There’s a human understanding of this, and a Buddhist understanding of this. Let’s start with the human, non-religious approach:
The Human Understanding: Seeking Shelter
Going for Refuge = Going for shelter, going for protection.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
So what do you come to a meditation class seeking shelter from?
We are seeking shelter from the normal, conventional, ego-driven life. We are giving up on keeping up with the Joneses. We have tried everything we can think of to be happy - everything that they said would work - relationships, jobs, money, cars, houses, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
It didn’t make us happy. Well, maybe for a few minutes it did…
But then the buzz wore off and we realized we were back where we started, just a little hung over.
So we are taking shelter from that huge, powerful, dominant consumer message that buying more things and having more experiences is going to satisfy us.
Many of you figured this out a long time ago, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But we really do have to try everything else before we sit down and actually look at our minds.
The Deeper Problem: The Illusion of a Solid Self
What's underneath the consumerist drives of society? It’s the belief that there actually is a solid, reliable, somewhat permanent person to have these experiences, buy these things, build this reputation, tell these stories about. If we all didn’t believe quite so strongly in the idea of our selves, society would be incredibly different.
When you look at it closely, is there an identifiable thing called Matthew Bellows?
There are all kinds of unsettling contemplations you can do in this vein of thinking, but they all lead to the same place… that no matter how you try, it’s very hard to pin down exactly what we mean by “me” except something like “This current, temporary amalgamation of experiences that I bundle up and name Matthew Bellows”.
So we are taking refuge from the insistence, the assumption, the mistaken belief, that we are all real solid fixed identities. We are admitting that living life in service of a shell, a persona, of ourselves is not working. In fact, it’s causing a lot of suffering.
What does that look like? Well, it looks different for every person. We are each on a journey to discover what opening up looks like, and what it feels like.
Ultimately, we are seeking refuge from the pain of confusion, from ignorance, from the illusion of separateness, disconnectedness, isolation.
We are going for refuge in reality, in how things actually are.
It’s like we’ve been standing outside in the pouring rain of other people’s assumptions and judgements, and our own fixed beliefs of who we are, what we can become. It’s a biting, cold rain. Our clothes are sopping wet.
So we go for refuge. We go to a practice where it’s ok to take off the heavy raincoat. It was uncomfortable, but it was familiar. So it feels good to take off, but it’s also scary. We take off the big heavy protective boots, so our bare feet can feel the earth.
We have found a place, a situation, where it’s ok to be alone, raw, tender, honest. And where we can grow ourselves in the direction of our expression of sanity, wisdom and love.
The Buddhist Understanding: The Three Jewels
In my experience, that place is called Buddhism, and in particular, Natural Dharma Fellowship. In Buddhism, we talk about “Taking Refuge” in the three jewels. Taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.
“Buddha” is taking refuge in the way that the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, lived his life, shared his insights. Taking refuge in the fact that he was a human being, just like us. Not a god or a demi-god. Not the Son of God. A human being who dedicated his life to waking up, did it, and taught others how to do it too.
“Dharma” is literally the teachings of the Buddha and other Buddhist teachers. This includes the Four Noble Truths, The Noble Eightfold Path and libraries upon libraries of other teachings. More importantly, though “Dharma” means Truth. So when Buddhists take refuge in Dharma, we are aligning our hearts with the actual discovered truth… not dogma, not what the big cheese said we should believe. But the actual verifiable testable experiential truth. It could be subjective truth if it’s hard to measure and run science experiments on. But it’s our truth, not someone else’s adopted truth.
“Sangha” is the community of practitioners, of meditators. Why are we taking refuge in a group of people? Well, because we need help. We are demonstrably unable to see our blind spots. We need friends, teachers, students, community members around us to help figure this out. It’s lonely, leaving behind the consumerist ego-driven conventional world. We take shelter in the community of fellow freaks, renunciates and refugees because we can’t make it alone. Plus it’s a lot more fun to cook together, eat together and clean up together than to do it alone.
That’s what going for refuge means to me. Ok, let’s meditate.