January 4, 2026 Talk On Taking Refuge In The Dharma

In this live online talk given to the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC on January 4, 2026, we discuss the importance of taking refuge--finding trustworthy support and safety--in the dharma, or teachings of the Buddha and other wisdom teachers. I discuss the three Buddhist refuges--1) the Buddha; 2) the Dharma; and 3) the Sangha--as reliable spiritual supports for us. A key theme of the talk is that we need to place the dharma at the center of our life and cannot simply look for support when things get difficult while living an unconscious and unexamined life. "The dharma will support us if we support the dharma." I finish by sharing a personal experience of learning the importance of taking refuge in the dharma--and sharing a quote from Anais Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Transcript

For the talk today,

I was thinking,

You know,

Of what would be helpful as we begin the new year.

And the new year is a great time for us,

Excuse me,

Great time for us to kind of reflect and take stock of where we are and particularly to think about our intentions,

You know,

What's important for us in the time ahead.

And so,

I thought today a talk on taking refuge and particularly today taking refuge in the dharma,

In the teachings,

You know,

It's kind of has a broad range of meaning,

Taking refuge and the teachings is kind of very specific.

Aspect,

If you like,

Of refuge.

But it more broadly,

It's taking refuge in the truth,

Taking refuge in life itself,

The way things are.

And what I want to really get at today is emphasized today is the importance of taking refuge,

The importance of putting our commitment to our spiritual practice really at the center of our lives,

How important that is for us.

So,

I want to share some reflections on that today and begin just by saying that refuge in the dharma is in Buddhist teachings is one of the three Buddhist refuges.

Many of you be familiar with that,

The three refuges,

But I'll just briefly name them and describe them.

First of all,

In Buddhism,

A refuge is understood to be,

This is much like it is in everyday,

Kind of in our everyday understanding of refuge,

It's really a place of safety or security or well-being that one can go to,

Particularly in times of difficulty or danger.

It's something that we can rely on.

We have our word,

Obviously,

To be a refugee would be to find a place of refuge,

A place of safety away from war,

Violence,

Oppression,

Et cetera,

All of the things that people are often escaping from and finding refuge.

And in the spiritual sense,

It has a similar connotation,

The sense of something,

Where can we go in the midst of the turbulence,

In the midst of all of the challenges of the time we're living in?

What is reliable?

What is safe?

What can we rely on?

What can be a refuge,

A genuine spiritual refuge for us?

And so that's what this kind of taking refuge refers to,

Speaks of.

So the three refuges,

The first,

And each of these refuges can be looked at in both kind of more of an external way and more of,

Or more of an internal or inner way.

So the first refuge is refuge in the Buddha,

And that can refer to taking,

Finding support,

Finding safety,

If you like,

In this historical Buddha,

This human being who awakened,

Who struggled and sought to find the end of suffering,

And ultimately did awaken to the deepest freedom that's possible in this human life.

At least that's my understanding of his realization.

And that we can be inspired by that,

That we can see that as an example for us.

We say,

Oh yeah,

This is the Buddha,

And I can follow that path.

On an inner level,

A kind of more interior level,

Refuge in the Buddha can be understood as taking refuge in our own potential,

Our own capacity for awakening.

You know,

Taking refuge in the fact that we ourselves,

Each one of us has the capacity to wake up,

And to actually do the work of waking up.

That's kind of more the inner,

Internal level of taking refuge in our potential to wake up.

The second refuge,

Which we're emphasizing today,

Refuge in the Dharma,

Is,

You know,

On one level it's taking refuge in the Buddha's teachings as a reliable path to freedom.

But also that we can actually embody these teachings,

We can transform ourselves through through these teachings,

So that in that more internal way,

We can take refuge in the teachings.

And as I'll be talking about,

It's more broader than just the Buddha's teachings.

It's all of the teachings that help us find freedom.

We can see as all of the wisdom teachings,

Whatever the tradition,

And I'll talk more about that in a little bit.

It's really taking refuge in the truth as well,

The truth about taking refuge in life itself.

So I'm going to talk more about,

Obviously,

About refuge in the Dharma.

So I'll leave it there for now.

Refuge in the Sangha is finding refuge in the community.

It can be the community of practitioners committed to the Buddha's teachings.

And on a more of an internal level,

It's taking refuge in our interconnectedness with all beings and all of life,

Seeing ourselves part of this web of life.

The Buddha,

You may have heard,

You know,

He said,

All of spiritual life is Sangha,

All of spiritual life is community.

And Dr.

Martin Luther King recognized,

He said that we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,

Tied in a single garment of destiny,

Tied in a single garment of destiny.

He said,

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

This is the interrelated structure of reality.

He said this in his letter from Birmingham Jail to pastors who were not walking the talk as it were at the time back in the early 60s.

So focusing today on the second of these refuges,

Taking refuge in the Dharma,

Two questions I want to ask.

First,

What do we mean,

What do we really mean by finding refuge in the Dharma?

And the second,

Why is it important?

Why is it important,

Or perhaps even essential to take refuge in the Dharma?

Essential if we're going to realize it's freedom in this lifetime.

For me,

Taking refuge in the Dharma means to consciously recognize and internalize that the Dharma,

That the teachings provide us with a pathway to freedom from suffering in this life.

So it's consciously recognizing this and really internalizing it in our lives.

That the Dharma,

So again we can say the Buddha's teachings of freedom,

And I'm going to focus mainly on the Buddha's teachings of freedom,

Which we could call,

We call the Buddha Dharma,

The Buddha Dharma.

But the Dharma is broader than the Buddha Dharma.

The Buddha Dharma is the Buddhist path to freedom,

But it's not the only path to freedom.

And so,

You know,

When I think,

You know,

If I think of Rumi,

His poem about welcoming the guests,

You know,

That for me,

You know,

That is Dharma.

That's Dharma.

That's kind of like,

That's a little nugget of,

A little jewel of the teachings.

Welcome the guests,

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who sweep your house empty of its furniture.

It's a kind of like,

Oh yeah,

These,

What comes up for us can actually be welcomed as guests.

And that's,

That's potentially freeing.

So that's the Dharma.

That's,

That's the Dharma.

You know,

When Rilke,

The poet Rilke,

Talks about always trust in the difficult.

Always trust in the difficult.

Again,

That's a nugget,

A jewel of teachings.

Because with,

When it shifts things around,

We typically think the difficult is,

Oh,

That's in my way.

That blocks me from where I want to go.

But when we look at the difficult as this is the place of waking up,

You know,

Similarly,

You know,

Make the obstacle the path.

The obstacle is the path.

We turn it around.

And in that turning around,

If we really internalize it,

That is a teaching of Dharma.

You know,

Obviously the teachings say of Jesus,

You know,

Love your neighbor.

Turn the other cheek.

You know,

These,

Again,

They invite a kind of radical,

Radically different way of looking at ourselves,

The world and others.

It's saying,

Oh,

I don't have to go get a bigger stick to hit them with.

I can,

That's,

That's the way.

And obviously,

You know,

In terms of relating to others,

But it's more the inner,

You know,

Inner letting go that I think is being pointed to in that teaching.

I think of Mary Oliver,

You know,

Her poem,

The Journey.

One day you finally knew what you had to do and began,

Though the voices kept shouting their bad advice,

Though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles,

Etc.

You know,

How that,

You know,

Is,

For me,

Is kind of a teaching of the Dharma,

You know,

Of how we can go from a place of,

You know,

Tightness and contraction and listening to all the noise of the world and believing that's the only way things are to seeing,

Oh,

We can embark on something new.

We can listen to those internal voices.

Again,

This is the Dharma.

You know,

I think of Carl Jung,

You know,

Saying,

You know,

Talking about how what is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate,

You know,

And again that we think,

Oh,

Yeah,

If we don't bring something into the light,

Into the light of awareness,

We just keep acting it out unconsciously and we keep suffering.

Again,

That's a Dharma teaching.

So I'm thinking,

You know,

I'm talking about the Dharma as any teaching and life itself,

You know,

The way life can kind of teach us lessons every day of the week of when the eyes and ears are open,

Even the leaves on the trees teach like pages of the scriptures.

I think Hafiz said that or somebody said that.

Hafiz or one of those wonderful Sufi kind of poets and not all Sufis,

But some of them are other traditions.

But anyway,

All of these are teachings of the Dharma.

I'm going to focus in,

You know,

For obvious reasons on the Buddha Dharma,

You know,

And how that can support us.

But I'm really talking about all of these teachings and how refuge in the Dharma is recognizing that taking refuge,

It provides us a pathway to freedom from suffering in this life.

So refuge in the Dharma means being intentional about putting the teachings at the center of our lives.

We'll realize the benefits of the teachings only if we make them a priority.

And this is kind of the core of what I'm wanting to get at.

The way I frame it in my own mind is the Dharma will support us if we support the Dharma.

The Dharma will support,

What I mean by that is that the benefits of the teachings will be available to us insofar as we give them centrality in our life.

If we don't,

Then we're not going to be able to benefit or not to the fullness of what the teachings offer.

You know,

The teachings can't just be something we go to in times of trouble.

You know,

When things are difficult,

Oh,

Now I'm going to go to the teachings.

What do the teachings have to offer me that can help me get out of this mess that I'm in?

Particularly if,

You know,

The way we're living our lives is disconnected from the teachings.

You know,

If we're not putting the teachings at the center of our lives,

What we will by default be putting other refuges at the center of our life.

And typically these other refuges will be things that lead us to suffering,

Like if we take refuge in drink or drugs.

You know,

Those are a form of refuge.

We're thinking,

Oh,

Yeah,

If I only have a drink or if I only have a drug or if I,

You know,

It may be taking refuge in fame and reputation.

Oh,

How are people looking at me?

Are they thinking good things about me?

You know,

Or it might be money.

You know,

Oh,

I've got to have more money and then I'll really be safe and secure,

You know,

Our possessions.

Or we take refuge in our beliefs,

You know,

And our opinions about things.

And that can be one of the most difficult refuges,

You know,

Because we can get really attached to our beliefs and we hold on to them.

I say that the teachings won't be available to us if we don't make them central.

The reason for that is that the strength of our delusions will outweigh the strength of our practice.

You know,

If we're not putting the teachings at the center,

Then our unconsciousness will be much stronger than our consciousness,

Much stronger than our awareness.

And in times of difficulty,

You know,

I think the teachings won't be available to us or won't be available to us in a deep way.

And I'm going to talk in some personal ways of how I came to understand this really strongly in recent years.

It's said that in Tibetan Buddhism that there are 84,

000 Dharma doors.

Obviously,

It doesn't mean that literally 84,

000.

It's actually 82,

720.

But 84,

000,

That's obviously a symbolic number.

But Dharma doors really mean teachings that help us help us to wake up.

There are many,

Many,

Many different teachings.

I highlighted some of the kind of non-Buddhist ones and there's,

I could pick a hundred others as well,

As probably you could too.

But one teaching is at the very center of all of the Buddha's teachings.

And that's the Buddha's teaching on suffering and the end of suffering,

The Four Noble Truths.

Two,

The Buddha talked a lot about suffering and the end of suffering.

He said,

I teach one thing and one thing alone,

Suffering in its end.

He also,

And there's a very well-known quote he said about the Four Noble Truths.

He said,

Friends,

Just as the footprint of any living being that walks can be placed within an elephant's footprint,

So too all wholesome states or teachings can be included in the Four Noble Truths.

So everything comes back to this teaching about suffering and the end of suffering.

He also said,

One who understands clinging and non-clinging,

That's the second and the third Noble Truth.

One who understands clinging and non-clinging understands all the Dharma.

So essentially,

If we really understand the teaching of the Four Noble Truths about suffering and how we find an end to suffering,

That is all the teaching we need.

I don't mean that the rest is irrelevant,

But that is enough to move us from suffering to freedom.

Really understanding and knowing the Four Noble Truths means not just understanding conceptually or cognitively that we can find freedom by letting go of clinging.

We have to know get to know these teachings very deeply that when we cling to anything we suffer.

It has to become a really an embodied knowing,

Knowing through our direct experience,

Knowing in our bones really.

Teachings have to go deep.

So at the heart of these Four Noble Truths is the recognition that when we cling to anything,

We suffer.

Whether it's clinging to our possessions,

To our views and opinions,

Clinging to the people that we hate,

That's another form of clinging.

Whatever we cling to,

Whatever we resist and push away,

Whatever we identify with,

We suffer.

Or whenever we identify with anything,

We suffer.

There's suffering.

This is the heart,

The teachings.

And when we let go of clinging,

We experience freedom.

It's very simple.

I think it's simple to understand that I think we all know that when we get caught up,

Addiction is a very clear kind of extreme example of it,

Of where we get into that,

You know,

Got to have.

But there's many,

Many other expressions of clinging,

You know,

Including the pushing away things.

And I think we can get this and also get how when we kind of open our fists as it were,

We kind of let go.

Then we experience freedom.

Some of you may be familiar with the story.

And I think that this is true that in,

I think in India,

Maybe other Asian countries,

They have this way of capturing monkeys,

You know,

That were doing damage and stuff.

And the way they do this is they,

There's a,

One of these big seeds that has a hole in it.

And they make the hole big enough,

Just the right size for the monkey to put its hand in.

And they put some juicy fruit in there.

And so that when the monkey puts its hand in the hole and grasps the,

The juicy fruit,

It tries to pull its fist out with the juicy fruit and it can't,

But it won't let go.

But it won't let go of the juicy fruit,

Doesn't want to let go of it.

So it gets captured.

And I love that image.

And it actually,

I believe it is,

I think I've never seen it personally,

But I've heard that this is actually what,

What the way they can capture monkeys.

And we're not really that very different,

Maybe different by a couple of million years,

But you know,

Not very,

Not very different.

You know,

When we hold on,

You know,

In this way,

We suffer.

And yet when we can open our hands and to,

And to just withdraw ourselves from that thing that we're clinging to,

Then,

Then we'll,

When we experience freedom.

And this is the heart of the teaching.

It's,

It's kind of easy to say in a way,

I mean,

It's fairly simple and not too hard to understand,

But when we have to do it in our own lives,

You know,

When we have to let go of,

Find a way of letting go of our anger or hatred towards a politician who we think is doing harmful things,

You know,

For some that may be an issue,

You know,

That,

That it's,

It's not,

May not be quite so easy to do it,

Easy to understand,

But not necessarily easy to,

To do.

So our task with each of these,

And I'm,

I'm highlighting the Buddha's teachings of the Dharma,

And I'm highlighting within that,

You know,

For simple,

You know,

Because it's the central teaching and because,

You know,

To give an example,

The Four Noble,

I'm highlighting the Four Noble Truths.

There are many other teachings that help us to wake up.

I'll just give you a couple of other examples of major teachings that help us to find,

Find freedom out of the 84,

000.

You know,

The one is,

You know,

Whenever we're suffering and whatever we're experiencing at any time,

That moment,

That experience can be the doorway to freedom from suffering.

So the,

You know,

One way of putting it is the present moment,

Whatever we're experiencing,

That can be the gateway,

The doorway,

The portal to freedom from suffering.

We simply have to open fully to our experience.

So what we were doing in the meditation of just allowing whatever is present to be here,

To come and go,

To see its impermanence,

To let go of clinging to anything as I or mine,

Letting go of our,

The mental stories and narratives,

And staying directly with our experience.

This is the doorway to freedom.

You know,

This is what the Buddha spoke of as mindfulness as the direct path to liberation,

Mindfulness as the direct path to liberation.

So that the present moment,

Awareness in the present moment of our experience is,

Is the doorway,

Is the doorway to freedom.

Eckhart Tolle put it this way.

He said,

You can always cope with the present moment,

But you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection.

You cannot,

You cannot cope with the future.

So emphasizing that the present moment.

So this is the teaching of the teachings of mindfulness.

You know,

The four foundations of mindfulness is another central teaching that,

That,

You know,

Is,

Is a gateway to freedom,

We can include or to the heart practices,

The practices of,

You know,

The,

The,

What called the Brahma viharas or the divine abodes,

Loving kindness,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy,

And equanimity.

These teachings are crucial,

Because it's often said,

It's like a bird needs two wings to fly,

Right?

Similarly,

In our practice,

We need,

The teachings need two wings,

They need the wing of wisdom and the wing of compassion.

The Four Noble Truths is fundamentally the,

The wisdom teachings,

The insight,

The understanding teachings.

The heart practices are the heart teachings,

The compassion teachings,

The other wing of,

Wing of the bird.

So those are,

These are just some of,

These are the central,

Some of the central teachings of the Buddha,

Which we call the Buddha Dharma,

That help us find freedom in our lives.

Maybe it's a little freedom,

Excuse me,

Maybe it's a lot of freedom,

Maybe it's complete freedom,

As Arjun Chah said,

Let go a little,

You know,

Experience a little peace,

A little freedom,

Let go a lot,

You'll experience a lot of peace.

Let go completely and you'll experience complete peace.

Your struggle with the world will be at an end.

So what I want to do in the final part of the talk today is,

Having laid out something of the kind of,

This is what taking refuge in the Dharma means,

And some thoughts on why,

Why it's important to take,

Take refuge in the Dharma,

Take refuge in the teachings.

I want to talk about a personal experience that really taught me the importance of taking refuge in the Dharma,

And it really taught me through failure,

Through not being able to find refuge.

And so the insights that I gained through this experience came with a lot of,

A lot of difficulty.

I had an experience a few years ago,

Some of you may,

You may kind of remember some this time,

Where I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of work that I had taken on,

And not knowing how I would be able to do it all.

I felt I just didn't have the resources to be able to respond to all the demands that I felt were coming my way.

And what came up for me was a lot,

A great deal of fear and anxiety.

And,

You know,

What would you say if I were to say,

Well,

How do you work with,

With fear and anxiety when they come up?

Or how do you work with anything,

You know,

Anger or grief or whatever?

What do you do?

You know,

I think probably most of you say,

Well,

The teachings tell us we,

We should turn towards that experience and allow ourselves to really feel it and be present with it.

Everything I've been saying in the last 25 minutes or so,

That's the way of turning to it,

To our experience.

And that's ultimately the way of finding freedom in the midst of whatever we're experiencing.

But did I do that?

No.

No,

I had a better way.

My response to this sense of kind of overwhelm and burnout and,

You know,

Whatever,

What name I want to give it,

Was to resist.

This wasn't something I wanted to have happen.

And I tried to hold on for dear life and kept on pushing through.

It was as though,

You know,

I thought if I can't keep on pushing,

I keep on pushing forward,

I'd somehow come to the other end of this unpleasantness and everything would be okay.

Do you think that happened?

You know,

But the more I pushed,

The more tight,

The more contracted,

The more anxious and fearful I became.

I remember,

I remember very clearly having images in my mind of driving on a freeway and seeing an exit sign that said,

Exit here,

Exit here,

Get off,

Stop,

Just stop.

But did I stop?

No,

I didn't stop.

I kept on pushing.

And I kept on pushing literally until in the end,

I couldn't push anymore.

And I just,

You know,

It's basically my body said no,

And I had to give up.

But this wasn't the kind of,

You know,

Giving up that you might talk about as,

Like you'd see as kind of spiritual surrender,

You know,

Where we really do let go and we say,

God or whoever it might be,

You know,

You're in charge for me,

I'm letting go of this.

It wasn't that kind of letting go.

It was,

It was a sense of failure.

And it came with a lot of shame.

Yeah,

Definitely a sense of failure.

And,

You know,

I for a while I was in a very dark place,

You know,

A kind of a lot of feeling of depression.

And one of the hardest parts about this experience was that I couldn't access the teachings.

I knew them in my head.

But I couldn't internalize them.

And I couldn't really practice them.

And I couldn't,

I couldn't access the practice of meditation,

I could kind of go through the,

The,

What do you call it,

Go through the words,

Lost my word,

You know,

Go through the,

As though I were doing it,

But it wouldn't,

Wouldn't be real,

Go through the motions,

You know,

You know,

But it wasn't,

It wasn't really,

I couldn't really meditate in a genuine way,

Even though I'd been practicing for almost pretty much daily for 30 years,

I couldn't access the teachings.

So it was a very,

Very painful place to be.

It wasn't that I'd given up on the teachings,

But it was just that it was like,

I was over here,

On this land here,

And on the other side of the teachings,

With all that they had to offer,

But there was a raging river in between that I couldn't cross,

You know,

That's just,

You know,

Given,

Give it an image.

I could see how helpful I could understand and had experienced in the past how helpful the teachings were and could be,

But they weren't available or brought to me at that time.

You know,

Over time,

I came to see how my resistance to stopping,

You know,

That keep on pushing,

Was a false refuge that,

That I'd kind of,

I'd taken refuge in thinking that I could push through.

I'm reminded of that,

I,

When I was thinking of this last night,

I'm reminded of a quote from,

Beautiful quote from Anais Nin that you might be familiar with.

She says,

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

That's the kind of positive end of it,

Is when we realize that it's harder,

It's more painful to stay in the tight place than to blossom.

But where I was at this time was I,

I didn't recognize that.

I thought the place of refuge,

A place to hold on to,

Was that tight place.

This was kind of the fearful place I was in that I would just hold on and I could just push through,

Push through,

You know,

Whatever things earlier in my life would condition me to do that.

You know,

My mother was an example with nine kids,

You know,

Bringing,

You know,

Of that kind of determination.

And it has a good side,

Obviously,

You keep going and you survive,

But it also has a shadow side.

And this,

I was stuck in the shadow of this.

I was not,

You know,

On that quote,

You know,

From Anais Nin,

The bud risking to blossom,

You know,

Risking blossom.

Ultimately,

I found my way,

You know,

To back to both,

You know,

Psychological,

Psychological well-being and,

And,

And to the Dharma and to be able to access the Dharma.

Obviously,

You know,

I found my way back to that.

And I learned a great deal through the suffering.

And one of the most important things I learned was that my,

My suffering was avoidable.

If I had truly taken refuge in the Dharma,

In the teachings,

In what life was telling me and what all those signals that were coming to me of like,

Stop,

Get off,

Get off.

And yet I pushed and pushed.

You know,

I think a lot of the time we learn through suffering.

Perhaps most of the time our learning,

Our insight comes through suffering.

But when we take refuge in the Dharma,

We have the potential to avoid the suffering.

The more I,

You know,

Retrospectively,

If I had invested more deeply in the Dharma,

In the teachings,

And not,

You know,

And not allowed the conditions to arise,

To kind of become disconnected from them,

Then I could have avoided that situation from arising.

Now,

I,

In the larger sense,

I feel completely understanding,

I'm not beating myself up about it.

And I understand that that's what I had to learn.

And that's the way I had to go through it.

But as I,

If I step up to a META level,

A meta level,

I can see that,

You know,

The more we invest in the centrality of the teachings,

The more we're able to avoid what the Buddha talked about preventing the arising of unwholesome states,

And to be able to really take the signals.

And when you see the billboard that says,

Get off here,

You know,

Please get off,

Then to get off rather than,

You know,

Driving ahead until you hit the wall in the end.

So I shared the story in the hope that it will be helpful.

You know,

A helpful pointer to the importance of really taking refuge in the Dharma,

Taking,

Really investing our time,

Our energy,

Our heart and spirit in the Dharma,

In the teachings,

The teachings of the Buddha,

The teachings of the other wisdom teachings that help us find freedom from suffering.

You know,

The alternative is that we'll find false,

We'll seek for and find false refuges,

And we'll continue on that cycle of suffering.

So where I want to finish is with a,

Maybe just a couple of minutes of reflection for us all here on taking refuge in the Dharma.

And you can,

If you want to,

You can close your eyes for this and just let your attention come inward.

And I want to just ask the question,

What would,

What would it mean for you to take refuge in the Dharma?

To really give it centrality and importance in your life.

We're living in,

We all know we're living in very difficult and challenging times,

And we need the refuge of the wisdom teachings and compassion teachings,

The teachings of those who've walked the path before us,

And can point out the potholes and the exits,

And remind us to pay attention.

So it's easy to recognize that on a cognitive level,

But what I'm wanting to get at is,

What would it mean to let that understanding go really deep for you?

You know,

What would,

What would taking refuge in the Dharma mean to you?

Would it mean changing anything?

Would it mean doing anything different in your practice?

And I'm not asking this in any way from the standpoint of shoulds,

You know,

I should do this,

I should,

It's not,

Should,

You know,

Not about shoulds at all,

But about what will serve me,

What will serve me to,

You know,

To let go of holding on,

To let go of clinging,

And to find greater freedom in my life,

Particularly in these,

You know,

Very difficult times that we're living in,

Where there's so much,

So much to trigger us,

So much to get us caught up in various kinds of dukkha.

So maybe just take a quiet minute to just sit with that.

So thank you,

Thank you for your kind attention,

And I hope that's helpful,

Maybe some food for thought,

Grist for the milk,

Particularly as we begin the new year.

Reviews

Thank you so much for so clearly explaining the option to take refuge in the wisdom and compassion teachings. It feels like the offer of an extended hand, to leave behind drowning in suffering. Very grateful for this teaching in this difficult time. 🙏🙏🙏

Hugh is always spot on. In these times , one of the best results for me and others is to turn even more attention to our spiritual growth and helping others to do the same. Look to the Buddhist monks and the Walk for Peace. They are attracting thousands as they simply make a statement that love, not anger or blame, is the answer. Thanks Hugh.

💓🙏

Thank you for these wonderful reminders 🙏🏼