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Venerable Ajahn Sundara -
Taking Refuge
After three or four days on a
meditation retreat, most of us are over the worst. We tend to look a lot
brighter and happier than when the retreat began. That’s the result of three
or four days of looking inwardly and of being with ourselves. However horrible
we might feel about ourselves, we get close to that feeling and actually listen
to our heart and mind. Then some lovely things happen and we begin to relax. It’s
not an easy thing to do but we begin to be more accepting of all the pain, of
all the suffering, that we usually tend to put aside.
We never seem to have the time
to be friendly towards ourselves. It doesn’t seem like an important thing to
do — to have the time and the space to live in harmony with ourselves. So when
we go on retreat what a wonderful opportunity to be able to open up, to be able
to listen, and perhaps to understand a bit more profoundly the nature of our
mind, the nature of our thoughts, of our feelings and perceptions. We have the
chance now to realise that we only feel limited and bound by them because we
rarely have the opportunity to pay attention to or investigate and question
their reality, their true nature.
At the beginning of a talk like
this, we have a tradition, we acknowledge the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dhamma,
Sangha. When we become a monastic, a homeless one, we trade our home and we get
Three Refuges. So we’re not totally homeless. We actually take three very
secure refuges and we leave behind all that we suppose to be safe, that which we
assume to be protective and secure. We leave behind home, family, money, the
control of our lives, the control over the people we live with, the place we
actually stay — we let go of all that. And in return, we take the Three
Refuges.
Now, in my experience these
refuges do not mean very much at first. I didn’t quite understand what they
were about. Several times a year, we have Buddhist festivals and ceremonies. We
follow a lovely custom on those days. We meditate through the night and before
the all-night vigil we slowly walk around the monastery three times, holding a
candle, some incense and some flowers in our hands. Monastics and lay people
walk together, silently around the monastery contemplating the Three Refuges,
the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. It’s very beautiful and inspiring
sight.
At first I didn’t know what
this really meant. I would reflect on the Buddha and just get a blank in my
mind; reflect on the Dhamma, another blank; reflect on the Sangha, another
blank. I didn’t panic though. I realised that there must be something that I
was not doing right and I wasn’t in a hurry to get it right. I felt at that
moment that I had a whole lifetime to understand this. So I just relaxed
considering that the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha wasn’t something I had to think
about. I knew somehow that those refuges were in the human heart and perhaps as
I practised I would come to know what they meant.
I think what brings many of us
to be interested in the practice of meditation is the need to understand
ourselves, the need to clarify the confusion we live in. Many of us want to be
free; we want to understand, we want to realise, to see for ourselves what it’s
all about. We are fed up with books; we’ve read enough; we’ve listened
enough; we’ve met enough wise people. We’ve done everything we could to
understand and yet that didn’t seem to be sufficient.
Second-hand knowledge somehow
is not really satisfactory. We want to experience for ourselves what all these
wise people and all the wise teachings are saying. As long as there’s no
realization of the truth of our mind there’s no real understanding. It’s
difficult to taste the joy and the freedom of knowing, experiencing the Buddha’s
teaching for oneself — what’s known as insight, seeing directly the true
nature of our mind and body and realising the freedom experienced when we let go
of any attachments.
At the beginning of the
practice, at the beginning of the path, we still tend to look for a form of
happiness. We all want to be happy, don’t we? Who wants to be miserable? We
all want to be free and to experience pleasure. I certainly didn’t want to
come to the monastery to be miserable and experience suffering. When I came, I
was quite certain the practice of meditation would make me happier and give me a
lot of pleasure. Happiness was pleasure. And that’s something we should take
into account.
The practice is not here to
make us suffer. We only suffer because we haven’t practised properly, because
we haven’t done what is necessary to let go of ignorance, to let go of our
attachments. So it’s important to take this into account. We should not
imagine that because we are practising we have to be terribly serious and feel
that unless we experience some terrible pain or hardship that somehow something
is not quite right.
That kind of idea made me
suffer quite a lot at the beginning of my training. I had the impression that
unless I went through some kind of hardship I would not be able to let go. And
it’s true that more often than not unless it hurts our ignorance is not
acknowledged. If it doesn’t hurt, we can go on forever without really being
aware of it. This seems to be our human predicament. Unless something hurts, we
don’t really wake up, we don’t open our eyes and look.
So everyday we recite the Three
Refuges as a reminder because out of habit, we tend to take refuge in things
like anger and worry. We tend to take refuge in self-pity or pleasure,
distraction, obsession with ourselves or wanting to sleep or eat all the time.
We take a lot of refuge in food, don’t we? And then we take refuge in feeling
guilty about eating. So our tendency is to take refuge in the wrong things,
things that makes us unhappy. And if we didn’t have reminders, if we didn’t
have skillful means to bring back into consciousness what’s really important
in life, we would forget ourselves and never see the way out of suffering.
~ Refuge in the Buddha ~
The refuge in the Buddha is the
refuge in the knowing. The Buddha knows the world — which in Buddhism does not
mean the world of mountains, rivers and trees but the world that arises in our
mind and body and the suffering that we create out of ignorance.
In our daily chanting we say
that the Buddha knows the world, he knows the arising of the world, the ending
of the world; he knows the way the mind creates the realities we live in, the
universe we navigate through. By going through the process, we also begin to see
clearly the path that leads us out of suffering. Somebody asked me today,
"Who is the one who knows? Who is the one who is aware?" A good
question, isn’t it? Because I can’t find anybody being aware, can you? I
tried for a long time to find someone who was aware in me. I finally gave up. I
remember when I did a meditation retreat with a well-known Burmese teacher, a
long time ago, somebody was talking about "Who was the one who knows. Who
is it?" One of the assistant teachers said: "A super
consciousness." I really liked that at the time; the one who knows was a
super consciousness.
So I imagined my brain to be
lots of little, sort of mini-consciousnesses, with a kind of umbrella on top, a
super consciousness. I felt really good; I really got the feeling I knew
something about this Buddha, this Buddha mind, the ‘one who knows.’ But
unfortunately, the nature of the mind being what it is, after about two or three
days I began to question and doubt, because that’s the natural process. As
soon as we get an answer, we can be sure we are going to get a doubt. This is
the way it goes.
And ever since I have made
peace with the fact that maybe there is nobody who knows. Just knowing — that
seemed to be fine. Knowing seems to to be able to carry on functioning with or
without my doubts. Without having an answer, I can still take refuge in being
the ‘knower,’ being the one who’s aware, who can see.
Even so, sometimes we can make
a big problem out of it. We can create somebody who knows and then get upset
because we’ve got somebody who doesn’t know. We get disappointed when we
haven’t got somebody who knows in there, inside of us. And maybe we get
overjoyed when we find someone who is aware. See, again it’s the swings of
pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness. But the One who knows is that very
factor that balances out those extreme swings of the mind. The ‘One who knows’
is what is called the Middle Way.
We can see the extremes of the
mind, happiness, unhappiness, pleasure and pain, inspiration and despair. We can
see hope and depression. We can see praise and blame. We can see agitation,
sleepiness, boredom, the whole lot. And that seeing is a balancing factor,
because we become aware of our attachments to these moods, these states of mind.
Without a refuge in the knowing, in the awakened mind we’d never be able look
at the mind; we’d be lost in confusion. So the refuge in knowing is very
important.
Together, the refuges are
called the Three Jewels — and they are really like beautiful jewels that we
can go back to whenever there is confusion, whenever there is agitation. We can
always go back and take refuge in knowing those states. We don’t have to think
about them, we don’t have to psychoanalyse ourselves. We can actually go back
to the knowing. And what happens then is that we see what the Buddha saw:
impermanence. We can see that these states are not worth holding onto because
they are insubstantial, not satisfactory. And we get the intriguing feeling that
maybe we are not ‘This.’ Maybe it’s got nothing to do with ‘Me.’ Maybe
my depression is not ‘My’ depression.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to
realise that one’s sadness is actually not a personal thing? Because we tend
to think that everything that happens to us is personal, we create many problems
in our lives: ‘Poor me’; ‘I’m the only one that this happens to’; ‘No
one else has this problem, except me.’ Everyone else looks terribly confident,
don’t they? Especially if we lack confidence in ourselves. Everyone else seems
to be terribly strong and really know what he or she is doing. I used to think
like that. I used to look at someone and, if I felt a bit depressed or
miserable, I could be quite convinced that they were OK. They were fine. I was
the only one who had problems until I realised they, too, had problems.
Because we are self-centered
creatures by nature, everything is ‘my’ problem, ‘my’ life, ‘my’
sorrows, and ‘my’ relationships. ‘My’ melodramas. Everything seems to
center around ‘Me.’ Refuge in the Buddha allows us to see this very clearly.
And it’s a compassionate refuge. It’s not a refuge that’s critical.
When we take refuge in
mindfulness, we don’t have to criticize or condemn or get angry with
ourselves. We can observe the tendency to be critical, angry or demanding
towards ourselves. It’s a very compassionate refuge. In fact, that refuge is
one of the first lines of our chanting, ‘the Buddha has compassion as vast as
the oceans,’ and that’s really what that refuge means. It is a beautiful,
compassionate home.
So we have three homes, three
refuges. We have refuge in the Buddha. It doesn’t have a roof, no central
heating, but it feels very good. It feels very secure, very reliable —
especially when you see how much of our life is so agitated, so unreliable and
insecure. As we become more aware, we have a clear view and a clear
understanding of what samsara - the endless round of birth and death - is all
about. And we are all here to get free from our attachment to it.
Taking refuge in the Buddha
actually keeps us in touch with what is real, what is actually true. That’s
one of the reasons we tend to forget about it. The meanings of mindfulness is
"recollection," to remember. We can remember every time we get lost in
being silly or in being unkind or in being angry or impatient or stupid. We can
also remember that we don’t have to change ourselves. The compassion of that
refuge is that in being awake to what is happening, there is no judgement; we
don’t have to become somebody who is not angry or who is not stupid. We can
actually acknowledge what is happening and accept it in consciousness and in our
heart. As soon as we have this clear vision of what’s going on we realise that
it’s changing and see clearly the uselessness of struggling to keep things
permanent, to keep ourselves as permanent entities. We are constantly changing,
so what’s the point being this person that we cherish, pamper and try to make
as happy as possible?
Most of our struggle in life is
to create situations where ‘me,’ my personality will never have to face
suffering, or endure pain, will never feel embarrassed, ashamed or guilty. That’s
why we are so good at forgetting — and we have to learn to remember again. We
have to learn to be aware, to have sati (mindfulness) in our heart as a refuge
and as a protector — it protects us, it protects the heart.
~ Refuge in Dhamma ~
The second refuge, the Dhamma, is
very close to the first one. In fact, there is a famous teaching that the Buddha
gave to his disciples just before dying. They were anxious about him leaving
this world and wondered who was going to be their teacher after the Buddha’s
passing away. They were concerned as to who was going to take over and be their
guide. And he said: "The Dhamma and the Vinaya will be your guide and your
refuge." On a previous occasion he had also said that: "Who sees the
Buddha sees the Dhamma, who sees the Dhamma sees the Buddha."
Dhamma and Buddha — there’s
no need to have a physical Buddha. We can actually find the Buddha, the one who
knows, the one who is aware in our own heart. And as soon as we are aware,
mindful, we are in touch with the Dhamma. That’s the beauty of this practice.
Sometimes, when we read books about Buddhism, we think we have to read the whole
Tripitika before we can get in touch with the Dhamma. We believe that we have to
learn the Abhidhamma, perfect the ten paramitas, develop the five powers, get
rid of the five hindrances and know the 56 states of consciousness, and so
forth. By the end, we can feel so exhausted that we don’t even want to start.
In fact, today I was reflecting
that when in our meditation period we mindfully breathe through our nostrils
enduring a little bit of pain, a little bit of sweating or bearing with the heat
and the cold, noisy people or boredom, we haven’t got any idea of the amount
of things we’re really practising with. We don’t know yet that at those
moments we’re perfecting the ten paramitas, that we’re letting go of the
hindrances and developing the five powers of concentration, effort, mindfulness,
faith, and wisdom. We might not be aware of it but we’re really perfecting
many spiritual qualities of the heart. But it doesn’t seem like very much,
does it? We’re just breathing in through the nostrils and then breathing out,
and then we feel a bit of pain, then it’s gone. Nothing much really? And yet
over some years of practise, we begin to see the fruits of our effort and the
teachings come alive.
So the refuge in the Dhamma is
not something we have to look for very far. We don’t have to look for the
Dhamma somewhere, out there in another country, or in another person, or for a
thing that will happen tomorrow or next year.
The quality of Dhamma is
immediacy (sanditt-hiko) — right here, right now. The Dhamma invites us to
"come and see" (ehipassiko) and can be realised when there is
awareness and wisdom. It’s not "delayed in time" (akaliko). Each
morning we chant those qualities. We don’t have to wait for someone to tell us
what it is. We don’t have to read books. We don’t have to have a progressive
step-by-step study before we can get in touch with Dhamma.
The refuge in awareness brings us
into the present and in the present there is the Dhamma, there is the truth,
there is the way things are. But it can only be seen when there is a clear
awareness of the present moment.
Another meaning of the Dhamma is
"that which sustains itself." Nature sustains itself; it has its
cycles and its seasons — it just goes on forever. We can look at the nature of
our mind, our human nature and how we function. We also have seasons and cycles,
we have our days and nights, our darkness and brightness, we have a rhythm. And
because we don’t know that rhythm, we can sometimes drag ourselves to the
point of complete exhaustion, sickness or mental stress. We often forget we are
part of nature, part of "the way things are."
Our intelligence, our capacity
for knowledge, tends to alienate us from our nature. We often feel estranged
from ourselves because our human nature is not really that exciting. Thoughts
are so much more exciting! We think, think, think the most incredible things.
Our imagination is really quite creative, especially on retreat. We can really
see how the mind is this wonderful creator.
A famous Thai meditation teacher
said once that in Buddhism it’s not a God that creates, it’s ignorance. We
create out of ignorance. We create an incredible amount of wonderful things and
miserable things — the heavens and hells. We can imagine almost anything.
Sometimes we wonder what we have done in the past because our mind can think of
the most bizarre things.
Because of our capacity to think
and create mentally, we often don’t acknowledge our physical nature, the
rhythm of our body, the rhythm of our mind, the rhythm of our emotions, of our
feelings, of our moods, of how we are affected by the world around us, by the
moon and the sun, by the day and the night. Many of us don’t seem to
appreciate any of that in relation to ourselves. We tend to have a lot of ideas
of how things should be, how we would like things to be, how we think things
should be, and have very little space for ‘the way things are,’ for what is
happening in the moment. In fact, after a while, one can see a really clear
pattern in the mind: there is what we think it should be, then there is what we’d
like it to be, and finally what is. All three seem to have a bit of a hard time
cooperating with each other.
In my early years, it took me a
while to notice this pattern but through the practice, I began to understand
that in one moment we can only be aware of so much - which is often not very
much. We can think a lot of things but we can actually know only a little. It’s
through knowing and investigating that which we are, that understanding deepens.
When I was still an anagarika, I
spent my third Vassa with another nun 300 miles from the monastery. It was the
Vassa period and we were on retreat for most of the time. In the beginning,
whenever I experienced some forms of greed, anger or delusion I would see a
recurring pattern of thoughts. At 7:00 pm at night, when we were doing our
evening chanting, the suffering that I had undergone through the day would seem
to be dispelling, or at least decreasing. And I would suddenly have this amazing
‘insight’ about how I would spend the next day and just how I was going to
deal with all my problems.
I would suddenly know how to
handle greed, I knew how to handle hatred; I knew how to handle boredom,
restlessness, the lot. I felt fully in control and knew that I would never
suffer again. I knew it. I was convinced that I would never suffer again.
Of course, by 9:30 my insight had
blossomed to the point where I had absolutely no doubt that I was enlightened to
all my problems. I would go to bed, and 4:00 am would come. You can imagine what
happens at 4:00 in the morning! In the early years, it was still quite hard to
get up at that time in the morning. The mind can feel drowsy, dull, depressed,
awful.
I would do some yoga exercises as
I knew that doing yoga was better than just staying in that negative state. And
after the session I would generally feel better. We would do our chanting then
would come the morning. We did not have breakfast in those days except for a hot
drink and my negativity wouldn’t lift up as quickly as I wanted. I would still
be feeling a bit grumpy and miserable. Then would come the meal and that was
really quite something. During those three months we had decided to do the
one-sitting practice which meant that once we sat down to eat we could not get
up and if we did we had to stop eating and that would be it for the day!
So we made sure that when we sat
down we had enough to eat in case we had forgotten something and had to get up
again. By the end of the meal, I’d feel terrible again because of course, I
had over-eaten. That meant an afternoon of misery, dullness, sleepiness and
confusion because the mind was not able to cope with the annoyance of feeling
greedy or upset with itself. Every day for a while I would see the same cycle
begin again. Of course there were some bright and peaceful spells too!
But sitting in front of my meal,
all my insights had vanished, gone somewhere where I couldn’t find them. At
that moment it would be really hard to drag wisdom and mindfulness into being
because basically I just wanted what I wanted; I wanted to eat what I wanted and
how much I wanted. And that was it!
Before each meal we did a
reflection saying that eating is for the welfare of the body, not for fun, not
for pleasure, nor for beautification or fattening and so forth but after
chanting it automatically I would forget all about it and start to eat.
Anyway, by 5:00 pm I would feel
better and a little lighter. I had just spent four hours digesting a heavy meal
whilst doing walking and sitting meditation; by 6:00 pm there would arise in my
mind again the resolve to not do it again, to not budge at all or give into my
desires. At that moment my understanding was perfectly clear. By 7:00, I had no
doubt. By 9:30 I knew the whole Buddha’s teaching and I knew I could handle it
all and I would never suffer again.
That process went on for quite a
while until I realised that it was just my mind. It had nothing to do with
reality. It was just the way my mind thought. Now if we believed these thoughts
and didn’t look at them as dhammas or felt that ‘this is what I am,’ can
we imagine the amount of disappointment we would have every day?
In fact, every day I felt
disappointed with ‘myself’ and would have the feeling that "I’m no
good. I can’t do it." But then I began to see clearly that pattern and,
as I realised it was exactly what I was supposed to learn from and to
understand, there were no problems.
As long as we take things
personally, we miss the Dhamma and are fooled by what arises in our mind. We
fail to see that the things that we are taking personally are not what we are,
nor what we think they are. We tend to believe and identify with the constant
stream of thoughts, feelings and perceptions of our mind and it’s no wonder
that we become neurotic and have to go to psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, faith
healers and so on.
It is a matter of practising with
right attitude, with an attitude of compassion and infinite patience, rather
than developing and perfecting any particular techniques. Because although we
may have done a lot of practice and be an expert in breath meditation, body
sweeping and all that, if we are still striving to develop the perfect
anapanasati meditator our approach is wrong. Without a correct perspective, we
are still caught up with the idea that we have to improve on ‘Me.’
The immediacy and directness of
the experience of Dhamma is something quite extraordinary; it’s another great
blessing. We can realise the true nature of our thoughts without any
intermediary, without any interpretation. We don’t have to create anything; we
can just see thoughts as they are. It is quite a remarkable thing and it’s
what attracted me most to this teaching.
When came to practice I was, in a
way, so overjoyed at the simplicity and immediacy of the realisation of the
nature of the mind. You did not have to learn too much or get a Ph. D., you didn’t
have to start accumulating more knowledge. In the practice of Dhamma, there is a
process of letting go, of emptying and freeing ourselves from the burden of
knowledge, from the burden of accumulated experiences, from the heaviness of
being somebody or carrying a person in the mind.
I remember that when practising
in the world as a lay person — now of course this is not to influence you all
to become monks and nuns — I had the feeling that I was always ‘somebody’
practising. I found that very difficult. There was this burden of ‘me’
practising. When I came to the monastery I was ordinary and could forget about
feeling special or being somebody going against the stream, some strange
creature on the spiritual path, because everybody there was doing the same thing
— you were just normal.
That’s another meaning of
Dhamma — "the Norm." That which is normal, ordinary. Much of our
training in the monastery focuses on the ordinary. Daily, we spend periods of
time cleaning, sweeping, dusting, walking from one room to the next, doing
simple jobs and paying attention to the most mundane things such as opening
doors, getting dressed, eating, getting up in the morning, brushing our teeth,
putting our shoes on, going to the toilet, going to bed. Simple things like
these are not exciting and our mind learns to calm down and be more simple, more
ordinary.
We can’t really get that
excited about putting our socks on, or getting up at 4:00 in the morning. We can’t
really get fascinated cleaning the toilet somehow. Though I tried hard! I tried
to make it really interesting but I couldn’t. Somehow it’s just so ordinary.
I cleaned the toilets for a long time at Chithurst Monastery where we all had
different morning chores to attend to. We call them chores but they’re not
really, they’re just what we do each morning and whatever we make of them.
They can be boring. They can be interesting. Or they can be just as they are.
We can see our mind wanting to
make things special. I remember how in the morning, cleaning the toilet, I would
decide to clean the sink first and then the toilet second and then the floor
third. Perhaps next day I would change the pattern; I would prefer to start
cleaning the windows first, or sweep with a different broom. Or I would decide
not to mop with this particular mop. I would change my mops. I would find myself
really getting hooked on using a particular tool, or getting upset about really
trivial things and making a big melodrama about nothing at all. If I had not
been living in the monastery, I would never have seen the way the mind can
create melodramas out of absolutely nothing.
To be in touch with the
ordinariness of our life is something very difficult for us because we have been
conditioned to get our boost of energy through things that are interesting or
stimulating. Or, we focus our attention on the next thing — on what’s going
to happen next.
Unless we have guidance and help
from wise people, from people who have an understanding of the path, we tend to
carry on in our spiritual practice in the same way as before we started. We’re
still looking for fascination, for excitement, for something special, for the
big bang, for the flashing lights, for the super insight that’s going to solve
all ‘my’ problems.
But I’m afraid it doesn’t
work like that. With the practice, there is a change in our relationship with
our mind. We let the flux of greed, hatred and delusion flow. We don’t make a
problem about it any more. We let the flow of our own mind just take its own
course. We stop shaping the flux of our thoughts and feelings into this or that.
Being in harmony with Dhamma is making peace with whatever is going on now, with
"the way things are," the Dhamma.
That doesn’t mean we turn into
a cabbage or into a non-entity or that we just sit there and sort of wait and
wait and wait for things to happen. Though we can sometimes feel like that.
After some years of practice I remember how I could feel really stupid. There
were moments when I had totally given up on the idea of ever feeling intelligent
again!
Once I remember crossing the
courtyard at Amaravati on one hot sunny afternoon feeling quite miserable and
depressed. I had lost the passions of the mind. They didn’t seem to be there
any more. There was just a kind of dull state and I was strongly identifying
with it. It was awful. I really thought that this mood was what I was and I
could hear myself being really upset about it. I thought: "I can’t bear
this, it’s impossible. ‘They’ with a capital ‘T’ are turning me into a
turnip" (which I thought of as the most pallid, wishy-washy,
nothing-looking vegetable!). I did not know who ‘They’ were… I remember
meeting on the way one of the teachers of our community. I told him: "I am
probably reaping the karma of having hated being a housewife." I always
hated the idea of being a housewife so much so that in the past, before becoming
a nun, I resented having to do any cleaning, housework, any washing or
dishwashing. Yet I found myself doing just that in my early training at
Chithurst. He laughed and replied: "Well, when you really don’t mind that
any more, then it means your karma with it is over."
That was really a very good
insight because I didn’t think that I minded. Yet I felt so despairing and
miserable that obviously something in me did mind. So it’s difficult to be
ordinary and accept the triviality of our life. That’s why most of the time we
feel frustrated, because we think that somehow things are going to be different,
or that they should be different, don’t we?
We sense that life shouldn’t be
just getting up in the morning, having breakfast, getting bored, having a cry
with one’s spouse, going to the toilet, eating, getting bored at work, coming
back, watching television, going to bed, getting up in the morning, and on and
on and on, day after day after day. We feel that somehow there must be something
else. So we go on a trip and travel around the world — and we find out that
even on the other side of the world, we still have to get up, we still have to
go to the toilet, we still have to eat, we still get happy and bored with
ourselves, we still get annoyed and depressed. We still get the same old ‘me’
— whether we are here, or in California, or in India, or anywhere. To come to
terms with that has been the greatest teaching of monastic life.
Actually, monastic life is
externally pretty repetitive and boring. And if we identify with the structure
or the routine then it’s the most tedious lifestyle. It’s so monotonous at
times, you have no idea! But through accepting the perception and feeling of
boredom for example, we realise that it’s actually quite OK.
It is not so much a matter of
getting rid of boredom but of seeing what we are expecting from life. I spent
many years expecting from life something it could not give me. That’s why
there was a problem. And in the same way if I expect something from the monastic
life that it cannot give me, then I’ll be very disappointed, frustrated or in
a constant state of conflict.
So seeing the way things are is a
very important realisation because then we can actually work with life as it is
rather than expecting or dreaming about it. Expectations are like dreams. And
most of our life is like a dream, or like a cloud, and we hope that this cloud
will give us something real and substantial. Have you ever been able to shape a
cloud? Or a dream? Yet this what we are always trying to do isn’t it? Can we
have any control over our dreams? Maybe we can, but most of the time we can’t
even remember them or do what we want in them.
So there’s this dreamlike state
that we create out of expectations, out of not understanding the limitations of
our mind and body, of our life and the world we live in. Our mind can only do so
much. Our body can only do so much. When you’re young, you think your body can
do anything, but when you get to middle age, like me, then even sitting can
become a challenge. I used to love sitting — I could sit for long periods and
really enjoy it. It was a pleasure. But now, sometimes, it’s more an endurance
test.
So we are limited; we are bound
by certain restrictions. But if we see them for what they are, then a wonderful
thing happens: we can actually work with life as it is. We don’t have to
expect something from it anymore; we can actually give to our life. And that’s
a great change in the mind. Through the practice we begin to see that we don’t
have to ask or get or demand something from life. We can actually give, offer
and joyfully respond to it. And this, we can all do.
The natural process of the
realization of Dhamma is the awareness that life is a constant opportunity to
give, to be generous, to be kind, to be of service in whatever situation we are
in. As we let go we don’t get so caught up and obsessed with ourselves. We can
actually be useful. We can help. We can give. We can encourage ourselves and the
people around us.
~ Refuge in Sangha ~
The refuge in the Sangha, the
last one, is the refuge in noble friendship — kalyanamitta. It symbolizes the
community of men and women, ordained or living in the world, who have taken
refuge in living wisely and compassionately, in accord with the Dhamma. They
take refuge in harmlessness, loving-kindness and respect for all living beings.
These are people who have a moral conscience. They are aware when they’re not
really doing the right thing or acting foolishly or harmfully.
This refuge symbolises the purity
of the human heart. I remember when for the first time I heard of the concept of
the ‘Pure Heart.’ I thought that it was a beautiful expression — ‘Pure
Heart.’ It felt like a good thing to be — a pure heart. And that’s really
what that refuge is: it’s a refuge in that in us which is good, wholesome,
compassionate and wise.
Before I started being interested
in Buddhism, I used to go to Christian monasteries to do short retreats by
myself. The thing that struck me most in those places — I didn’t know
anything about Buddhist monasteries then — was this awesome, pervading feeling
of respect for life, for each other. Even the silence seemed to be a kind of
acknowledgement of reverence, of honoring the best in human beings. It was very
moving. Even though I could not explain what it was, I sensed that people were
devoted to something really good, to something really true.
When I came to Chithurst and met
the community for the first time, I had a very similar feeling of meeting human
beings totally dedicated to honouring the truth, to being it and living in
accordance with it. And so the refuge in Sangha was the first thing that brought
me to the monastic life.
My interest in joining the
monastic Sangha came from the need to have a vehicle and a refuge of sanity in
myself that would provide some guidance. I realized for example that without an
ethical standard to contain and understand the energy of my desires, I was
really in trouble. I was always very good at knowing what I should do, what I
should be; I was a real expert at creating ideals! But somehow the energy of my
desires had very different ideas about that. My self-gratifying habits on the
one hand and my yearning for truth on the other didn’t meet, didn’t seem to
be very good friends.
One of the first things that
became really clear when I joined the Sangha was that the precepts were my best
friends and my best protectors. I never had the feeling that they were imposing
themselves on me at all. On the contrary, I knew that they were supporting me
and reminding me of being more mindful of when I spoke, when I acted, when I
thought or when I ate or even when I slept.
The training of our body and mind
requires an enormous amount of patience and compassion. Our habits are strong
and if we have lived a fairly heedless life in the past, we can’t expect to
turn instantly into a virtuous person. When we arrive at the monastery we don’t
become a saint overnight. And it is not a meditation retreat and the keeping of
the precepts for ten days that is going to turn us into one either, is it? But
at least we have a situation and a teaching that can help us to look at what is
not correct or skilfull in our behaviour and our habits and to make peace with
it.
So we take refuge in the Sangha
and use the standards followed by those who have walked the Path and liberated
themselves before us. This refuge points to our commitment to virtuous conduct,
to a way of life that protects and nurtures peace in the heart and reminds us of
our intention to liberate it. If we didn’t have these guidelines, we would
easily forget ourselves. And we are very good at that. In fact, that’s what
the mind is most intent on and does all the time, it forgets. But when we take
refuge in mindfulness, in the Dhamma and in the purity of our intention to free
ourselves from delusion, we remember that we have the necessary tools to train
the heart and to see clearly the unskilfulness of our habits, of our speech or
of our thoughts, etc.
These refuges may appear as if
they were three: Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. But actually they are just one. We don’t
have one without the other. When there is virtue and the intention to live
harmoniously, with compassion and respect for oneself and each other, then there’s
a naturally growing awareness, in harmony with the Dhamma, and we are more
attuned to the truth. All of them interact and affect each other.
At first, we don’t know quite
what or where these refuges are. They may seem to be just words. You might even
feel confused and have no trust in them. But as we practise, as we keep letting
go of our attachments to thoughts, feelings, perceptions, they become a growing
reality.
We can actually experience these
refuges. They become a part of our life, a part of something that we can go back
to, right here, right now. We don’t have to wait. They are always present in
our heart. Here, now, in the present. That’s the real beauty of the practice
of the Path. It’s that total simplicity, that immediacy, complete in itself.
There’s nothing else that you need. Just in taking the Three Refuges, you’ve
got all the tools you need for your heart to be free.
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