This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video I Walk in Refuge with the Buddha. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome here this morning. My wife read me headlines from a news site that she was reading, and the headline said something like, “To have a happy life, don’t be frightened. Stop being frightened.” That sounds nice. But I also thought, that’s great, that’s maybe what my topic is today, because that topic is a very Buddhistic topic, and it’s the topic of refuge.
For those of you who don’t know much about Buddhism, it’ll become clear how central refuge is. The idea is to—often we talk about going to refuge or going in refuge—going to some place that’s safe or some place that’s protected. And that can be both inspiring to some people, to know there can be safety to be had in this dangerous world we live in, and for some people, it could seem kind of off-putting because it seems like it’s withdrawing, it’s pulling back into some place that we’re going to be all safe and comfortable and not really in the world as it is.
So I’ll tell you a story from some years ago that just delighted me when I understood what was going on. I was in a training, and we invited a trainer to come. As a way of beginning our time together, the trainer said, “Take out a piece of paper and pen and write down what you need to feel safe here.” And I thought, this is okay, this is good, to create safety. If we have safety, then we could all share and be together nicely. And I kind of imagined we would share what we had written, and that would create community and safety in itself or something like that.
So everyone was very earnest and was writing away what they needed for safety. And then she said, “Okay.” And so then everyone came back and was sitting there, ready for the next thing. And she said, “Okay, now you bring that with you. If you need safety, you bring that with you.” That very thing. So she kind of turned it around in a way that no one expected. And as she turned it around, it was to make each person responsible for themselves to create the safety that they would have there.
Now, this also could be inspiring, and it could also be off-putting because there are real dangers in the world. And what now? Now I’m responsible? People have been dumping on me forever, and now I’m supposed to be the one?
But there is a refuge. There’s a place to find protection and safety that is not withdrawing from the world but actually allows us to be in the world more fully. It’s a little bit like—and maybe it’s a little bit too pedestrian of a metaphor—but most of you are here, I think the great majority of you, in order to come here today, you probably put on shoes. And putting on your shoes, you’re protecting your feet, so it’s a little bit easier to walk around and get here. By having protected feet, safe feet, it’s actually easier to go where you want to go in this world. And we don’t say we’re giving refuge, protection to our feet, and then worry, “Well, now you’re disappearing, you’re not available to us, you’re disconnecting from the world. This is really a problem, these Buddhists who wear shoes.” [Laughter] No, it actually allows us to step into the world more freely and be more available for the world, more connected, rather than going on so gingerly.
And so it’s the same way with this refuge, this refuge that Buddhists discover. To have that refuge actually allows us to go into the world better and fuller. It’s not a withdrawal.
Usually, there are considered to be three refuges, and these are called the Buddha1, the Dharma2, and the Sangha3. The Buddha is the exemplar and the founder of Buddhism. He’s more important as the exemplar than he is as the founder of Buddhism. He’s the example of how thoroughly a person can become happy and free. There’s Dharma, which are his teachings, for sure, that point to that possibility, but also the underlying kind of patterns of life that we tap into in order to find our inspiration, in order to find our safety. And then there’s the Sangha, which is the community of practitioners, especially the community of practitioners who have really tasted the freedom that Buddhism is about. But it could be any of our fellow practitioners.
The way that it’s usually chanted, it’s actually one of the core rituals of Buddhism, where people will chant: Buddham saranam gachhami.4 And it goes on. The gachhami at the end has a literal meaning: “to walk.” And buddham is Buddha, and saranam is refuge. With the way the grammar is, you actually have a fair amount of choice about how you put it together. Grammatically, the most common perhaps in English is, “I go for refuge to the Buddha.”
But what I’d like to offer today is something different: “I walk in refuge together with the Buddha. I walk in refuge with the Dharma. I walk in refuge with the Sangha.” The word “walk” is kind of a metaphor for moving through life. When just saying it in my mind, I’m reminded of a Native American religious idea that is to “walk in beauty.” It’s inspiring. And for Buddhists, we say, “walk in refuge.” And we have company for that process. We have companionship. We’re not doing it alone; there’s support.
So we walk in refuge with the example of the Buddha, with the guidance of the Buddha, with the way the Buddha provided. We go for refuge with the Dharma. We walk in this world with the support, with the companionship of these teachings, and then with the community. And this idea of walking is something that each person needs to do themselves. So, “bring your own safety,” “bring your own refuge.” You have to do something. It’s not like just going for refuge is just sitting on your couch, waiting for something to protect you, thinking, “I’ll be fine if I just hold on tight to these things.” It does require stepping into the world. It does require living a life, a life that’s dangerous to some degree, a life that has its challenges, a life where maybe the biggest challenge is you yourself, to yourself. And so to step into that and see it, to hold it, to be with it, to walk in this world.
And so that comes to something that’s seldom talked about in Buddhism. There is a fourth refuge that the Buddha taught. The Buddha never actually told anyone that they were supposed to engage the Buddha Dharma as the refuge. The one thing he did say in terms of refuge, he said, “Make yourself a refuge.” And so the fourth refuge is yourself. And so that goes back again, you know, to be safe, bring it with you. Or to say it maybe nicer, it’s up to us to find a way of being in the world that we create. We make a refuge. And eventually, as we make ourselves a refuge, we make ourselves a refuge for others. We become someone who’s safe for others. We make ourselves someone that is then accompanying and supporting others in their deep process of becoming free, becoming themselves.
There are three different main meanings that this “walking in refuge” implies. It implies an understanding, something that provides meaning, gives meaning to our life and understanding to our life. It implies something that is motivating, something that we can commit ourselves to or be devoted to. And it implies some form of inspiration, something that’s heartfelt, some kind of—the classic language in the tradition is—some kind of gladness or joy that bubbles up from the inside.
So those are the three elements of what it means to walk in refuge. There’s an understanding we come to, so it’s not magical thinking, “Oh, if I just trust the Buddha without knowing what you’re doing.” The idea is you have to understand something. And that understanding doesn’t come from reading books; it doesn’t come from listening to my talk. The real understanding comes from yourself. You begin seeing and experiencing for yourself something profound, something very meaningful.
For different people, this can be different things. I want to be very careful not to only give one example or leave you with the impression there’s only one thing it can mean. For some people, it’s seeing dramatically clearly how they are contributing to their own suffering by what they’re clinging to, attached to, what they’re resisting, what they’re fighting, what they’re rebelling against, what they are running away from. And to see that so clearly, “Wow, I thought it was the world that was doing it, but I’m contributing to this.” And lo and behold, I see that it’s possible. It’s difficult, but I’m inspired, I’m motivated. I know it’s possible to chip away at this way in which I’m contributing to my suffering, even if it takes me a lifetime. That’s how I want to walk. I want to move through this life, engage in this life, so I stay close enough, attentive enough to my inner life, so I begin chipping away at how I keep adding to my suffering, adding to my challenges, how I keep making it worse for myself.
So the understanding there is maybe the motivation is encapsulated by the expression, “I won’t make it worse.” No matter what’s going on, I’m not going to make it worse. And for some people, that’s maybe a really great possibility. It seems like at least that’s possible. “I can’t make it better, that’s too high a bar, that just seems too much to make it better, but at least I’ll stop making it worse.” That’s how I’ll walk through this world. And we’ll chip away at it.
For other people, it is something better that they discover through this practice. And thinking about this talk, I was trying to remember for me what words I would use to describe what I discovered, because there was something positive that I found that really changed the direction of my life through this practice. I couldn’t quite settle on one word. When I was younger, I used the word “integrity” for it, but not an ethical integrity. It was more of a sense of feeling whole, like all of myself was there. I felt complete, and I had never felt that way in my life in this regular way. I started to be awakened through my meditation. And it wasn’t that I was less neurotic or less troubled or my mind got quieter, because I used to think a lot. But there was something about being present for it that felt complete. Something felt like I’m including it all here. And this inclusion of all of who I am, warts and all, just created a sense of health, a sense of well-being, a sense of healing or something. It might have been a feeling of peace. I felt more peaceful, at ease. I might have been more feeling at home here in this being and this world. There were a variety of things I was starting to feel through my meditation practice.
And that became important enough for me that it kind of turned my whole life in a new direction. At first, it was just a small turn of the ocean liner, but then slowly it got bigger and bigger. And that was, I want to now have this, whatever I was discovering in meditation. This is so important, this has so much value. It feels like nothing else is richer or truer, this way of being, at least for me. As I walk through the world, I want to walk through the world with this way of being because this seems right. Now I want to find out how to do that in the world. I want to find out how to be working outside of meditation. How can I have what I have in meditation? How can I have this in my daily life?
And that became a multi-year process. And step by step, I went deeper into Buddhism, not to get more out of Buddhism or be more Buddhistic, but I wanted to answer this quest I had, which is, how do I live from this place of at-homeness or completeness or peace or integrity that I was feeling? Can I live this way in my whole life? Because that seemed valuable and important.
So I had an understanding, which is part of refuge, that it was possible to live a different way. It was possible to live a way that was settled, at ease, at peace. I was motivated to do so. Not only was I motivated, I was committed. But the commitment was not like hard and fast. I didn’t even know I was committed. It was like, this is what I’m doing. I didn’t even have those words in my mind. I’m saying this in retrospect, looking back at my life when I was in my early 20s, that yes, that’s what I was dedicated to. This is what I was going to do. And it was heartfelt. There was an inspiration to do it. It just felt so good.
And in fact, the truth was that both of these two things, positive and negative, motivated me. The more I felt better, I could see how I was making it worse for myself. And so I was inspired not to make it worse. And I could see what this better way of being was, and I wanted to stay close to it. And it wasn’t just hedonistic, it wasn’t just selfish to feel better and not feel worse. It had a much deeper kind of feeling of rightness because it was almost like this is what allowed me to stop being selfish. This allowed me to stop being self-preoccupied and caught in my neurosis. And it was clear that what was being born in this process was a greater sense of community, a greater sense of compassion, a greater sense of care for the world around me that I didn’t have before I started this process.
So for me, these three different aspects of refuge were very alive. It involved an understanding, and for some people, it’s related to the topic I talked about last week, the Four Noble Truths. For some people, that encapsulates it beautifully for them, this new understanding. And it encompassed the motivation, and it encompassed something that was heartfelt or an inspiration that, “Oh, this makes me happy, this seems right, this feels good.” That doesn’t mean that there was clear sailing for me. I had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of challenges as I went through this practice, but I never doubted it. And so that was the refuge. I walked in refuge in the practice, in refuge in myself, that I was going to do it because I could kind of see what this is about. I can’t contract it out for someone else to do it for me. I had to do it. I had to show up. I had to show up every day, in some ways, every minute, to show up for this life. And then I had to keep walking the walk, keep doing it, keep finding it, keep discovering it here and now.
So this idea of going in refuge, walking in refuge, means that we’re accompanied, we’re surrounded, we’re filled by something that’s profoundly important, something that’s invaluable. And to stay close to that, to be reminded of that. When I was in my 20s, for a while, I was living in a place where they had manzanita berries, and I picked all these dry berries. And then I went to the shop and flattened out little sides of them so I could drill a hole through them. And then I made mala beads5 from them. So I made my own kind of little thing I carried on my arm for a while. And it wasn’t because I was showing off that I was a Buddhist. They were kind of big and long, many beads, it was kind of awkward. And so when I was going to do anything, I was always being reminded by this awkward thing, this bracelet kind of thing was there. And so it was reminding me of refuge, reminding me of the practice, because I needed help sometimes to remember, “Oh, okay, remember, remember.” And sometimes I would go through them, you know, like prayer beads, I’d just count them through. I wasn’t doing anything else but doing that, just running through them with my thumbs. But that too reminded me, kept me connected. Remember, stay here, stay here.
I know people who really can’t concentrate in meditation, and so they find that having these mala beads is like prayer beads, and every time they breathe, they do one, and then they stay connected. So what does it take to walk in refuge?
It’s important in Buddhism, this topic of refuge, because it’s a turning point for someone. It’s a point where the Dharma, the practice, becomes maybe the centrally important thing in their life, where they have a lot of faith, a lot of inspiration, a lot of love for this. And some people say that there’s nothing more important than this. And then other people say, “What does the spouse say?” [Laughter] “What do your kids say?” Nothing is more important because we’re so much better and more present and maybe even have more love for all those people in our life. So you can tell them, you know, it’s a trade-off. “Okay, if you want you to be the most important thing, let me tell you the trade-off. If you’re the most important thing, I will not be so happy, and then I’ll not be able to offer you as much love. But if you allow me to have this practice be the most important thing, then I’ll have so much more for you.” That’s the trade-off. And if you need to bargain, negotiate, you know, that’s one approach.
So, refuge in the Buddha, refuge with the Buddha, refuge with the Dharma, refuge with the Sangha. And I like this wording, “I walk in refuge with the Buddha.” I’m the one who’s walking, I’m the one who’s engaging. I have to do it. So it’s kind of like these shoes. If you don’t wear them, they can’t protect you. You have to walk. If you want the shoes to protect you, you have to walk. If you want the Dharma to protect you, you have to go and enter into this world with all of who you are.
So this quote that I started with, there was something like, “To live a happy life, stop being frightened.” I’d like to offer something different: “To live a happy life, bring all of yourself along. Bring all of you to the table. Bring all of you in as you walk, including your fear. Hold it all together, let it all be here.” And that’s the possibility and why I think this Dharma, this practice, is so powerful, so wonderful. It’s not to reject any part of ourselves, but finding a way to walk in the world, to be in the world, to be ourselves, where we bring all of it along. And in doing so, live a wise life. In doing so, live a life that doesn’t harm ourselves or others. That’s at the heart of the Dharma.
So those are my thoughts today about this topic of refuge.
We have about 15 minutes before the scheduled end if any of you would like to ask any questions or have comments about this.
Questioner 1: I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on refuge with the Sangha when you’re by yourself.
Gil Fronsdal: Are you ever by yourself? Does that ever happen? Physically, yes. Oh, physically. Physically, that happens occasionally. I think that the classic practice of doing that is to bring the Sangha to mind. Think about them, remember them, consider them. Some people have pictures on their little altar at home, and some people have pictures of the Buddha, or maybe of their teachers, teachers that inspire them. So find some way to remember, recall. Maybe going for a walk and thinking about it. So being intentional. And this is an example where the answer to these kinds of questions is always, “What are you going to do? How are you going to be active in the process of looking for what you’re asking for?” And so these are some of the ways to bring them to mind. Maybe write a letter to the Sangha. Have you ever written a letter to your Sangha? Write a letter. You don’t have to mail it, but that might bring it all to mind and the connection you have and make it come alive in your heart in a nice way.
Questioner 2: Hello everyone, thank you. My question is about finding refuge during conflict, during a moment that your body is triggered, and how to work through that rather than walking away from it.
Gil Fronsdal: Yes, well, I mean, there’s so much to be said about that. A very important topic. It depends a lot about who you’re with, who the conflict is with, and what’s possible. There are times where, because of who I was with, I asked, “Can we take a pause?” And I think a few times I’ve actually asked, “Can I step away for a while? I need to kind of be with myself and process this so I can come back and process this with you.” Because, you know, I’m a little bit—I don’t know, my wife says I’m equally introverted and extroverted—but there are times where I need to really go off by myself and process it. Introverts often need time alone. It’s hard with introverts and extroverts because extroverts want to do it right now, in person, and that’s what works best for them. And so you have to explain, “You know, I have a need. I want to take care of this. I want to be honest and really come to the bottom of this, but in order for me to do this effectively, I need to pause.”
And sometimes I’ve done it for, you know, “Can I take two or three minutes just to breathe here and just check in so I can come back in a way that’s more effective?” So sometimes that’s necessary. But knowing you have that option, then you don’t have to run away. The other is to assess what the other people are capable of. You have to be kind of have certain street smarts to see, are they capable here? And maybe the only thing they’re capable of is, let’s lower the temperature a little bit. We can’t really resolve this, but let’s lower the temperature. And one way to do that is just to name a little bit what’s happening in a safe way, like, “Oh, I see this is difficult for you. And you know, I see it’s difficult for you, it’s difficult for me, and I’m not sure what to do, but I just want to acknowledge that yes, this is not an easy thing.”
Just that. I learned many years ago that one way to de-escalate a conflict, if it’s really strong, if it’s a true statement, is to let people know you’re frightened. Like, “Wow, you know, this is really difficult for me. I’m scared right now.” Especially if someone’s angry with you, because they’re kind of hostile in the conflict. Some people, when they hear that, they’re shocked, like, “Wow, I had no idea.” And they’re put on notice, like, “Is this really what you want to do?” Maybe unconsciously it is, they want you to get scared, but when it’s made conscious, it’s hard for them to kind of want to keep doing that. So just saying, you know, and you’re not saying anything about them, you’re saying, “Wow, I’m really afraid, and I need a minute to catch my breath here.”
And then sometimes it’s helpful if you have established ahead of time—so if it’s with a friend or a partner or someone who you’re going to be seeing for a long time—when things are good, you might say, “You know, I kind of suspect sooner or later we’re probably going to have some kind of conflict. Maybe it might be accidental, but could we have a plan? You know, how we talk to each other, what we do? Can we have a plan of what we can ask of each other so that we don’t just go into it with all the plates flying through the kitchen?” But so that we can say, if I lift my hand, “Hey, let’s at least sit down together,” or “Let’s both of us go outside and get some fresh air before we continue,” or “Let’s both of us now talk about this only using ‘I’ statements.” Anyway, so if you can plan ahead.
But then in relationship to this talk I gave today, which is really where you have the most possibility of success—people are difficult. So getting everyone to harmonize is not always so easy. But at least harmonize within yourself. And so that’s where the, “How do you walk? Walk in refuge, walk connected.” So if a person really has a strong sense of what refuge is for them, or a really strong sense of a good inner way of being, even if it’s not available right away, we have a practice to reconnect to it. We have a practice to try to come back to it. And if we can’t really get back to it, then we have a practice of mindfulness. And part of what mindfulness can do is, especially if it partners with the practice of getting grounded, so just sit up straight or stand straight and breathe and just feel what’s going on and hold it all in some kind of way and really become very clear what your experience is right now. And that clarity of what’s happening is a refuge. So those are some things to do, but I don’t want to imply that it’s easy.
Questioner 3: A number of years ago, in fact probably more than once, you told a story which was very interesting, a personal story about being on the street at night in San Francisco. Is that a story… I don’t know if you’ve told it lately or not. Would you be willing to tell it? It’s not that long a story, and I doubt whether you’ve forgotten it.
Gil Fronsdal: I have all kinds of San Francisco street stories, but maybe it’s the one with the woman in the car?
Questioner 3: No, you were walking with a friend, and these guys came up to you with a gun.
Gil Fronsdal: Oh, it wasn’t… no, that’s not me. No, there was a friend of mine who someone came up with a gun. I had a few friends who were held up at gunpoint in San Francisco. But maybe the one that you’re thinking of, one of them was useful, seemed like a very useful thing to do. I remember one of them was, the person just looked at this young man with a gun and said something like, “You know, you’re not a good Christian. Your mother would be ashamed of you.” And that was enough to kind of just break the whole thing, and the person left. There are a number of wonderful stories of people getting out of trouble on San Francisco streets like that. But you can’t use it as a technique. It all has to do with, in the moment, something feels like the right thing to do. And the one person who didn’t do something like that and kind of was reactive back to someone who came and held them up, he reacted, and I think the person who held him up was never apprehended, but he ended up in jail because of his reactivity to it all. So it’s good to stay calm and know how to be non-reactive.
Questioner 4: I like the story about the prayer beads. But I would lose them, I guarantee. But you know, I find that staying mindful, especially at work, is really hard. And I did set an alarm to go off at noon every day to kind of try to remind me, and a lot of the times I just turn it off because I’m in the middle of something. So do you have any other tips, or maybe somebody else has other tips on how you remind yourself to be mindful during the day when you’re busy?
Gil Fronsdal: Two things I could say. One is to make it a habit to—you do much of your work sitting, standing, both? Both. Is to focus on your posture. And so sit in a good, aligned, upright posture, and also stand that way in a good way. And let the posture somehow call forth, bring forth a form of mindfulness. Because if our posture collapses, so does our mindfulness. But if the posture is kind of aligned and good, sometimes we can see when we’re starting to lose the mindfulness because the posture begins to collapse or give up. So posture is invaluable.
The other is to have reminders around. I used to use every time I went through a door frame, that was my reminder. And it was kind of nice because when you go through a door frame, you’re going into a new space, so it’s good to kind of notice what you’re doing and not just be kind of lost in thought. And so I used to go through a lot of door frames, so that was a great thing to do. Some people put stickers on things that they’ll see regularly. I’ve known people who put a sticker that says “remember” or something on top of their computer screen so that it’s always there, so they see it regularly. So, you know, something you do regularly. And it can be a series of things. So if your thing was to only at noon, once a day… I bet you go to the bathroom more often than once a day. So make that your thing.
Questioner 5: Yes, as far as staying mindful at work, I have a mug on my desk. A mug that says, “Take a breath and remember who the heck you are.” So as far as taking refuge in yourself, you know, I’ve got the Dharma, I’ve got a long life of experience. I’m looking at turning 70, so come on, you know, I’m not helpless. So I just find that really useful.
Gil Fronsdal: Great, I love it.
Questioner 5: Yeah, if I didn’t have the mug, I’d put a little sign there, “You’ve got this,” because I’ve got some worries, and I realize that worries are related to fear. And I know how to deal with fear. So yeah.
Gil Fronsdal: So there are people who, at work, at home, on the bathroom mirror, on the steering wheel of the car, people put all these little reminders.
Okay, maybe that’s enough. So I’ll end this way.
May all the ways that you might walk in refuge support you to be a refuge for others. May this practice we do be for the welfare and happiness of the whole world. Thank you.
Buddha: In this context, refers to the historical founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, but also to the potential for enlightenment that exists within all beings. He serves as the ultimate example of a fully awakened and compassionate person. ↩
Dharma: A Pali and Sanskrit word with multiple meanings. Here, it refers to the teachings of the Buddha, the path to awakening, and also the underlying, universal truths or natural laws of existence. ↩
Sangha: The community of Buddhist practitioners. Traditionally, it referred to the monastic community, but in a modern context, it includes all people who follow the Buddhist path, providing mutual support and companionship. ↩
Buddham saranam gachhami: A line from a traditional Pali chant. While often translated as “I go for refuge to the Buddha,” the speaker, Gil Fronsdal, offers an alternative interpretation based on the literal meaning of gachhami (“to walk”): “I walk in refuge with the Buddha.” ↩
Mala beads: A string of beads, similar to a rosary, used in Buddhist and other spiritual traditions for counting mantras, breaths, or other repetitions during meditation. They serve as a tactile reminder to stay present. ↩