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Refuge (2 of 5) The Internal Refuge

So this day I'll continue the talks on refuge. In this second talk, I'm fond of the idea that the usual expression around refuges is gacchāmi^[1], the Pali word for "going," as in "going for refuge." But the word "going" literally in Pali means to walk. Walking has the idea of bringing all of yourself. When you walk, you don't leave part of yourself back at home. When you go out for a walk, you bring all of yourself into it. When we go for refuge, it is something where the wholeness of who we are is brought along. We engage, we commit, and we are involved.

As I continue these thoughts, building on what I said yesterday, in the last days of the Buddha's life, he said that he had not appointed anyone to be the leader of the Sangha^[2]. There was no successor for him to be the next person in charge of the community of monastics. This idea that this great world religious leader explicitly did not create someone else to be the leader is quite a phenomenal thing.

What he said instead was, "Now you have the Dharma and the Vinaya^[3]—the discipline, the ethical rules especially for the monastics. The Dharma and the Vinaya are your leader, your teacher." Here, it is almost as if he is saying you have to become your own teacher. You have to know what the Dharma is, what the teachings are, and where the Dharma is found within. That is where it is found. Today, that is the direction we are going: to not have an external leader, but in a sense, to become our own leader and our own teacher.

After he died, someone asked his disciple Ānanda^[4] if the Buddha had assigned anyone to be the refuge. The person said to Ānanda, "Now that your teacher is gone, has he appointed someone else to be the refuge?" Since we often say we go for refuge in the Buddha, Ānanda said, "No, the Buddha did not do that." The man then asked if the bhikkhus^[5] (the monastics) had appointed anyone to be the leader, to be the refuge. Ānanda said, "No, the community of monks and nuns has not appointed someone to be the refuge."

But then the man said, "If you have no refuge, what is the reason why the monastics live in concord? Why do they live together peacefully in harmony when there is no person they can go to?" And Ānanda replied^[6], "We now have the Dharma as the refuge."

So here again, this is pointing back to the Dharma. At its essence, the Dharma is something internal, something we discover for ourselves. It lives in us, it becomes us, we are the Dharma. In this regard, the tradition distinguishes between two kinds of refuge. In the language of the ancient texts, there is the conventional refuge, the worldly refuge. And then there is the ultimate refuge or the transcendent refuge that a person can take.

In modern language, I understand this to mean there is the external refuge and there is the internal refuge. The conventional refuge is the external refuge: the refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma, in the Sangha as something external to oneself. The ultimate refuge is, in a sense, internal, found right here within ourselves.

So what is it in here that is the internal Buddha that we take refuge in? The internal Buddha is the capacity we have to dwell without being caught up in clinging, craving, hostility, and hatred. It is dwelling without being caught up in anxiety, lost in fear, or holding on to fear. It is dwelling without being preoccupied with conceit and selfishness, and without being indecisive, deluded, confused, or filled with doubt [unintelligible].

This capacity is really talking about the absence of something—the potential we have to not be caught up in greed, hate, and delusion. Now, this might seem like a minor, poor, or insignificant kind of refuge: the refuge of really knowing the value of the absence of clinging and craving. Maybe that seems like a small thing.

However, the idea is to take refuge in that absence so that we don't succumb to craving, clinging, and hostility. There is no hostility that is worth being involved in. There is no craving, grasping, or tightening around that is worth doing. There is no anxiety that is worth dedicating one's life to, getting caught up in, really trusting, or staying involved in. Of course, as human beings, there can be craving, hostility, fear, doubt, and all these things. We will have those things. It is not a crime to be this way; we are human, and this comes with human life.

But we don't have to stay that way. We can discover something else which is also in our human nature. Perhaps it is something deeper, something more reliable and trustworthy: the capacity to not cling and to not hold on. To really trust that absence and take refuge in it means that we are less likely to trust in clinging and grasping again. We discover slowly, bit by bit, in small little increments perhaps, the value of not clinging. We realize, "I don't have to be caught up in this thing or that thing"—all these things that many people get caught up in and concerned with. To find tremendous value in this non-clinging, that is the refuge in the Buddha, the inner Buddha.

The internal Dharma, at its essence as I see it, is the ability, the sensibility, the understanding, and the practice of non-harming. It is said in the ancient texts that the primary characteristic manifestation of the Dharma is non-harming. So the practice of not harming oneself, the practice of not harming others, and the understanding and sensitivity of that, comes from the first refuge—the refuge of non-clinging and non-grasping. It is seeing that everything about the Dharma teachings arises, supports, and connects to all the things in the world that involve not harming. And conversely, they are connected to what is beneficial, skillful, and nourishing for us, which helps us to thrive internally.

The internal refuge is beginning to take refuge in that place inside where we don't want to harm anything. It is the place inside where we are ready to not invest in hostility causing harm. To understand what is harmful and what is not harmful, what is skillful and not skillful—to understand that for ourselves is the refuge in the Dharma.

The internal Sangha is our capacity for goodwill, for care, for connectedness. It is our feeling of really being kin to each other, of being in this human world together. We have this completely natural capacity—without which we would not have survived as a species—of caring for each other, caring for our children, caring for our relatives, caring for our neighbors, and caring for our tribe. As we practice, to take refuge in the inner Sangha is to expand this notion of care beyond the usual circles where it is pretty natural to care. We expand it until it becomes natural to care for all beings, anyone we encounter: the stranger, the neighbor, the traveler, and people we don't even see who live far away.

We have a capacity for caring for our relatedness. We have a capacity to create bridges of relationships between each other that are inspiring, meaningful, and wonderful. We can particularly do that with people we are challenged by, people we find difficult, so that no one is left out of our hearts—even as we work for justice and work for things that need to be done. And so, this is the internal refuge.

These are things that we come to understand. Initially, it might be a provisional understanding, or it might be small ways that we understand it, or we may only understand it in very big terms. There are all kinds of ways we understand it. I use the word "understanding" purposely because in the ancient commentaries of our tradition, from the ancient teachers, one of the ways they describe this idea of refuge is that it is an understanding.

It is not something we take on faith blindly, like a tenet or a belief that we should trust just because the source is good. Rather, it is something we come to understand for ourselves. To go for refuge is to go into what we have come to understand. It is allowing what we understand to be integrated into us and to become who we are. So, the internal refuge is one of the meanings of going for refuge.

It is one of the ways of harmonizing the idea of refuge with the emphasis the Buddha and his disciples had in the ancient world: that once the Buddha has passed away, the refuge is found in the Dharma. The Dharma that is within us is the internal refuge.

Tomorrow, I will talk about the external refuge. The external refuge is that which is external but resonates with the internal refuge. This is also very important for Buddhists, to have faith, connection, and inspiration. The external refuge is a great support for our practice.

Thank you very much for being here and listening. I hope this is something you can reflect on. I do regret a little bit that during this shelter-in-place time, there isn't a time to meet with some of you, to actually hear you and be in conversation around these topics, which I think are so important. So thank you, and I look forward to tomorrow.