Refuge (5 of 5) Being a Refuge to Others

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Dharmette: Refuge (5 of 5) Being A Refuge for Others. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 13, 2020. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Refuge (5 of 5) Being a Refuge to Others

So then we come to the fifth of the five talks about the refuge series^[1], and so the concluding thoughts about this topic.

One of the strong emphases I've made in these first four talks is how much the Buddha himself did not emphasize refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—especially not as something external. But rather kept pointing, when he talked about refuge, back to one's own experience, and in oneself. When in oneself one finds refuge, or one makes the refuge for oneself, that refuge is found essentially the most deeply in the absence, in the letting go, and the destruction of these human tendencies for greed, hatred, and delusion.

One of the words that is associated with refuge—this kind of focus on discovering refuge here—is a word in Pali called aveccappasāda^[2]. Some translators will translate it as "unshakeable confidence" or "unwavering faith." And it's powerful, the idea of unshakeable or unwavering, like we know something so clearly that it can't be taken away. This is what the basis of our life is. The word avecca that's translated as unshakeable means "what is known for oneself," what one has come to know. And so even though "unshakeable" speaks to what it feels like, it again points to what is known.

When the Buddha was most clear about what's known, it is that we know the difference between a mind or heart which is caught up in greed, hatred, and delusion—with avariciousness, conceit, resentments, or envy. He goes through a list of a whole bunch of unhealthy mind states. Painfully, the word is "afflicted"; it hurts us to have these mind states, and we know what it's like to have them. And we really know what it's like not to have them, to have them drop away. To know it in such a strong, qualitative way that now I know this is possible, and this is worthwhile to base one's life on, to go in this direction of this kind of freedom.

Now one knows what the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are about, and the unshakeable faith in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha comes from knowing in oneself what those three are really pointing to, or what they really represent. So I've been emphasizing how much it's here in oneself.

However, it is at the same time a radical letting go of self, so that we're not really self-centered, but we become, in a sense, situation-centered. It's not really right to say that instead of being self-centered, we are other-centered; that lends itself to some of the same problems that can exist with being self-centered, just in a very different way.

But the idea of being situation-centered is to let go of the conceit of self, the attachments to self, and all the complicated ways we get entangled with ideas of who we are that interfere with our ability to see clearly, feel clearly, and participate in the world in a clean way. We let go of the kind of self-preoccupation which itself is stressful and causes suffering. You can feel that it doesn't feel good to be in it, if you're really sensitive. But instead of being other-centered, it's to still be centered here in this situation. So we really take into account what's happening here in this body and mind. We are conscious, responsible, and clear about what we feel, what we believe, what we're thinking, and we are clear and aware of what's happening around us. There isn't this really sharp line, wall, or barrier between self and other, but there is clear awareness of both so we can find our way and be in a healthy relationship with all things.

What is important to say here today is that this notion of going for refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—that represents one of the deep experiences or deep expressions of Buddhist faith—is in its essence also a way of saying, "I trust something, I have faith in something that is different than my little self, my self-preoccupation, my conceit, and all these problematic ways in which we construct a sense of self, defend it, assert it, and do all these things." Many people, whether conscious or unconscious, have so much focus on themselves that it's almost like that's what they have faith in. Our culture, families, and schools will often reinforce this faith we have in the importance of the self.

I remember a friend of mine who moved here from Japan and put her child in kindergarten. She was horrified at the ways in which the kindergarten was immediately trying to create kids who all thought that they were special and highlight their specialness. It's certainly a wonderful thing in some ways for people to feel like they're special. But to have it solidify as a way of viewing oneself, and needing to be a certain way, can cause suffering. So this practice of meditation, this practice of going for refuge, is to trust something that's other than the small self, other than the contracted, constricted self. To trust nature, to trust something some people might say is larger than self, more glorious than this little self.

It's not a diminishment of who we are; it's an enhancement. It's a heightened thing. From the outside, it looks like a real confidence. It's a real willingness to show up, be present, intentional, and engaged in the world. It's not a disappearing from being in the world, but it is a disappearing of this small, contracted self that somehow gets in the way of things. So when we chant or go for refuge, it's also a reminder that there's something else supporting us here other than our own efforts in practice. Of course, we have to make our effort, but we're being supported by so much more. We're being supported by nature; we're being supported by the Dharma.

We have amazing healing capacities. We have amazing capacities within for human development and growth. We don't just stop growing and developing as human beings when we turn eighteen or twenty-one. There is a continuation of psychological and human development and growth that happens; if everything is normal and healthy, it keeps going into old age. Practicing the Dharma is a way of supporting this natural phenomenon of growth, healing, development, and liberation that is inherent in our whole system. There's an inherency to this movement of wanting to be free. To take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is to trust this inherency—that something more than myself is supporting me. By trusting that, we allow what's more than self to operate.

If we believe we are the only one responsible, the only one who has to figure out how to make it work, we actually at some point start interfering with a deeper process that's happening. So part of what it means to go for refuge is to trust something, to trust nature in a deep way. As we trust ourselves, as we trust the situation-centered world, at some point in this developmental process that the Buddha talks about, the refuge gets turned inside out. Rather than being the one who receives refuge or experiences the refuge, we become the kind of person who offers refuge to others. The orientation becomes much more about being a person of refuge than being a person who has refuge or receives refuge.

The Buddha talked about it as making oneself safe for all beings. What a gift, he said: the gift of safety, the gift of fearlessness, that we can live in such a way that other people have nothing to fear from us. It might take a long time to develop and grow in confidence, skills, and freedom to feel we're ready to be a refuge for others, or to offer people the gift of our fearlessness so that they don't have to fear us whatsoever. But this is the direction of refuge. It isn't just, "Do I go for refuge?" but also, at some point, "I offer a refuge. I will become now a refuge for all beings." In this way, going for refuge in the Buddha, going for refuge in the Dharma, going for refuge in the Sangha, is going to that space, that place of refuge where we ourselves can be a refuge for all beings.

And this is what the world needs. I don't know if it's more now than ever, but it certainly feels like we've come to a point where, really, let's be a refuge for all beings. Let's be a refuge for Black lives—people who for centuries have not felt safe, to put it mildly. Now is a time to offer them safety so they can be supported; it's their turn. So thank you for doing this, and I will see you on Monday. We'll start a new theme on Monday.

Q&A

I'll stay here for a little while if you'd like, and I'll try to look at the chats. If anyone has any questions you'd like to ask, I'll try to answer. I'll probably take about 10-15 minutes here before I have to go. It takes a while for the questions to make their way here.

Q: Are you talking about emptiness?

Emptiness is a very profound topic in Buddhism. Maybe one of these weeks I can make that the theme of the talks. But certainly, I'm talking about the emptiness of self—the emptiness of self-concern, self-preoccupation, and self-attachment.

Q: Was the retreat tomorrow canceled?

Yes. Maybe I didn't cancel it on the website; I'm sorry if that's still up there. But yes, that's not happening.

Q: How do you meditate with pain?

Well, that's a good question. That question requires a lot of respect; pain can be quite difficult and challenging. I've known people who have learned to meditate with very severe pain, so it is possible. To speak briefly about it: one of the things that's helpful with pain is to really study our relationship to it. Sometimes there's a "second arrow"^[3] that we add to it; we make it worse than it needs to be. It can be bad enough to have pain, but then there's a lot of reactivity that can happen to it. The practice can help us a lot with the reactivity, and sometimes, as the direct reactivity settles down, the pain can be much more bearable. That's just one thing. I'm sorry that there's not really time to talk a lot about pain today, but maybe another time we can spend more time on it.

Q: S.N. Goenka^[4] talked about Vipassanā^[5] being body scanning, and Ānāpāna^[6] breathing meditation. Can you comment?

Yes, S.N. Goenka was an Indian Vipassanā teacher—an insight meditation teacher—who had a very particular technique for doing Vipassanā. The word Vipassanā originally is not a name for a practice; it was a name for insight. It was the insights that we have as we go deeper and deeper into Buddhist meditation practice. In the modern world, partly because of S.N. Goenka and others, Vipassanā has become the name of a technique—the practices that lead to the insights.

There are many different ways and techniques of practicing mindfulness so it leads to these insights of Vipassanā. S.N. Goenka has one: he does body scanning, just really scanning through the body and feeling sensations of the body. Ānāpāna means mindfulness of breathing. It's a powerful way of practicing. It takes a limited range of our human experiences and really goes deep with it.

The way we practice Vipassanā here is leading to the same goal, the same purpose, and the same insights, but we have a different approach. That is to not take such a narrow bandwidth of our human experience as the focus, but to be much more broad, to include all of what we're experiencing. The result of that is sometimes we're a little bit slower to go deep, but then it's sometimes broader and more stable at the same time. This is very rough, but the Goenka practice is quite effective and wonderful.

Q: Why is it not a good thing to make a child feel special, or that they have special qualities?

When my children were growing up, when they did something wonderful, fun, and nice—like draw a nice drawing, or something really small—we did not say, "Oh, what a good boy." We said, "Oh, you had so much fun doing that," or, "It's so much fun to watch you do that." We wanted to celebrate the activity that the child was doing. Because as soon as we start saying, "You're a good boy, you're a special boy," it's easy to reify the expectation that they're supposed to get that kind of approval. They think they deserve that kind of approval, and then they start looking for it and wanting it. They become more fragile; if they don't get it, they feel upset.

What we're trying to do with our kids is to have them really engage vigorously, fully, and confidently in the world, but without needing to define themselves by the idea of being special. They found out in education studies that this whole movement of developing self-esteem in children was certainly pointing to some kind of need. But meeting that need by emphasizing self-esteem led to children who felt they deserved to be privileged, who felt they deserved to just be provided with things rather than work for things. I know it's a short little conversation on this, but it's something like that.

Q: Can you say something about witnessing, having our hearts broken, and the change in ourselves?

I think that it's very important to be a witness to what's happening in the world and to be a witness to suffering. Without really seeing and recognizing what's there, we can't be changed by it. We can't really see what's true in the world. As we talked about earlier, the word Vipassanā literally means "clear seeing." The ability to see clearly is part of being a witness.

It's really helpful for others that people know, feel, and experience their suffering. A lot of people have suffered in isolation. So many people in our society—where society has caused a lot of suffering—look around and no one seems to understand the suffering they have. Or they understand how the oppression of society has caused them suffering, and when they bring up and talk about that suffering, they get told they're wrong, or "it's not that way," or "that wasn't the intention." But to really have our hearts broken actually makes it easier for other people to know that they're not suffering alone.

It's also just a very human, natural thing to break a heart. It shouldn't be a problem to have a broken heart. It's painful, for sure, but a broken heart is how we grow and how we develop. We learn to use this mindfulness practice to learn how to not have "second arrows"—how not to add reactivity. Then, a broken heart does not have to be a tragedy; it's something through which we grow and develop. To witness and experience the suffering of the world is for the growth of all of us.

The idea in Buddhism is that as we experience a broken heart, as we experience the suffering of the world, we want to then change ourselves. We don't just want to wait and expect someone else to change things. The more we're distressed, the more our heart is broken, the more important it is for us to do something to make the world better, to be changed by the experience. It doesn't mean we just go out and fix the particular social problem that broke our heart, but we do change ourselves so we become someone who's part of the greater solution, part of what makes a difference. It could be as simple as making a donation someplace, or going down to volunteer somewhere to make a difference. Or we develop stronger connections and care for our neighbors. Or we have work that is meaningful, and we devote ourselves more to that work to really help society even more.

Q: How are equanimity and detachment different?^[7]

Detachment is a closing down; it is a constricting. If you really are mindful and attentive to it, detachment has qualities of tension and suffering within it. It's not comfortable to be detached. Equanimity might look the same, but equanimity is not aloof. It's not removed, it's not contracted, it's not a shutting down. It's really an ability to stay fully open to the situation, to be a witness and not have reactivity or "second arrows."

Q: Is it the experience of the absence of clinging that dissolves the stickiness of self?

It's a great question. I'm not sure exactly... I'd like to say yes, but the issue of self—the particular kind of formation of self that we're looking at in Buddhism—is not all ideas of self, but the attachment to it. The clinging to it. That itself is a clinging. So discovering the absence of the clinging to self dissolves the stickiness of self.

Sometimes we can have very clear experiences where that self-attachment and self-preoccupation completely falls away. It can seem like there's no self here, just life being lived. The self will come back later, along with the stickiness and the attachment, but we know this other place so clearly that we have a very different perspective on the self that comes back. Now we can really recognize that a lot of what I thought I was is a construction. It's a convention. It's a learned behavior and idea of who I am that's been taken on from my culture, my family, my religion—all kinds of things. It's provisional. It's conditional. And for whatever is useful about it, maybe I'll participate in it. Whatever is not useful and painful, maybe I can let it be.

So thank you for participating, and I hope my answers were adequate. They are great questions and very important issues, not always so easy to answer, especially in this format without getting much context for the questions. I look forward to being together next week. Thank you.