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, and going back to Dogen, the Japanese founder of this tradition of 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 are, 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?

[01:02]

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?

[02:05]

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 and Dharma and Sangha? During the practice of sewing Buddha's robes, whether monks preach robes of cases or lay raksus like men are wearing, during the practice of that, and Hokusui 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.

[03:06]

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 this 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?

[04:07]

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 Chan in 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 he was a historical human being, and he woke up.

[05:07]

He became the awakened one. He had this great experience of awakening. He became the awakened one, and everybody realized it when they met him. 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 the 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.

[06:09]

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 figure... 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.

[07:12]

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.

[08:13]

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 who, in history, who decided to find out the root of suffering, and the story goes, 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 insight and have this available. 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

[09:19]

for a very, very, very long time and will be alive and expressing Buddhaness 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. 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.

[10:23]

So just, I take refuge in Buddha. I'm 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.

[11:25]

So the 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?

[12:30]

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 suture 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 them. 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,

[13:43]

the point of studying all these teachings, is not to decide on some great philosophy or idea. It's not to learn certain doctrines or 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

[14:52]

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

[15:59]

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 Zen transmission, a powerful story, a wonderful story, is the Buddha Shakyamuni was sitting on Vulture Peak and he held up

[16:59]

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.

[18:00]

And we each have our own personal habits and qualities and patterns of grasping and craving and anger and of confusion. But also collectively, our karma is collective too. So the problems of our world and of our society also are dharmagates, can be dharmagates. 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? Every situation can be a dharmagate. That's what it means to take refuge in Dharma. You know, to take refuge means to see the nourishment and the sustenance and the refuge in a particular situation. So we also take refuge in Sangha.

[19:04]

So Sangha means community on many levels, and Sangha may mean like a particular Sangha or a meditation group like Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. And speaking of dharmagates, 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. 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.

[20:07]

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 refuge is a little tricky too. You know, 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.

[21:10]

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, you know, the point

[22:12]

is that we each, you know, we 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 and to do it. And if it's 20 minutes instead of 30 or 40, that's fine. But, you know, when we're together, there's a kind of support. This is what Sangha is about. This is what Sangha is about, is 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.

[23:15]

So 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 the world. So these three refuges, taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, taking refuge in

[24:26]

Sangha, are very 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 the 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.

[25:27]

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 finding a new 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.

[26:35]

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 and delusion, craving and 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 and on more and more subtle levels.

[27:39]

And that's the work of Buddha, actually, of doing this awakening practice. Buddha is not some one-time experience. Buddha is this ongoing awakening. So thank you. Other comments, responses? Cassidy, hi. I like the refuge in Buddha is 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 is something that I want to be better at, where instead of kind of the refuge in Buddha for me is not escapist, but kind

[28:44]

of within myself. And I see the refuge in Dharma is facing the challenges and trying to connect with people in challenging situations. And so it's been like 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. Thank you. Yeah. So again, Dharma gates are everywhere, and there is this side of it that, you know, so personally, I just love the Dharma. That's why I'm here. I just love. So I've always been a reader in studious, 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, then, you know, there's a lot of material available, and I'm here to suggest

[29:45]

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 blonde, very blonde hair, and it's lying on my stomach. And there's a big, thick book, and I'm looking at it very intently with my tongue stuck out. So I somehow had some karma about being studious. But, you know, 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.

[30:47]

It's not, you know, always obvious that it's different. That's kind of what you were speaking of. Okay, well, we close our Dharma talks with the four 40-satva vows, which are on the end of your chant book, which we chant three times. I vow to enter them, Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them, Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it, beings are innumerable, I vow to free them, delusions are impossible,

[31:58]

I vow to enter them, Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them, Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it, beings are innumerable, I vow to free them, delusions are impossible, I vow to enter them, Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them, Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.

[32:54]

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