Taking Refuge Part 2: Dhamma

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado, on Dhamma. This podcast invites the listener into a state of reflection, introspection and growth. Recorded live with some background noise.

Transcript

When we were last together in beginning this three-part series,

What we did was to begin an exploration or an inquiry into this very ancient tradition within Buddhism,

Within Buddha-Dharma.

The gesture of the tradition of the ritual of what's called going for refuge or taking refuge in the Buddha,

The Dharma,

And the Sangha known as the Triple Gem.

And as we reflected on it,

As we explored the topic when we were last together,

We saw that this going for refuge or taking refuge is held in somewhat different ways by different traditions.

So for instance,

In the Tibetan tradition,

Going for refuge with a specific teacher can in fact be a lifelong commitment to being a student of that particular teacher or that guru.

And likewise becoming part of the lineage or the school of teachings of that particular guru.

And so it's a very,

Very long term kind of relationship that has some real gravitas attached to it.

In other Buddha-Dharma traditions,

There's less emphasis on the teacher as guru,

As one to whom one surrenders in terms of going for refuge.

But a more sort of lateral relationship,

One that really has more to do with just coming into community and sharing some teachings and reflecting together on what they might mean.

As we also talked about when we were together,

Whichever of the Dharma traditions that we're contemplating the going for refuge or taking refuge phenomenon from,

There are certain aspects of it that are really worthy of deeper inquiry,

Ways to understand what it means to go for refuge or to take refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha.

And during our three part series here,

What I want us to be able to do is to dig in a little somewhat beyond the surface and go into some of the richness of what it means to take these refuges.

Perhaps the most frequently used simile that the Buddha offered in his teachings was one of,

If you decide to take up the Buddha's teachings,

He talks about walking the eightfold path,

Going on a journey.

Essentially an inward journey,

A journey of inward inquiry,

But you do it along with others.

It's your own journey,

But you're sharing that inner journey with others in Sangha or spiritual community.

So in a theological lingo is applied to the teachings of the Buddha.

One of the distinctions that comes up in the literature is this distinction between what's called the mundane and the supramundane.

Mundane doesn't mean worthless or common or lesser,

It comes from the mundo of the world,

The outward,

The tangible,

The visible.

The supramundane refers more to the inner,

The invisible,

The extra rational if you will.

And so in looking at the three refuges,

If you're going forth on the spiritual journey,

Along the way you're going forth from a place of comfort.

You're going forth from a cocoon woven by your attachments and aversions and delusions.

You're agreeing to go forth and see what else is out there.

And in so doing then these refuges become a part of the journey.

So the supramundane aspect,

So there's an external,

The literal historical meaning of taking refuge in the Buddha,

Is taking refuge in the memory of a person who sought to find out what is the nature of this self-generated suffering that we experience in life.

Where does it come from?

Why does the mind do it?

And how might it be brought to an end?

How might it cease?

So taking refuge in the Buddha,

Literally be taking refuge in the memory of someone.

He said,

My hardware and software is like yours,

Or at least my hardware is.

I've been working on the software for the last 45 years.

But I am no different from you.

I am not a god and I should not be regarded as one.

This is simply,

When I talk about the path,

I talk about the path that I walked,

My own exploration,

What I discovered.

And I share it with you in the event that your goals,

What you want in your own spiritual life,

Is the same thing I wanted.

To discover why we suffer and how it might be brought to an end.

And he said,

If that likewise is your goal,

Then you might want to try doing some of these things that I did.

And see if you have similar insights,

And see if over time you begin to gain a similar freedom from self-generated suffering.

That was his basic message.

And he reiterated over and over and over again,

He said,

I would not ask you to do these practices if I did not know you could.

So taking refuge in the Buddha in the memory of this person who accomplished this particular objective,

Is sort of the mundane aspect of what it means to take refuge in the Buddha.

However,

There is also this inner aspect,

As I spoke about the last time I was over there,

Of taking refuge in the Buddha as well,

Of taking refuge in the Buddha within,

In one's own Buddha nature.

Some phrases that I know,

That I have shared in here frequently in the past,

Because they have particular meaning for me,

And they are the ones that I certainly share when I am working with someone whose life may be about to come to an end,

Because that is why these phrases were written in the first place.

They are from a Tibetan text called the Book of Great Liberation on Hearing in the Bardo.

And they are verses that are read to someone whose life is coming to an end,

Usually by a spiritual benefactor,

Or a family member,

Or a dear friend.

And it is something that is intended to act as a reminder to someone as their consciousness is leaving their body and going on this journey into the unknown.

And the verses say,

O nobly born,

You who are the son or daughter of the Buddha,

Remember who you are in these times of change.

Remember the Buddha who has taken birth in your very own form.

Step out of the small self,

This body of fear,

And rest in generosity and kindness of heart.

Rest in your own true virtue and wisdom.

Rest in the graciousness of patience,

The dedication and equanimity,

And compassion you share with all life.

That is who you really are.

Trust it and rest in your own true nature.

They refer to the physical body as the fear body.

And the reason is because it is hard-wired to stay alive.

And it is going to do whatever it can to stay alive.

If you have been with someone who has been dying in the past,

Then often times there can be real peace of mind and they are quite prepared for the experience and they relax into a state of deep rest,

Stage 3 anesthesia and maybe just kind of moving on out.

But at the very end,

Often times the body is having none of it.

It is going to go down spring.

Because it is its nature.

And so that is why they call it the fear body.

It is just how it is wired.

But to remember in these moments,

That is not really who you are.

That is just leftover engine backfiring when it shuts down.

This is kind of.

.

.

But it is not who you truly are.

And so trying to be reminded of your own Buddha nature is what the intention there is.

And that there is that place.

Another way to get a feeling for it a little bit,

This place of inner peace or spaciousness,

One's Buddha nature,

Is captured in this book,

Kitchen Table Wisdom,

By Rachel Remnett,

Who is a physician who has done a lot of work with people who are facing serious physical and inevitably then some psychological or emotional challenges with regard to things having to do with their health,

Especially life threatening disease.

She says in a book about Spain,

I remember reading an interesting thing about bullfighting.

There is a place in the bull ring where the bull feels safe.

If he can reach this place,

He stops running and can gather his full strength.

He is no longer afraid.

From the point of view of his opponent,

He becomes dangerous.

The place in the ring is different for every bull.

It's the job of the matador to be aware of this,

To know where sanctuary lies for each and every bull,

To be sure that the bull does not occupy his place of wholeness.

And bullfighting,

The safe place,

Is called the Karencia.

For humans,

The Karencia is a place in our inner world.

Often it is a familiar place that has not been noticed until a time of crisis.

Sometimes it is a viewpoint,

A position from which to conduct life,

Different for each person.

Often it is simply a place of deep inner silence.

In working with people with cancer,

I've seen the change what happens when a person finds their Karencia.

In full view of the matador,

They are calm and peaceful and wise.

They have gathered their strength around them.

The inner silence is more secure than any hiding place.

So when I looked up the word Karencia in my Spanish dictionary,

The definition of it was the place where wild things go to be safe.

So it's like that inner sanctuary,

The wild part of us,

The part that's untamed,

That's uncaptured by the discursive mind.

Where it goes to be safe is a place of spaciousness,

Of silence,

Of refuge.

So that's one way of thinking about what it means to find the Buddha within.

And then,

You might as well hear from the dude himself.

The Buddha took a long time to die.

He had eaten some rotten food.

He was aware at the time that this meal he was being offered was in not such good shape.

He wound up contracting a serious gastrointestinal disease to which he eventually succumbed.

So it was,

I guess,

Probably as fortunate for his followers that it didn't go out in the blink of an eye.

Because while he was dying,

He had all these kind of teachings that he shared with others.

And perhaps the most famous one is the advice that he gave to those who were gathered around him as he was near death.

And they were sort of lamenting and they were saying,

Oh what are we going to do now that you are no longer here to share your teachings with us?

They realized that they had grown quite dependent upon him,

Kind of hanging on every word.

And what he was advising them to do at the time was to turn inward.

There are two,

A very early translation of this particular text,

It's the Parinirvana Sutra,

The greater discourse on the Buddha's passing.

Yeah,

And to find the state of nirvana not in his body.

And the earliest one is by,

In English language,

Is by a translator named Rhys Davids.

And its title is,

Be a Lamp into Yourself.

And its standards are therefore known to be lamps into yourselves,

Be ye a refuge into yourselves.

Betake yourselves to no external refuge.

Hold fast to the truth as a lamp.

Hold fast to the truth as refuge.

Look not for refuge in anyone beside yourselves.

And those ananda who either now or after I am bid shall be a lamp unto themselves,

Shall betake themselves to no external refuge.

But holding fast to the truth as their lamp,

Holding fast to the truth as their refuge,

Shall not look for refuge to anyone besides themselves.

It is they who shall reach the very topmost height,

But they must be ready to learn.

A modern Pali scholar,

Bhikkhu Bodhi,

Who is probably the foremost English language translator of all the texts of what the historical Buddha has actually thought to have said.

Said,

Well Rhys Davids,

His Pali wasn't very good.

There was a book that had recently come out,

And it was one of the first English language texts about the Buddha.

It was called Light of Asia.

And so he translated this particular word as lamp.

But he said,

Well no,

Not really.

He said that the real meaning of that Pali word is island.

But you know,

Back in the 1600s John Donne,

The English poet,

You know,

No man is an island entire of itself.

Everyone is a part of the main,

Therefore never send a no for whom the bell tolls for thee.

And so this notion of each person being an island is a little off-putting perhaps as well.

And then likewise in any altar,

You see in the Buddhist altar,

You see in Asia,

Or here in the West for that matter,

If there are flowers and scents and candles,

The candles stand for the light of wisdom.

However,

Says Bhikkhu Bodhi,

The real translation of the word is island.

Not island like a little sand spit in the middle of the Pacific with one palm tree and a guy waiting for a ship to come.

Rather an island like Sri Lanka.

An island that has a complete ecosystem.

That has fresh water and plants and animals.

And that is in and of itself self-sufficient.

So if you go back and read that text,

You know,

Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation,

Therefore Ananda,

Be islands unto yourselves.

Be a refuge to yourselves,

But take to yourselves no external refuge.

Hold fast to the truth as an island within yourself.

Hold fast to the truth as a refuge.

Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves.

So what he's really teaching to these people as he's passing on,

He's saying,

You know,

In order for what I have taught you to fully ripen,

And for you to be ready to go forth and share it with others,

You have to acknowledge that while the words that I said had real value for you,

It's not simply that I said them that matters,

That has transformed your life and your consciousness.

What matters is that you heard those words and they became your truth.

Your lived experience.

They became your dharma,

Not just a doctrine.

They became the reality of your own existence.

And so he said that,

And that kind of segueing into what does it mean to take refuge in the dharma,

And now of course as well.

But the point he's trying to make over and over again,

You know,

Is that there's not some guy in the sky,

There's not some deity,

There's not some external authority figure,

There's not somebody else that you've got to be looking for or looking to to hang your hat on as a principle distinction between buddha dharma,

Which is a non-theistic tradition,

And the theistic traditions of the world.

Be-take yourselves no external refuge.

You've got everything you need inside.

Trust,

You know,

Like I said in the Tibetan book that I did,

Trust your own buddha nature.

It's been there all along.

It's just a matter of allowing it to come forth to find its voice,

To mature.

So before I start making a few comments about taking refuge in the dharma,

Is there anything that I've said about taking refuge in yourself and your own buddha nature that resonated with you or that you'd like to explore more fully or that you have a question about?

There we go.

Please.

I get the islands thing,

And we,

That ultimately,

You know,

I'm not sure that your happiness is not depending on conditions,

You know,

Outside yourself or in your body or whatever,

But I don't know.

I wonder how that,

I mean,

Until you're enlightened,

I wonder how that fits with the,

When Amanda says that noble friends and noble conversation is half of the life.

You know,

Because it seems really important to be able to have your friends around and be able to bounce this stuff off of them and have them get it.

One of the prerequisites for being able to embark upon this particular path,

To inquire into the buddha's teachings,

To learn the extent to which they seem to resonate with your own understanding,

Is being comfortable with paradox.

Because,

You know,

On the one hand,

He's saying just that,

He's saying,

If you feel that,

Your own spiritual well-being,

Your own ability to know what is true,

Your own ability to live with integrity,

Your own ability to be a compassionate person in the world,

Is dependent upon somebody else telling you what to do,

Is dependent upon you getting validation from somebody else.

Then you've not fully learned what I've been teaching.

And,

In another meeting,

Just as you said,

At another time,

Another place,

When Ananda was saying,

You know,

It seems like noble conversations with noble friends is half the whole life.

When we get together in two weeks and talk about the Sangha,

We're going to be going back to that very teaching.

And,

Of course,

Ananda is this kind of straight man.

He'd say these things,

And then they'd say,

Oh no,

Ananda,

Do not say this because you're mistaken,

Of course.

Another faceplant for Ananda.

He said,

No,

He said,

Surely noble friends and noble conversations is the entirety of the holy life.

The distinction that we've got here is he's talking,

On the one hand,

In terms of finding the Buddha within,

Your inner refuge.

It's kind of like,

You know,

The war pigeons.

It's like your own wisdom,

Your own grounding and faith in your own wisdom and compassion is what gives you the motive energy and the insight to live the Buddha's teachings.

So that's the found.

That's kind of where it comes from.

If you see the Dharma wheel here,

You know that eight aspects,

The four paths it's called,

The meditative aspects of effort and concentration and mindfulness that kind of prepare the soil,

Prepare the mind to be able to recognize insights,

You know,

Insights into who and why you are the way you are,

Insights into all the causes and conditions that gave rise to who you are in this moment.

It's one of the two wisdom factors,

Right understanding and right view or right thought,

You know,

That that's insight into who you're going to be in the next minute.

It's insight into your own motives so that you can recognize the wholesome from the unwholesome in terms of motivation.

So that's the two wisdom factors and the last three are the manifestation of the meditative factors and the wisdom factors in how we speak and how we act and how we live our lives.

All of those activities are interactive.

They're mundane.

They happen in the world.

And they're just as important.

The reason it's,

You know,

It's laid out here like spokes on a wheel is because no one can be weaker or stronger than the other.

They're all equally important.

They balance each other out.

They happen in a social context.

The reason the Buddha said that Sangha is so critical,

Spiritual community is so critical is that,

You know,

Even though we have this wisdom and compassion,

This Buddha nature that rises within us,

What's going on within us at the same time is a lot of competition for our attention and for our action and whatnot.

And when it looks like we've kind of,

You know,

The wheels are coming off a little bit and we're kind of losing focus and we're edging toward saying or doing something that's kind of unskillful,

If you are in community with others who recognize the symptoms,

Okay,

They can help you,

You know,

In a kind way.

We can kind of witness to each other.

We can be mirrors to each other,

Reflect to each other in terms of what we're thinking,

What we're saying,

What we're doing,

And kind of remind each other of the Buddha within.

So when we,

Like,

Take refuge at the beginning of a sitting or the beginning of a retreat,

That's kind of what we're doing.

We're reminding each other of these kind of inner qualities.

Yeah,

Please,

Don.

In the Zen tradition,

A lot is made about the interconnectedness of all beings,

Of all worlds.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know,

One with all beings,

And that's a sort of pivotal realization.

But I always sort of saw that as sort of one of the deeper realizations that come with practice,

As opposed to simple acknowledgement of the social context in which the practice is.

Right.

Understanding the interconnectiveness is on its fundamental level.

Yeah,

At the absolute rock bottom we are all one,

Is I think what it's saying.

Yeah,

Well,

If you want to get a few points in the discourses,

The Buddha says,

You know,

There is this teaching called Paticca Samudhara,

Or codependent arising,

Dependent origination.

Basically it's the teaching that everything creates everything else all the time,

And everything is arising and passing,

You know,

Constantly.

And so it's interconnection at a level more fundamental than we're usually capable of comprehending.

So in that particular regard,

This notion of an island or one separate,

You know,

Basically another way to understand that would be be ecosystems unto yourselves.

Because it's this,

You know,

It's not an isolated kind of individual,

It's this continuous arising,

Changing,

Passing away,

Arising,

Changing,

Passing away,

And the insight into the fact that that's going on,

It's going on for all,

It's going on for everything in the world all the time.

And to be able to begin to comprehend that a little bit is to really help to be able to begin to let go of this notion of a discrete,

Permanent,

Separate and abiding self.

So it's murky stuff in languages,

It's slippery here,

But what on the one hand,

What his translation is trying to get at is,

You know,

Don't feel like because the dude died you're going to run out of gas,

You know.

He said all I was here to do was to awaken something in you that you've already got out.

And the beauty of Sangha is one that it helps keep that awake,

It helps sustain that which is in you.

So he didn't say go off and sit on a mountaintop by yourself,

Not at all.

What he was saying is that he was trying to disabuse them of the dependence that he saw with them.

He said that's not really so helpful,

It's not what everyone's trying to get across.

Thank you.

Taking refuge in the dark?

Oh please,

Please.

But that is interesting that even,

You know,

That people around him when he was dying felt that,

Or he felt that they were becoming too dependent on him.

Tell me,

Tell me I'm okay,

Tell me this,

Tell me,

Tell me that.

I can relate to that.

That to me is a struggle that I think if I can continue to find it within myself,

That is really my,

One of my biggest goals right now in my life is to find this peace,

This knowing.

I happened to go to Mile High last week and it was a very similar talk about self-love.

And then having your actions,

Every choice that you make in your life is,

You're taking really good care of yourself,

You know this,

That you're valuable.

And so all of your actions come out of that.

It's a very similar message.

Quite so.

Learning to trust yourself,

Rather than in a more fundamental way,

Perhaps you have.

And it's,

Yeah please.

Sorry,

Sorry.

Kind of goes along with what she was saying.

I'm always having a hard time with,

You know just drink your Kool-Aid just because this dude says so,

And I can't always go out and follow that.

But at the same time I just don't trust myself or I don't trust enough my good nature or so,

Or sometimes the wisdom.

So I just,

Sometimes I just cannot distinguish between is this truth or is this some kind of foreign stuff.

Or even like when you belong to some kind of community,

Other families,

You know community is great,

Some are great.

For example in work situation or some kind of social association you belong to.

And sometimes you're not so sure,

You know it sounds great,

But at the same time I just cannot trust it.

And I feel like there's some kind of tendency there.

Should I trust my instinct or is there any other technique?

What you all are doing is providing a wonderful segue into having a look at what it means to take refuge in the Dharma.

Which again has its mundane and super mundane aspects to it.

So taking refuge in the Dharma,

What does the word mean?

A lot of translations.

One is truth.

Other is teachings.

Other is law,

As in natural law.

The way,

You know which is that which is in accord with nature.

So you may have noticed that my teaching may talk about Buddha Dharma or the teachings of the Buddha more than I use the word Buddhism.

And the reason for that is that the word Buddhism is a West European academic construct.

It came into being in the 18th century when Asia was being colonized by the West.

And there are these comparative religion types that were trying to figure out what the extant religions were there and how to make sense of them.

And they did that of course by comparing what they knew to what they didn't know and using the language of the stuff they did know and applying it to what they didn't know.

And doing a certain amount of conceptual violence to it along the way.

So which is why I use the phrase Buddha Dharma,

Literally the teachings of the Buddha.

There are other Dharmas that other teachers would offer.

This is the one that he happened to offer.

And it comes in myriad forms and it has different texts and different traditions.

All of them purporting to be the words of the Buddha.

One of my primary teachers and friends Joseph Goldstein wrote a book a few years ago called One Dharma.

What he had seen happening here in the West was that we had all these various Buddha Dharma traditions from various parts of Asia all making their way to the West.

And in many ways they had relatively little in common or at least the ones,

The way they were being brought over,

The way they were being taught.

What also came across was a lot of the sectarianism that was going on in Asia.

With all these different ways of thinking about what the Buddha said and all the different ways that the teachings got admixed with the cultures that sustained them and what not.

And there were all these different schools of views and ideas and what not.

He decided you know I think it's time for us to move the focus away from how they're all distinguishable from each other to what they hold in common.

And so,

And there are places where the Buddha actually said there are not many dharmas but one and this one Dharma is what you felt we needed to focus upon.

So somebody asked him once after he finished his book,

Is there anything that you found in common across all these different schools of Buddhism?

He said yes,

There is no Buddhist school that says clean.

So the idea of the Four Noble Truths,

You know the yes suffering exists and yes it's caused by craving and clinging and yes it is possible to train the mind to not crave and cling and here's how you do it.

And one way or another you find those teachings coming through in terms of the industrial basic core Dharma as far as the teachings,

The literal teachings.

So taking refuge in these teachings,

In the Buddha's recorded experience of inner exploration and how he found the answer to the questions that he set forth to find the answers to,

Is what constitutes the Dharma,

The teachings of the Buddha.

And he was out on the road doing his shtick and got invited to visit a spiritual community,

The Kalamas and there is a Sutra,

A teaching of the Buddha's,

A discourse called the Kalamas Dilemma.

And it has to do with when they have one spiritual teacher after another come to town and do their spiel and so he did his spiel and talked about the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path and bringing suffering to an end.

And they said,

Yeah well that's nice but last week some guy came through here and he was an eternalist,

He said there is a God,

There is a soul and they last forever and before that was somebody called a nihilist who said nothing exists,

Party on,

You know,

No consequence.

And why should we believe you any more than we should believe any of these others and his answer was you should not.

He said,

Let's go back to square one,

I set out to discover the nature of suffering,

Especially that suffering which we cause ourselves,

Where it comes from,

Why we do it and how it can be brought to an end.

I teach one thing and one thing only,

Suffering in the end of suffering.

If your goal likewise is to discover why we suffer and with particular regard to this kind of self-generated dissatisfaction of suffering and how it might be brought to an end,

If your goal is the same as mine in other words,

Then you may want to give some of what I'm suggesting here a try,

You know,

Listen to these teachings,

Do some of these practices,

See if they work for you.

If indeed you have the same experience that I did when I came across this stuff,

If indeed you do,

Then the words that I shared with you will no longer be just a test,

They will not any longer be just some doctrine,

They will be your lived reality,

They will be the truth of your experience,

They will be your dharma.

So that is a transformation from the outer,

Those 5,

000 printed pages of the Buddha's teachings and the Nikaya's,

The collections,

The transformation of that which you found in those teachings that speaks to you in a very fundamental way and causes a shift in the way you understand yourself and the way you interact with the world.

And when that fundamental shift occurs,

That change in perception,

Change in view,

That affects a change in behavior and a change in understanding.

Then the dharma has become your dharma.

It has become internalized.

It has become who you are.

So taking refuge in the dharma,

In your dharma internally,

Is taking refuge in your ability to know what is true,

Insofar as how to bring suffering to an end.

However,

The tricky business here,

As you pointed out,

Is the teachings in the dharma traditions are basically that we come into this world seeing the world through the lenses of our desires and our aversions.

So he was saying,

Don't do this practice because I told you to.

Either my practice or anyone else that comes along.

If you do the practice because the guy is really smart or good looking or rich or he's got a big following,

You know,

Or all your friends say you should,

He said that's really shaky ground to build your spiritual life on.

The only thing worth building your spiritual life on is what's true for you.

And in order for you to know what's true for you,

You have to be able to figure out,

To recognize when you're hosing yourself.

So like the Buddha said,

You know,

We become what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts,

With our thoughts we create the world.

Speak or act with unwholesome purpose and sorrow shall follow you as surely as the wheels on the cart follow the oxen who draw it.

We become what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts,

With our thoughts we create the world.

Speak or act with wholesome intention and happiness will follow you as your shadow and swerving.

When we're looking at the world through the lenses of greed,

Hate and delusion,

You know,

Then we're likely to speak and act in ways that are harmful to ourselves and others.

When we're not looking at the world that way,

We won't.

So making this dharma yours involves learning how to perceive clearly when you are and when you are not looking at the world through those particular lenses,

You know.

Karl Grafasche's famous little poem,

You know,

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.

That's what he's talking about.

We for the most part see the world through the lens of our own needs and wants,

Our own fears,

Our own anxieties,

And we block everything else out that we don't want to look at.

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.

He says there is a reality and you are that reality but you do not know it.

When you realize this is so,

You will see that you are nothing and that being nothing you are everything.

That is all.

What Karl Grafasche is talking about is the ability to see the world from a non-self referential point of view.

To be able to see things as they are.

With eyes unclouded by fear and longing as the Buddha said.

When it's capable,

When you find yourself,

Even for little moments at a time,

You know,

When you are sitting and you see that you are in the throes of one or another,

These unwholesome mind-space and then for a minute you are not.

And when you have that moment of mindfulness,

The moment of clarity is basically a moment of looking back.

Because in the moment you can see that the mind was taken up with anger,

Frustration,

Or ill will,

Or fear,

Or whatever.

And the moment you recognize the mind to be in that state,

It's not in that state anymore.

At that moment you are being mindful.

Being clear.

You are able to see that in the immediate preceding moment that's what you are feeling.

And maybe that's what you are going to be in one day's moment.

And then there is going to be another moment of mindfulness.

So what happens the more you do this practice,

Especially if you are on retreat or weird,

That those moments of mindfulness,

More and more of them begin to appear.

They start getting strung together,

You know,

Like beads on a mallet.

And then what happens as a result of that,

Your ratio of experiencing afflictive emotions for instance,

And your moments of mindfulness,

The ratio begins to change.

So when you first start sitting,

You may just be in the throes of mind states that you don't really particularly appreciate being in.

And every once in a while there is a moment of mindfulness and you see there in some ways it makes it even ickier to realize that what's going on.

But then little by little bit,

The more you practice,

The more mindful you become,

You know,

The more the moments of mindfulness begin to shove out the other ones.

And you begin to disempower those mind states.

They don't have the control over you that they used to.

This is what taking refuge in the inner dharma is really all about.

It's taking refuge in your capacity to know what's true,

To be able to see clearly in a way that you couldn't before.

And then as the Buddha said,

As this ability to see things more and more clearly strengthens,

And the unwholesome states of mind and motives get progressively weaker,

Then the dharma becomes yours in a very fundamental way.

Until you and the dharma basically become indistinguishable.

And so that's what it means to really take refuge in the dharma in this kind of internal sense.

Faith in your ability to know what's true.

Faith in your ability to understand when you're coming from a not so wholesome place and to see what the consequences are likely to be.

Faith in your ability to understand the wholesome.

Faith in your memories of times when you acted on the wholesome and did not act on the unwholesome and the beneficial effect it's had on your life.

This dharma is not just words in a book.

The teachings are there,

I mean they are words in a book,

But the reason that Buddha dharma is still around,

The reason that we still practice it,

And the reason that it still transforms lives over and over and over again,

Is because aspects of those teachings,

Literally if our goals are the same as the Buddha's,

Become who we are and with the same effect.

Let's sit together for a couple of minutes.

We live in illusion and the appearance of things.

There is a reality.

We are that reality,

But we do not know it.

When we realize this is so,

We will see that we are nothing and that being nothing,

We are everything.

That is all.

Thank you for being here tonight.

Hope you enjoy David's talk next week and I'll see you in two weeks.

Reviews

Wonderful teaching! It opened so much inside. I’m deeply grateful.

Thank you 🙏🌺🦋🌸

Amazing. Thank you