Tonight I want to talk about the Three Refuges that I just chanted.
These are part of our sixteen bodhisattva precepts.
I've been talking about these precepts as expressions of our zazen and guidelines to
expressing our zazen mind in our everyday activity.
We have, in our tradition, sixteen precepts.
Going back to Dogen, the Japanese founder of this tradition in the 13th century,
the first three are taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
So we're going to be doing a precept ceremony this Sunday.
But really, these precepts, and especially these refuges,
or whether or not you do that formal ceremony,
are in many ways the heart of our zazen practice that we've just been doing.
So, what does it mean to take refuge in Buddha?
What does it mean to take refuge in Dharma?
What does it mean to take refuge in Sangha?
Well, first the word refuge has many meanings.
It means, in a way, to return home, to return to our original theme,
to come home to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
And I think in English we think of refuge as a kind of a sanctuary,
a place that is safe.
And in some ways that's what this is about.
But also we have the saying from the Sixth Ancestor,
or from the Diamond Sutra, about the mind not abiding anywhere.
But also Dogen talks about occupying a Dharma position.
What is refuge?
How do we take refuge in something that, in some sense, is nothing?
In some sense is everything.
What does it mean to return home to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha?
During the practice of sewing Buddha's robes,
whether monks preach robes of cases or lay raksus like men is wearing,
during the practice of that, and Hokusu is a teacher of that,
with each stitch, one chants, Namo Kiya Butsu,
which in some sense means, I take refuge in Buddha.
Literally it's something like Namo Kiya is plunging into.
So we plunge into Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as we do this Satsang practice.
We give ourselves to Buddha.
We give ourselves to Dharma, or the truth.
We give ourselves to Sangha, or the community that supports us.
It's not exactly the same as submitting to Buddha,
but it's kind of a little bit of a self-surrender involved.
It's really wholeheartedly turning towards Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.
And whether we know this or not, whether we say this formally or not,
that's what we do when we do the sitting practice.
Sitting upright, calm, enjoying our breath,
in some ways emulating the Buddha sitting calmly in the middle of the meditation hall.
Just, I take refuge in Buddha.
I come home to, well, what is Buddha?
Buddha is literally the awakened one.
So, there's many sides to this.
Many Zen koans are about what is Buddha in one way or another.
Whether it's what was your face before the Big Bang,
or what was your face before your parents were born,
or why did Bodhidharma, the founder of China, come from the West, from India?
What's the point? What is Buddha?
So this is a wonderful question.
And there are many Buddhas.
One way of thinking about it is Shakyamuni Buddha,
the historical Buddha who lived in what's now northeastern India.
We don't know exactly, but somewhere around 500 BC, 400 BC.
And was a historical human being, and he woke up.
He became the awakened one.
He had this great experience of awakening.
He became the awakened one, and everybody realized it.
But also there are many other Buddhas who we sometimes talk about or venerate.
In our chant to the Buddha ancestors, the people in our lineage
who kept this tradition alive in every generation from Buddha to us,
we also talk about seven Buddhas before Buddha,
seven Buddhas ending up with Shakyamuni Buddha.
And we talk about Medicine Buddha, and the future Buddha Maitreya,
and Amida Buddha, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land.
And there are many, hundreds and hundreds and myriads of other Buddhas
who are named in the sutras.
And there's different ways of talking about Buddhas.
There's also the Buddha who is called the Dharmakaya, the Dharma body,
the Buddha that is everything, the whole universe awakened.
Everything is as Buddha.
So Buddha also means this quality of awakening,
this quality of awakening as reality itself.
So this is something that's not something you have to...
Buddha is not something you have to figure out.
Buddha is not something you have to have some special experience of.
Sometimes those experiences happen, and that can be wonderful,
but that's not the point.
Buddha is in the space under your cushion right now.
Buddha is available to each of us.
And each of us has their own way of meeting Buddha,
settling into Buddha, returning home to Buddha.
I can't tell any of you how you should be Buddha.
Each of you has your own way to express that Buddhaness
that is already part of you,
that basic insight and caring and kindness.
One description, and there are many,
of what happened when the historical Buddha awakened
is that he saw that all beings fundamentally
have the insight and compassion of the awakened ones
only because of our ancient twisted karma,
because of our habits of greed and grasping
and aversion or anger or hatred and confusion and so forth,
because of these human karmic patterns,
we don't recognize Buddha.
So returning home to Buddha is about returning home
to something deep that's already here.
This quality of awakening.
So when we say we take refuge in Buddha,
well, maybe you understand that
as turning towards Shakyamuni Buddha.
And in some ways we can take refuge in particular Buddhas,
but it's this quality of awakening.
And the Buddha was this human being
in history who decided to find out the root of suffering.
And the story goes, he sat up all night under the Bodhi tree
and saw the morning star and awakened to this reality
that all beings fundamentally have this available.
Now, there's a little bit of a problem in the Lotus Sutra
that we're going to be studying in the spring practice period.
There's a story about Buddha saying that actually
he's been alive for a very, very, very long time
and will be alive and expressing Buddhahood
for twice that long into the future.
So that sort of almost becomes this cosmic Buddha figure.
So is Buddha a human being? Is Buddha a special human being?
Buddha's not God. He's not the creator.
He's not some all-powerful being in the sky.
Although some of the sutras sort of talk like that.
So there's various ways of expressing Buddha in our tradition.
What is Buddha? Who is Buddha?
But the point of taking refuge is to return home to Buddha,
to turn towards Buddha, to appreciate Buddha.
Of course, in other beings, in beings who inspire us,
in the traditional Buddhas, but also in those qualities
that we can come to recognize in ourselves as well.
So just I take refuge in Buddha.
The perfect teacher.
The second refuge, I take refuge in Dharma.
So Dharma is, well, literally it means a few things.
It means the truth. It also means the teaching.
It means reality itself, but it means the teaching about that,
and it also refers to Buddha's teaching.
So when Buddha was about to pass away,
he said that the Dharma, all of the teachings he has left,
are his body, and that his disciples should turn towards the Dharma
as the Buddha's body and take refuge in the Dharma.
So Dharma is also as complex as Buddha.
What does it mean to take refuge in Dharma?
So on one level, Dharma is just all of the different teachings
that the Buddha is said to have related in his lifetime,
and there are a huge quantity of those,
and there are different traditions,
the Arhat tradition and the Bodhisattva tradition
of personal liberation and universal liberation,
and many, many, many, many texts.
So compared to Jesus, who taught for, what, three years?
Are there any Christians here?
Well, of course we all are.
But Buddha wandered around and taught
45 years after his awakening,
so there's a much larger body of teachings.
So how do we take refuge in Dharma?
And in our tradition, there's the Dharma of all of the sutras or scriptures.
Sutra means scripture, really.
It has the same root as sutra in English.
Originally, they were written down.
A while after Buddha's life,
the early sutras were compiled on palm leaves
and kind of stitched together.
But these scriptures, these sutras,
we take refuge in and we can study.
And then in our tradition, we also take refuge in Dharma
in terms of the sayings of the old Buddha ancestors,
the Zen ancestors, the teachers who left comments
and gave sayings about whom we have stories.
So that's also part of the Dharma we take refuge in.
And there are teachings about that.
Again, Dogen, 13th century Japanese sutra founder,
said that the point of studying Dharma,
the point of studying all these teachings,
is not to decide on some great philosophy or idea.
It's not to learn certain doctrines,
certain history of a tradition.
The point of all of these teachings,
of these Dharma teachings, is to encourage us to practice.
So it's not about learning Zen philosophy
or Buddhist philosophy or something like that.
These teachings, some of them have qualities
that we can understand,
and so we might say there's a philosophy to it.
But the point of that always is just
how do we encourage ourselves and each other
to return to Buddha,
to actually express and practice and engage
in awakening practice,
to express all of the other precepts,
to express helpfulness rather than harmfulness,
to express kindness, to express insight,
to be helpful in the world.
So we study all these teachings sometimes
as encouragement, and different people
at different times will be encouraged
by different stories or different scriptures,
and that's fine.
All of them are just, it says in the Lotus Sutra,
skillful means.
They're just ways to help us develop our practice.
But still we take refuge in Dharma.
We take refuge in reality itself
and the truth about that
and all the various teachings about it.
So there's these bodies of formal literary teachings,
of teaching stories and of scriptures.
But also we'll say at the end of the evening,
after some discussion, I hope,
we'll say the four Bodhisattva vows,
which include Dharma gates are boundless.
I vow to enter them.
So in one sense, Dharma means the body of teachings.
It's the body of Buddha,
but it's the body of teachings left by the Buddha
and by the Buddha ancestors over the generations.
But also, Dharma gates are boundless.
So each situation is an opportunity.
Each problem or difficulty in our life
is an opportunity.
We can see, you know,
when the story of the first sentient transmission,
the apocryphal story, the wonderful story,
is the Buddha Shakyamuni was sitting on Vulture Peak
and he held up a flower.
And Mahakasyapa, who became the first ancestor, smiled.
And Buddha said,
Oh, you have the wondrous true mind of Nirvana.
The Dharma treasury, the true eye of Nirvana.
So a flower can be an opportunity to open,
to take refuge, to return to Buddha in a very deep way.
And all the situations in our life,
all the opportunities of our life
allow us to take refuge in Dharma,
in reality, in truth,
which is not separate from turning towards Buddha.
Or taking refuge in Buddha.
This is true, you know,
I mentioned our obstructions of seeing this awakening.
And we each have our own personal habits and qualities
and patterns of grasping and craving,
of anger and of confusion.
But also collectively, our karma is collective too.
So the problems of our world and of our society
also are Dharma gates, can be Dharma gates.
The horrible situation of climate damage,
just for one example,
it can be an opportunity for humans to see through
all the patterns of greed that have led to
our damaging the habitat of not just humans,
but many species.
How do we turn this?
So every situation can be a Dharma gate.
That's what it means to take refuge in Dharma.
To take refuge means to see the
the nourishment and the sustenance
and the refuge in a particular situation.
So we also take refuge in Sangha.
So Sangha means community on many levels.
Sangha may mean like a particular Sangha
or a meditation group like Ancient Dragon Zen Gate.
And speaking of Dharma gates,
this Sangha's name, Ancient Dragon Zen Gate,
refers to a particular kind of historical artifact in China
called the Dragon Gate.
So there's an image of it on our altar,
on this side of the altar.
You can look at it more closely afterwards.
But the story is that in the,
I think it was in the Yellow River in China,
one of these deep big rivers in China,
there's a dragon gate.
And what happens is when a fish comes to that gate
and swims through it,
they come out the other end and they're a dragon,
a great being.
So you can see that actually depicted on our altar.
And, you know, we don't know,
but maybe there's a dragon gate in Lake Michigan.
So taking refuge in Dharma,
seeing is this possibility.
And it means, so a Sangha as refuge is,
what supports you?
So we take refuge in Dharma means
to find that teaching,
those teachings that support and encourage you
to actually practice,
to be willing to sit upright and present
and face the wall and face yourselves
and settle more and more deeply into,
over time, doing this regularly,
to find a deeper calm and dignity,
to find a possibility of opening.
So Sangha as refuges is a little tricky too.
There are many communities.
There's Ancient Dragon Zen Gate as a Sangha.
There are many other Buddhist groups or Sanghas
in Chicago and around the country.
But each of us also is part of many communities,
co-workers, family, neighbors.
So how do we take refuge in those as Sangha?
Well, it becomes Sangha,
it becomes a refuge when it supports you.
So whatever communities of culture,
of music, of art, of service
you are involved with in the world,
you can take refuge in them
when you see that they actually support you
to practice, to express Buddha.
So as a meditation Sangha
and as a practice Sangha,
including various ritual forms
that help us to see the inner qualities
of our meditation and awakening,
the point is that we each sit,
we just do this practice of sitting zazen,
being present and upright on our own seats.
But all the people around you
are supporting you to do that.
It's harder to sit for this long
quietly and upright when you're sitting alone at home.
I encourage you to try it, to do it.
If it's 20 minutes instead of 30 or 40, that's fine.
But when we're together,
there's a kind of support.
This is what Sangha is about.
It's a kind of nourishment.
And it's also about each one of you
supporting everybody else.
Each one of you, sitting here just now,
supported all of us to do this practice.
So taking refuge in Sangha means
turning home to this sense of community,
that we're not alone.
In fact, that we're deeply connected
to many, many beings, each one of us,
in our own way.
We have the Sangha of the present community
that supports you to turn towards Buddha.
And we have the Sangha of, well,
all the different communities,
all the different beings who have helped you
to find a way to come to spiritual practice,
to do some practice of expressing something deeper.
And doing that, not just for yourself,
but for all beings.
This is what Sangha is about,
is our connectedness to community,
to various communities,
ultimately to the community of all beings.
One of our 16 precepts is to vow
and to embrace and sustain all beings.
So in this Buddha way,
we don't build walls to keep certain people out.
We face the wall as a way of seeing ourselves
and as a window to all beings.
So these three refuges,
taking refuge in Buddha,
taking refuge in Dharma,
taking refuge in Sangha, are deep.
More and more ways of seeing
how the Buddha awakeness,
or the awakened ones, Dharma,
the reality of awakening,
and the teachings about it.
And again, not just the teachings
in the formal religious scriptures,
but whatever expression of awakening inspires you.
So Dharma Gates, of course,
includes music and literature and art
and flowers and trees and great lakes
and many, many Dharma bodies.
And then Sangha, as various communities
that we can take refuge in,
that we can turn to,
that we can find our own home in.
So that's a little bit about Buddha,
Dharma, Sangha, and taking refuge.
I would love to hear your responses,
comments, questions.
Please feel free.
Or if you can say something about
how it is for you to take refuge in Buddha
or to take refuge in Dharma
or to take refuge in Sangha,
to come home to Buddha,
or Dharma, or Sangha.
I know that I'm a finding peace and stillness,
a calmness.
That I didn't know existed.
But I'm also a sensitive,
more sensitive now,
to things that didn't used to happen.
Yeah, thank you, Luke.
So, that's true.
Part of what practice does is
we see this resource, this nourishment,
but there's also a sensitivity about it.
So what's difficult about doing this practice
and sustaining it
is not getting your legs into some funny position
or sitting still.
And if you need to move your leg position
in the middle of a Zazen period,
here we say go ahead and do that.
Just do it quietly.
But what's difficult really
is that we do become sensitive,
as Luke said, to our own stuff,
our interest in karma.
And that's painful.
And so we learn compassion
by being kind to ourselves,
forgiving ourselves for being human beings
and for having greed, hate, delusion,
craving, anger, and confusion.
And we start to study that and see that.
We see our ancient twisted karma.
And we start to see how
not to be caught by it so much,
not to react to it.
But it is about becoming sensitive to it
on more and more subtle levels.
And that's the work of Buddha, actually,
of doing this awakening practice.
Buddha is not some one-time experience.
Buddha is ongoing awakening.
So thank you.
Other comments?
Responses?
Cassidy, hi.
I like the refuge in Buddha
as something that comes more naturally to me
over the years that I've practiced.
But the way you presented it today
with the three facets
and the taking refuge in Dharma
is definitely the one that
I see from the Dharma talk
as something that I want to be better at,
where instead of the refuge in Buddha,
for me, is not escapist,
but kind of within myself.
And I see the refuge in Dharma
as facing the challenges
and trying to connect with people
in challenging situations.
And so my practice has kind of been
the first step was the refuge in Buddha,
and now I need to find refuge
in entering the Dharma gates.
Good, thank you.
So again, Dharma gates are everywhere.
And there is this side of it that...
So personally, I just love the Dharma.
That's why I'm here. I just love...
So I've always been a reader,
and so I like reading
all these different elaborate
Asian Buddhist old teachings.
You don't have to do that
to do this practice.
But if it's nourishing for you,
as it has been for me,
there's a lot of material available,
and I'm here to suggest things
that you might find useful.
But more fundamentally,
it's what you said.
It's seeing the Dharma,
seeing the truth,
seeing reality in everything.
But I do like the Dharma books.
I have a picture of me
when I was seven months old
and had white hair,
or very blonde hair,
and I'm lying on my stomach,
and there's a big, thick book,
and I'm looking at it very intently,
and my tongue's stuck out.
So I somehow have some karma
about being sleepy.
But we study the Dharma,
as you were saying, Cassidy,
in the situations that arise also.
So thank you.
Other comments?
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.
Taking refuge in these
is kind of like an art.
It's not, you know,
always obvious that it's different.
That's kind of what you were speaking of.
Okay, while we close our Dharma talks
with the four Bodhisattva vows,
which are on the end of your chant book,
which we chant three times.
Beings are numberless.
I bow to three of them.
Illusions are indestructible.
I bow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless.
I bow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.
I vow to realize it.
Beings are numberless.
I bow to three of them.
Illusions are indestructible.
I bow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless.
I bow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.
I bow to realize it.
Beings are numberless.
I bow to three of them.
Illusions are indestructible.
I bow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless.
I bow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.
I vow to realize it.