, neither are loved ones or relatives. They will go to their own destination and leave you."^[2] We don't know when people are going to leave us either through their will or our will or through death. And if I'm looking to people for refuge, do I not need someone who's actually gone beyond fear? Otherwise, how could they be a refuge for me? Do I not need someone who has known some liberation?

In the Buddha's time, there were a lot of superstitions around, like that jewels had protective powers. It's actually why it's called the three jewels, as well, because the belief was that certain jewels, certain gems had protective powers. Some of that is still around; people believe this or that about crystals and whatnot. More subtle even than that is the way we take refuge often in experience, or we seek to take refuge in experience, this or that experience. Often, you hear people say -- it's a kind of more subtle seeking of refuge -- "Oh, I really want to experience this or that. I really want to see this or that before I die. I really want to go there or some other place before I die."

Or we take a kind of subtle refuge in food. Sometimes just here, a difficult day of meditation, the lunch bell -- "Yes!" Or sleep. Sleep can be a refuge too. I just want to turn everything off. It's my refuge. TV. A really good, hot bath, with all those magical salts and stuff in. What are we expecting these things to deliver? Are we expecting them to deliver something they actually can't deliver? It's impossible. How is it possible they could really be a refuge for us? They are impermanent. This is clear: they're impermanent. They're unreliable. They're empty also of inherent existence.

Oftentimes, too, a person finds themself taking refuge in fantasy. I don't know if you can see it, just watching the mind here on a day of a meditation retreat -- not that easy, and the mind just wants to go off into a daydream, and take refuge in those fantasies. Sometimes it's more a sense of wanting a refuge in just getting rid of this thing that's bugging me right now, this situation that's a hassle, this thing that's going on in my body: "I just want to get rid of this problem. I just want to sort out this hassle." And there's a kind of refuge in the projected getting rid of something.

So the Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha, they're said to be the exceptional refuge, and all the other refuges we try and take are ordinary refuges. That's not to deny that some of them have a limited refuge potential.

What does it need for something to actually be a really viable refuge? What does it need for us to have that sense that this thing can be a real refuge for me? One of the things, interestingly, is actually a sense of the danger that we're in, a sense of fear. One of my teachers, Ajaan Geoff, said the path is based on a sense of fear, which when I first heard it, I was like, "Wow, that's really odd." Actually to have a very alive sense of danger and fear, it's a requirement for refuge. So the Buddha would encourage these kind of reflections, reflections on ageing, reflections on the fact of sickness, reflections on death, reflections on loss, on the inevitable growing separate from what and who we love. This is the nature of things, and so he said one should reflect, "I am subject to ageing, subject to sickness, subject to death, subject to loss. I have not gone beyond ageing, sickness, death." To really reflect on this. And then to reflect further: "I am not the only one subject to ageing, sickness, death, etc. All beings are subject to ageing, have not gone beyond ageing, sickness, death, loss."

He continues, "When he or she reflects on this often" -- and the operative word is really 'often,' because I know that you've heard this before; 'often' -- "when one reflects on this often, the factors of the path take birth."^[3] Something takes birth in the being. And then, if one sticks with it and cultivates it, develops it as a reflection, then eventually the fetters are abandoned; there is liberation. But the really operative word is 'developing' it. So oftentimes, everyone knows people get old and get sick and die. Everyone knows that. How rare it is to reflect on it and develop it as a reflection to the point where those kind of awarenesses are running almost constantly through the day. They're part of almost the fabric of perception. How rare that is, but how powerful.

So to really be clear: money, health, youth, fame (if we have fame), appearance, relationships, career, work, intelligence per se, none of this is reliable. Memory, even, is not reliable. Sense pleasures -- unreliable, impermanent. They fall apart. They die. They will let you down. They can't help you, they can't help us when push comes to shove.

So there will even come a point in our lives when the best doctors in the world, the best medicine can't help us. This is where things are heading. This is the nature of our existence. The people that we love the most cannot help us. Our loved ones cannot help us. Our friends cannot help us. There is no refuge in the things of the world. It's not there. There is no refuge in the things of the world. There is no really happy ending. There's no happy ending. Where's all this going? Project forward, if we're lucky, a few decades. What's it going to look like? It's not like it goes off happily ever after into the sunset. There isn't really a happy ending.

There's something about looking totally honestly and fearlessly at the nature of our predicament. There's a fearlessness in that, and there's a kind of strength in that. But there also can be a lot of compassion in that. So look around the room right now. Here's a roomful of people that -- I know a couple of you are still quite young, but let's be generous: eighty years' time, it's a roomful of skeletons. This is so fragile and impermanent. Have the sense of our existential predicament.

We're on, in some ways, this beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, fragile piece of rock, hurtling through the vastness of space, with this incredible brevity to our existence. And on top of that, all our confusions, and all of our ego insecurities, and all our vulnerabilities, and all our triumphs and loves and losses and griefs. And that's actually the nature of things.

Obviously with modern medicine and technology, etc., huge benefits to many people. But one of the downsides to that is nowadays it's quite possible for many people to live quite comfortably, to go through their life and be relatively comfortable for the most part, get quite a lot of what we want, certainly in this culture, quite a lot of sense pleasure, and quite a lot of distraction from this existential level of unease, and not actually see this plight that we're in. Or that the fear might be there when we see that, but it goes a little bit underground, and it's not conscious, and yet it's still propelling us and propelling the movements of our life. So are we aware -- this is really one of the central questions -- are we aware what we take refuge in, what we pin our hopes on, and what we have faith in?

A really interesting time right now with the credit crunch, and just seeing what that brings up for people, and what it exposes in terms of where we have put our refuges and pinned our hopes. So there's a real kind of fearlessness in looking even at our pleasures and the places of comfort that we have, and the places of security, and actually looking right at them and seeing: there's dukkha there too. There's suffering there too. They're not what they seem to be or what they're cracked up to be.

It's very easy -- and as I said, I know I've said this before. I know I'm not saying anything that you haven't heard before, and it's very easy to just kind of have a, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that." Can this be really alive for us? Difficult, not easy.

So we need to keep that sense of danger and fear alive to be part of what cultivates a sense of refuge. The second thing we need is a belief or a faith that what we're taking refuge in can actually really help us, can actually be of some help. So when we're a toddler, we take refuge in Mummy. We should take refuge in Mummy. She's our refuge. She's our harbour. She's our safety. When we're ill, most people take refuge in doctors. When there's something that we feel insecure about, we take refuge in the police, or if you don't live in a culture like ours, you take refuge in the local mafia or something or your local warlord who is powerful. There's a sense of having confidence in someone or something that it can protect you from something.

With all that, and the Buddha comes and says three refuges: Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha. What does that mean? As I said, there are many ways through this, but the ones I want to explore tonight: to take refuge in the Buddha, what does that mean for us? It means, or one of its meanings is, to take refuge in the fact of his awakening, the fact that there was someone who woke up, who awoke to something. That word, buddho, Buddha, means 'awake.' It's a little difficult in English, because it doesn't mean 'mindful,' like he's really alert and really present with life. I mean, he is that, as well, really present with life, really wakeful, really mindful. It doesn't mean just that. It means a lot more. He's woken up to something totally out of the ordinary, totally radical, a totally upside down way of seeing life, way of understanding life. So take refuge in the fact of believing in the fact of his awakening, and that he did awaken to what was true -- more importantly, that he did so by developing qualities that we also can develop, that he brought certain qualities to a kind of pitch of development and we also can do that. We can develop the same qualities that led to the Buddha's awakening. That's the nub of it. And that the truths that he awoke to are the best way of looking at life.

So there's a lot -- I'll go into this later in the talk: there are lots of ways that we can look at our life, many, many ways we can relate to life. To have faith in the Buddha's awakening means that we have faith or conviction or understanding that what he awoke to, the truths and the principles that he awoke to, provide the best way for us to look at our life and to process our experience and to understand and to relate to our experience, and even more importantly, our actions and our choices.

In that, in refuge in the Buddha, is very much this sense of the possibility, the possibility that exists for developing the Buddha-mind, developing the mind of a Buddha. Or we could put it another way. You could say 'developing'; you could also, in a complementary way, say 'discovering' or 'uncovering' the mind of the Buddha. This mind of the Buddha is what we're taking refuge in when we take refuge in the Buddha.

He said, "A mind that, when touched by the ways of the world, when touched by the things of the world, is unshaken, sorrowless, dustless, secure, this is the highest protective charm."^[4] So if I say that, the Buddha-mind, I'm aware -- I don't know how many people are in the room right now, but I'm aware for some people it doesn't really mean much at all as any sense of possibility or even something that stirs anything in the heart or the sense of aspiration. For other people, it's very inspiring. And for other people still, it's the opposite -- it's kind of deflating. Immediately the comparing mind and the ego and the inner critic gets hold of it: "I can't do that. How could little old me possibly ever get anywhere near something like that?" And again, what are we taking refuge in? What am I having faith in? What am I believing in? Am I believing in the contracted, little definitions and self-views that spin around the mind about how I am and how I'm not good enough, etc.? Am I, in some strange way, taking refuge in that?

What it's really pointing to, again, is possibility that arises through practice. It all comes down to practice. And the Buddha was aware of how people might hear that, and said, "If it wasn't possible, if all this wasn't possible, I wouldn't ask you to do it. I really wouldn't ask you to do it." He's coming out of compassion. He said, "I know it's hard. I know it's hard to understand. But if it wasn't possible, I wouldn't ask you to do it." Other people might hear this Buddha-mind and immediately it's almost like they dispense with the notion of practice, and it's a sense of some kind of grace from some mystical being will come, some kind of magic. But actually there is no magic. There is no magic here. There's no grace. There's a tantric text. It says:

The Buddhas do not wash away your bad deeds, your unskilful actions with water. They do not wave their hands over your head and your suffering is removed. They also can't move their understanding to your mind or to your heart without saying anything. The only way they can lead you, the only way they can free you, is by teaching you the truth, the Dharma, which they themselves have realized. Liberation depends on one's practice.

So this is really the core to me of the three refuges -- it's practice, which is the Dharma. It's the Dharma, the second refuge -- the Dharma meaning the teachings, certainly, but Dharma principally as practice and the realization that comes out of practice.

So what does 'practice' mean? What does it mean to practise? Practice means the whole path of practice, the whole of the Dharma. It's very tempting, I think, nowadays to overemphasize mindfulness and put too much faith in our capacity for mindfulness, for being present, for being with, to bring awareness to, etc. Too much faith in that. The Buddha taught an eightfold path. The whole of the path is important. Certainly mindfulness is crucial. It's absolutely a crucial part of the path.

But even if mindfulness is part of our refuge, or we're relating to this capacity we have to meet experience, to be with, to open to experience -- beautiful, beautiful, precious capacity that we're very much cultivating on a retreat like this; it's very much at the centre of insight meditation practice, but even then, when we emphasize mindfulness, we need this sense, we need to develop a sense with it of when the 'being with' what's difficult (if we're talking about what's difficult) is actually helpful. We can develop our sensitivity so we feel that. When is my 'being with' helpful? And one senses a certain easing come into the experience, or a certain relaxing around, or a certain dissolving of something, or at least a sense, "This thing is difficult, and it's still difficult, but there's something -- I'd rather be connected. I'd rather be with it than not." When we have any of those senses, then we can say that the mindfulness is working at that point. It's actually a helpful kind of mindfulness.

But sometimes we're trying to be mindful, every good intention of being present, of showing up, of opening, of working with, and it's just got a little bit of a feeling of being stuck, of being stagnant, of something just being stuck in place. We need to be sensitive to these two different kinds of ways that it feels. Sometimes even our mindfulness of something seems to actually exacerbate the problem. Again, we need to be paying attention to the effects of mindfulness in the moment for it to really be part of our refuge.

And as I say, the Buddha talks about the eightfold path. He says wherever there is any teaching or teacher or doctrine or Dharma that has the eightfold path in it, that teaching, that doctrine, that tradition won't be empty of people who have some degree of realization. It will be there. Other times, he puts it less kind of rigidly, and he just says: if you want to know what the Dharma is, the totality of the Dharma, look at the fruits. And if the fruits are peace, unburdening, unbinding, if the fruits are selflessness as opposed to self-aggrandizement, that that is being taught or that that is being practised, that's the Dharma. It's a quite simple, lovely way of putting it.

So what does it mean for us to have a real sense that my practice is my refuge? What would it be? Is it possible? It is possible that we put all our hopes, a person gets to the point in their life, in their practice, when actually all one's hopes are placed in the Dharma, in Dharma practice. Not in career, not in the promise of relationship, of this or that kind of living situation or house or money or whatever it is. I really believe and really know, deep down in the core of one's being, I know what helps. I know what's really helpful. Not things or the events of life. It might be that the events of life are very much secondary -- very much secondary in terms of our deeper well-being and the deeper significance. We pass through life, and what happens and what doesn't happen may be very much secondary, being free of this or that hassle. It's practice that actually is the refuge.

So what might that mean? Start very small and simple: in formal meditation practice, we can, as we develop in our practice, a person begins to get a sense, a palpable physical sense of the meditation posture being a refuge. One's just spent so much time in it, working through stuff in it, as one establishes oneself in that posture, takes one's seat, one feels it and one knows it as one's refuge in two ways. One is that, over time, gradually, it becomes a place where we know how to cultivate a sense of well-being and happiness in the body, the actual bodily sense. We develop our capacity to have this meditation posture be a place of ease, of well-being for the most part. That comes in time. Very developable, and very much part of what it is to have posture as a refuge. But also, through practice, it's our place for meeting difficulty. So this thing is going on in our life -- this relationship anxiety or whatever, whatever it is, this sadness, this grief, this depression, this anxiety -- there's something we know about collecting ourselves in the meditation posture that we, over time, know how to meet it, and it's our refuge. It's our place that we can meet the difficult and meet it well and skilfully and compassionately and wisely.

But practice as refuge is much more, certainly, than the formal practice. It's even more, we could say, than just sitting every day and kind of trying to be mindful when we remember. For a lot of people, that's what practice can become: sitting, trying to sit every day, and trying to be mindful when we remember. But it's a lot, lot more than that in its potential. I would say 'practice as refuge' means having an attitude of opportunity. I'll explain what I mean. An attitude of opportunity, of responsibility. An attitude of response-ability and responsiveness.

One of my teachers, Ajaan Geoff, says, to take refuge, what it really means when you get right down to the heart of it, what it really means is to take refuge in the principle of karma.^[5] I'm not going to say that tonight, because it's too loaded for people, and it involves too much else. I'm going to expand it a little bit and say, the core of it, what are we really taking refuge in as practitioners? We're taking refuge in Right View. That's really what it means as a practitioner to take refuge.

This is totally massive and at the heart of what it means to practise. In our life, what is or what are the views that we have of life? By which I mean, what are the ways or the way that I am seeing my life? I'm born. I live for some indeterminate amount of time. And I die. How am I seeing that? How am I seeing that period, that miraculous expanse of time, that miraculous fact of existence? How am I viewing it? And on another level, how am I viewing this moment and this experience? Whatever it is -- this pain in the knee, this joy, this humdrum. I look at the wall, whatever -- how am I viewing that? So view has a lot of aspects to it and a lot of different levels. I'm aware when I say this it doesn't sound that significant, or maybe it does to some people, but it can potentially sound like it's really like, "Pfft, that doesn't sound very interesting or that big a deal." It's enormous in its implications and in the power it wields, what is around our view and comes out of our view.

The views that we have, on either the life level or at the moment level of experience, might be conscious. They might be conscious. They might be espoused, and we say, "I think this about life. This is my view," and we can proclaim it to others. "This is how I see things. This is how I see this situation." It might be like that. Some of them might be like that. It might be that all of them or some of them are unconscious. They're unconscious. We're not even aware exactly of what the views we hold are. It might be that the views we have, again, of our life or any situation, we could put them into some theoretical framework, and it's like, "Oh, yeah, it all fits like this." It might be that they're not even conceptually formed for us, that it's very murky and kind of not really neat.

But all of that, all of that, all the levels and all the aspects of what I just said, all the threads of it, all of them are active, all of them are powerful, and all of them have enormous, enormous influence. They influence our choices, our seeing, our direction, our responses, our attitudes, our heart, our minds. Enormous, enormous, moment to moment, how they colour and shape our world and the way we relate to our world. A person might want to say, "I don't impose a view, and I don't like this Right View business, and I don't like the sound of that. I don't want to conceptualize a view. I don't want any dogma. I reject dogma. I reject any kind of complexity. I don't want to be rigid around this." Understandable, but in a way, there's a kind of blindness or naïveté there a little bit if we're holding too tightly to that. A little bit of arrogance, maybe.

There is always, always, always, always a way of looking that we are engaging in. There's always a way of looking, and it may be conscious. What we want to do is actually become conscious of the ways that we're looking. So in the day today, as I said, this knee pain, this restlessness, whatever it is, how am I looking at that? How am I looking? That's where the practice is. It may be that I don't have any conscious views, etc., but I'm actually rigidly attached to unconscious views.

So when the Buddha talks about Right View, what that means, again, has a couple of levels. Fundamentally, what it means is understanding for ourselves what it is that leads to suffering, what creates more suffering for ourself and what eases our suffering, what brings freedom from suffering, what brings actually happiness and well-being. And this turns out to be all those boring Buddhist lists of this quality and that quality, all the qualities of heart -- generosity, loving-kindness, compassion, mindfulness, calmness, concentration, equanimity, patience, all these lists, investigation. These are the things that bring happiness and well-being and freedom from suffering, and the intentions of goodness behind them. So those are our investment as practitioners. Those are our best possible investment portfolio in this life, best possible.

So this teacher that I mentioned, Ajaan Geoff, he used to say, you know, this business of refuge isn't some warm, fuzzy, nice feeling for your heart; it's actually a matter of taking responsibility about just that, about what am I cultivating, what am I developing, what am I investing in? And I would say the place of the heart does have a big part here; I'm not emphasizing it tonight, but I think that's also important. So something about responsibility. Have I or am I developing the kind of mind and heart that can be a refuge, that is dependable, that is reliable, strong, clear, kind, steady, patient, insightful? I can develop that. The question is, am I doing that? That's the refuge: refuge in realizing that that can be my source of strength, my refuge.

At another level, Right View is about the Four Noble Truths, and what it means is that freedom is possible. Again, we go back to the sense of possibility, and what I said about a sense of opportunity. It means that not only in our life, but also in this moment, in this moment of whatever is going on, some degree of freedom is possible, and I take refuge in that sense, in that knowing. We realize: suffering, the sense of suffering in life, is actually added, is concocted, we could say, by the mind and the heart. Suffering is an extra. It's the mind and the heart, and its way of seeing and its relationship with experience, that adds suffering, that concocts suffering. And that process can be understood. It can be understood. That's the amazingly beautiful thing: it can be understood.

So in this process, there's a really alive sense of inquiry: what am I adding? What is the mind, the heart, adding to this situation, this experience, that's creating suffering? And the sense of the possibility that it doesn't need to do that, and I can learn to let go of that. The whole range of suffering, from the most gruesome situation and fact of our deaths, all the way down to whatever's happening in this moment. This depression, this anxiety, this boredom, this hassle, this difficulty, this illness that's happening at the wrong time, this loss of whatever it is, something in me or someone or something in my life, this failure of myself, of my dreams, this knee pain, this back pain, this restlessness -- all of that comes with a question and an opportunity. That's the hinge of refuge. What is the mind adding?

So things go wrong, and very quickly we go, "I just need to fix this. I just need to solve this situation. Then I'll, then I can think about practice." That friend that I told you about, just obsessed a little bit with sorting her life out and the living situation and the job situation. Someone else the other day put a hot iron on the carpet and burnt a few holes in their carpet. How quickly that just becomes, "Agghhh, this thing!", and we forget about seeing it as an opportunity.

I'm so aware when I say this kind of thing how undramatic it sounds. It doesn't sound -- I wish I could make it big and colourful and dramatic and "Yeehaw!" It's a subtle shift. It's a subtle movement of mind on which everything hinges. It's such a small movement. Am I seeing it like this, or am I seeing it as an opportunity, with the sense of the possibility of some degree, if not a lot of degree, of freedom? Everything hinges on that. It's subtle, but it's huge. It's absolutely huge.

How do I get faith in that? Well, I do it. I practise it. And more and more, I do get the sense, "Look at that! It is the mind adding something. Look at that! It is the relationship." And I learn how to take it apart and ease that suffering. And slowly, slowly, gradually, the sense of possibility grows. It grows and grows. The sense of possibility for ourselves grows. That's why, as Catherine said last night, the little experiences today of calmness, of quietness, of concentration, of presence, of aliveness, they're important, because something is growing there, little seedlings. Something is growing, and eventually it reaches a point of utter, complete conviction, complete conviction, and we know in our heart the practice is actually all we need. Practice is all we need. And we stop hedging our bets: "I'll do a little bit of practice, but I'll make sure that this is in place. And I'll do a little bit of this, and have that security and this, this, this refuge, and make sure, and I hope I have this relationship, and da-da-da-da-da." That's, for the most part, how a person who hasn't developed this conviction will live. Of course they're going to live like that. You're going to hedge your bets.

The conviction that practice is all we need -- usually, it's "I'll do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of practice and a little bit of this," and then we end up with a little bit of peace, a little bit of freedom, a little bit, and a little bit of security. We split our investments, and we actually minimize our return.

So it goes deeper and deeper, and we can glimpse the ending of suffering through insight. When I said at the beginning refuge needs a sense of danger, what we come to realize, actually, is that the danger is here. The danger is right here in the heart and in the mind. The danger is in what the Buddha calls the afflictions of the heart and mind, in greed and aversion and delusion. A person really understands they are the danger, not everything else: "That's what I need to be kind of wary of." So the Buddha points to this possibility of being free of the afflictions of greed, aversion, and delusion. He talks about nibbāna, endlessly talking about nibbāna, and he actually uses the word 'refuge,' a lot of synonyms for nibbāna. He says this is "the secure, the island. Nibbāna is the shelter, the asylum. It's the refuge."^[6]

So practice is really at the core. So Buddha, Dharma, Dharma as practice. And the last one, Saṅgha, meaning 'community,' it has actually a lot of different meanings. Originally what it meant was what's called the ideal Saṅgha, which means the community of people who have actually realized nibbāna, realized to some degree a direct realization of the emptiness of all things, what's called ariyas, people who are beyond turning back. It also includes the monastic community, and it also of course includes what's traditionally called not Saṅgha but parisā, which means everyone who's involved in practising, so everyone who's supporting each other with practice.

I think all of those meanings are actually important. It is important that there are in the world people who have realized something, as I said earlier, something completely counterintuitive about existence, something that turns our understanding on its head. It's important that we know and we even have contact with people like that, so that we know it's possible, and so that we see what that looks like in life, how a person like that lives. The monastic Saṅgha, also very important. They give a sign of renunciation, of being able to live without, simply, and the beauty of that.

But also very importantly is this, actually the word parisā, what has come to mean Saṅgha: everyone who is practising, everyone who is sincere in their efforts, in their questing, and the beauty of that. Usually on retreats at Gaia House, we don't say keep your eyes down on the ground, don't look up, don't make eye contact. Actually I think -- I don't know if I can speak for Catherine, but I would rather, I think we would rather you made some eye contact. Have a look around you. Who's here? Who's supporting me? Can you see the beauty of that, the preciousness of that? Who am I supporting? Lovely, lovely people, giving themselves to this endeavour over and over and over, every sitting, every walking. To have that sense touching the heart, as I said last night, through the silence, in the silence, of mutually supporting each other, that gift, giving and receiving, a Saṅgha there -- beautiful.

And the Buddha in particular talks about spending time with people who have more experience, who are more developed than we are on the path. There's a lovely exchange he had with someone with the wonderful name of Tiger-Paw. He's talking about this, and he says:

Now, what, Tiger-Paw, is friendship with admirable people? It's where, wherever a person lives, he or she spends time with those young or old who are advanced in virtue [meaning goodness, kindness, ethical uprightness and integrity; spends time with those advanced in virtue]. He talks with them. He engages them in discussions. [In other words, go and badger people -- how did you develop that? What do you do? How is it that you see things, that this comes about?] He emulates consummate conviction in Right View in those who are consummate in conviction. He emulates consummate virtue in those who are consummate in virtue.

This word, 'emulate,' means to imitate, to try and equal, or to even go beyond -- to actually imitate what they do. Ask a person who it seems is living with a lot of generosity or goodness, "How is it that you are able to do that? What is it that you're doing? How are you seeing things?" Badger them.

Emulates those who are consummate in generosity, emulates those who are consummate in discernment or insight or understanding. This is called friendship with admirable people.^[7]

This Saṅgha, this togetherness of people practising, I think, is so important nowadays. There is another kind of Saṅgha, not to make too much of a duality here: what we could call the Saṅgha of the dominant culture that we live in. And oftentimes, unfortunately, the dominant culture is actually supporting unskilful qualities, unskilful views and relationships with what's going on. So, for example, this financial crisis; so, for example, terrorism and the war on terror. There's a way that it's very easy for people to mutually reinforce fear, and certainly the media to be feeding an attitude of fear. It's an unskilful quality that's being fed in the culture.

So we need exposure to and closeness to people who have no fear or much, much less fear in relation to those things, not going to be keeled over by those things -- or at least people who are really interested in not being bowled over, not seeing these things with fear (the financial crisis, the terrorism, the whatever it is). Because it's so easy, it's so unbelievably easy to take it for granted that because such-and-such is going on, that there should be fear, that that's a kind of natural response. There's a financial crisis, so we kind of are less generous, for example. It's so easy to take that for granted. We need all the support we can get to move our hearts and minds in an opposite direction.

I'm running out of time. I was going to say some more about Saṅgha. Bur I'll just close with something.

This word, saraṇa, actually means, the word for 'refuge' literally means 'something to remember.' So it's almost something we keep close, close to the heart, close to consciousness. We remember this possibility of what the mind can develop to, the possibility of, as I said, opportunity, the possibility of different ways of seeing things, the possibility of development -- something to remember. In a way, refuge has a lot to do with direction, a sense of direction in life, a sense of moving towards something and towards something beautiful. So a refuge, in a way, is a beacon. It's a light -- oftentimes it seems in the distance, saying, "Over here, over here. This way, this way." Something in refuge, in all those meanings, allows us, if we can open to it, if we can develop our sense of refuge, actually allows us as human beings, funnily enough, to take risks, to take risks in life more and more and with all the beauty of taking beautiful risks.

I saw this postcard the other day in a shop, and it said, "You know you're middle-aged when the only thing you care to exercise is caution." We could substitute a lot of things for that. They had this picture of two people on a deckchair not really doing anything. We could substitute a lot of stuff for that. But you could say we know our refuge isn't really developed when all we care to exercise is caution, when there's this overcaution in our life.

So something about refuge gives us, at a very deep level, this courage to take risks. Actually, they seem like risks, but they're not. Courage to take risks in and with the Dharma. You know, to practise generosity seems like a risk. It's the refuge, an understanding of refuge, that gives us the ability to do that and the courage to do that. What is it to experiment with generosity so one actually has the sense of taking a risk with something? It's fresh. Something in the heart is being blown open. The cobwebs just break open, because I'm practising at my edge with something like generosity and all the forms that generosity might take.

What would it be to take risks around generosity, around energy and the energy I put into practice, in the very broad sense of 'practice'? What would it be to take risks? Again, sometimes we're very cagey with our investment in terms of practice. I might be tired; I don't want to overdo it -- understandable. What is it to take risks with mindfulness? Sometimes it feels very risky to be with what's difficult. It really feels at our edge. I don't know if I can. To open to what feels like, "I'm not sure if I can open to it."

What is it to take risks with the heart in its opening of loving-kindness and compassion? To actually let the heart open that way, let it melt things. Can feel risky. With our whole sense of commitment -- so even here on the retreat, the sense of staying up late or the possibility of staying up late and practising, playing with this edge of our sense of commitment, or getting up early, whatever it is. There's something in this that the more we do that, the more the sense of refuge develops. The more the sense of refuge develops, the more we're able to do that. And together, they carve out this avenue, this path to freedom in a very real way in the being.

So it's there for us as something very beautiful to really question, to probe into with the mind, but also with the heart, to use for support for our practice. Something available to all of us.