Refuge, the Three Jewels and the Bodhisattva vow... Words or phrases you might want to look up: Refuge (Buddhist) Dharma Sangha Three Jewels Bodhisattva Bodhicitta Perfect Conduct – Ascertaining the Three Vows (by Dudjom Rinpoche) Jewel Ornament of Liberation Words of My Perfect Teacher Three kayas Sutras Bodhicaryāvatāra And the verse: Sang gya cho dang tshog kyi chog nam la Jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi Dag gi jin sog gyi pai so nam gyi Dro la pan chir sang gye drub par shog Approximate text at this blog post. In the early weeks of this podcast I included an approximate script, not particularly well edited, on a blog page. For the episode dropped on 4 September entitled “Bad gurus, tosh gurus and good gurus” and for episodes due to be dropped from 18 September onwards, starting with “Jyekundo / Yushu: travelling in East Tibet” there is a transcript file which is much closer to the actual words used. Note that other distribution platforms do not necessarily pass this on, and if you want to read it you may need to listen on podbean. YouTube has been making its own transcript, which was an unholy mess. I think I have now deleted all of these "auto-generated" scripts, but it will not be possible to retrospectively add properly edited transcripts to episodes prior to September 2024.
Hello, dear listeners, and welcome indeed to yet another episode of the Double Dorje podcast. There can't really be any doubt that when we say that taking refuge is the gateway to Buddhism, that's quite a good metaphor.
Perhaps not quite as cogent, but nevertheless still probably making sense, is to say that having come into the entrance hall through taking refuge, adopting the Bodhisattva's vow and training to develop Bodhicitta is the grand staircase leading up to the great rooms above.
And although, as I keep saying, I'm not trying to give you a course in Buddhism, having just looked at the four revolting thoughts in the last episode, it does follow very naturally to look at the next step, which is taking refuge. In a moment we'll look at that, but first the quick call to action as it's known. Do please take a moment, on whatever channel you are listening...
to like this episode, subscribe to the podcast, share it with your friends or on social media, or indeed wherever else might be appropriate on your channel. It really does help, so thank you. Now to the subject of taking refuge. This is the moment where you take up the practice of Buddhism and most importantly the orientation towards that practice.
As seems to happen rather often, I feel that before talking about what refuge actually is, it might be quite a good idea to dispel one or two misconceptions. So in that sense, let's start with the question of who is it that gives refuge, or gives the refuge vows. In some traditions, there are very strict rules about this, but in others, it's a little bit looser.
and you can take them with the aid of somebody who you can trust to be a good representative of the whole of Buddhism, in a sense. This is one of the most important steps you ever make, so it would clearly be ridiculous to take your refuge vows with the aid of someone you didn't like or respect, just because, technically speaking, they satisfied the rules.
But it is a mistake to think that this process turns the person who's giving the vows into your teacher, your Lama, or anything of that sort. Most of all, if Lama XYZ administers the refuge vows to you, it does not mean that you have taken refuge in Lama XYZ. To make this clearer, let me say that it's unlike the situation with empowerments.
An empowerment really should create a deep personal connection between the student or students and the guru or lover. Well, that at least is the case in theory, although nowadays some empowerments seem to be scattered around like confetti and even given virtually as online empowerments. Who am I to say that that doesn't work?
After all, there are, it seems, people who are totally happy with cybersex or digital pornography. Yet, I think most people would recognize that the real thing is in another league altogether. But that's an aside. Taking refuge is not meant to establish a specific connection with the person who administers the vows, but who really only facilitates the student in taking the vows.
And the connection that's made is with the whole bang shoot. the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. In real situations, of course, the student may indeed have a strong personal connection to whoever it is that administers the vows.
It's just that that's not essential, and the vows you take are made to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, not to a specific teacher or even a specific lineage. This is what formally makes you a Buddhist. Now, you will, unsurprisingly, find some people taking what, quite honestly, is a juvenile attitude to this, saying things like, why should I identify as anything?
Or, I don't want to be confined by labels. Or, saying that I'm a Buddhist religious fellow is my ego. or rather such barren, trivial objections. To these objections I say, come on, bite the bullet, have the guts to accept the label, actually the honour, the privilege and the duty. Or would you rather be a neither here nor there type of person? Now, I mentioned vows. Yes, indeed, vows.
Pride of place does not go to the question of whether you believe or disbelieve something, not that that's unimportant. The special position goes to a deep-seated motivation to do something about the mess we are in, and the promise to act in ways that will take us in that direction. For details, you could take a look at Dajun Rinpoche's Perfect Conduct, Ascertaining the Three Vows.
You might know that I typically include a list of technical and other terms that you might like to look up in the description of the podcast, so you can check the title of that book there if you want to find it. though I will warn you that the average reader might find the description of the various bows found in the Buddhist tradition to be excruciatingly detailed.
Perhaps a little more accessible would be the descriptions given in the Jewel Ornament of Liberation that I referred to in the previous episode, or to the Words of My Perfect Teacher, which is a famous Nyingma text on this and related subjects. All of those sources will cover these things more deeply and with more authority than I can, so I limit myself here to just providing a tasting plate.
First of all, of course, taking refuge in the Buddha. What does that mean? On one hand, the Buddha may simply mean the historical Buddha who lived two and a half thousand years ago. but it's perhaps more often understood, in a broader sense, as the three Kāyās, or three bodies of the Buddha.
Having mentioned them, saying anything about the three Kāyās would definitely cause this episode to burst its banks, so let's move on. In particular, taking refuge in the Buddha means that we will not take refuge in other gods. Traditionally, most Buddhists would take for granted the existence of some kind of gods, with perhaps some power to help or hinder us living on some other plane.
The point isn't necessarily to ignore them, but to recognize that they cannot give us shelter from the shitstorm of samsara, the cycle of suffering. It's precisely around this point that one of the questions most asked about Buddhism hinges. That's the question of, is Buddhism a religion?
I can now give you the true, honest, considered, fair and correct answer to that question, with a fanfare, the answer that will allow you to stop worrying about this for the rest of your life, namely, yes and no. Go to any traditional temple, listen to the chants, enjoy the offering of lights, flowers, incense and so forth, and you will have no doubt that Buddhism is a religion.
But it does not acknowledge a creator God with the power to save us, to damn us to eternal suffering in hell, or just to torture us for a while in purgatory. So when the Buddhist teachings advise us not to put other gods above the Buddha, This is actually not at all in the sense of any claim that the Buddha is the best god, better than your god, or better than any other god for that matter.
No, it's in the sense that Buddhism is just not playing that game. There is something else that follows from this understanding. In some circles, the idea of being a Buddhist Christian or Buddhist Jew is promoted. Well, what can I say? Full marks for openness and generosity of spirit, but not many marks for clarity.
Christianity, if I may make so bold to talk about it, is founded on the redemption of sinful humanity through Christ's sacrifice of his life, so acting as a proxy for us with the effect that God will not send us to burn in hell or even just to oblivion. Buddhism rejects the idea that such a God exists and rejects the idea that someone else can save us.
The two lines of thought are quite simply incompatible and in my view, you can differ of course, is in effect an insult to both the Christians and the Buddhists.
A quick look at that movement, in which I am, I will confess, not an expert, suggests that a few exercises thought of as Buddhist, such as mindfulness and watching the breath, have been extracted and included in a prayerful Christian life. It may very, very well be helpful, but what it shows is that those practices, popular as they may be in Buddhist circles, are not definitively Buddhist.
It's not in any sense combining Buddhism and Christianity. The two are not playing the same game. The second of the three jewels is the Dharma. Scholars will tell us that Dharma is a very tricky word with a large number of different and, of course, context-dependent meanings.
In the Buddhist context, two of those meanings are particularly important, and one of those is in fact quite slippery, being, at the risk of being shot down by scholars, something like a true thing, as in statements such as, all dharmas are empty of true existence. Luckily for this episode, that's not the meaning that's being used here, so we can leave that aspect at the back of the cupboard.
Here, the meaning is very much that of the Buddha's teaching, In its simplest sense, that is the words of the sutras and other such literature. In fact, in visualizations and pictures, the Dharma may well be represented by a stack of books. Again, it also has a deeper but closely related sense, which is the deep peace experienced through having realized the meaning of the teachings.
And for a vow related to this, Jewel, Not harming. Simple, short, but huge. The third refuge jewel is the sangha. If you are now surprised to hear that this word has different meanings at different levels, then I obviously haven't been engaging enough, and I'm sorry if you have fallen asleep.
Most basically, the Sangha is the community of Buddhists, particularly referring to five or more fully ordained monks, or more broadly, to the Bodhisattvas living on a high level, which includes popular figures such as the compassionate Chenrezig, the lovely Saviouress Tara, and others. It does, for sure, also include the general community of your friends and companions on the path.
And what about a specific bit of a vow connected with this? Not to associate with extremists. Exactly what is meant here can be a bit tricky to unravel, but I think we all basically understand that we can be, all of us, hugely influenced by other people.
Indeed, making an effort to associate with other people who are working in the same direction is, in a sense, part of what taking refuge in the Sangha is about. And most particularly, if we're starting out on the Buddhist path in a non-Buddhist environment, such as a typical modern environment, our choice of friends can help or hinder our progress to a very large extent.
If you have understood the things I've been trying to talk about, then you can in fact take refuge by yourself. It is valid. but taking it formally from a respected teacher is much more usual. The officiating teacher may well cut a small piece of hair from your head as a sign that you are cutting the root of the cycle of suffering. You may very well be given a new name.
Some people then use that name in everyday life, but others find that somewhat pretentious and prefer to keep their new name in their heart. The ceremony itself can be very moving. Picture the end of a week of Buddhist teachings, where some of the newcomers ask, in the course of the last session, whether they can formally take refuge.
Those of us who are rather longer in the tooth may well find it very touching as we watch them going up, one by one, having that bit of haircut and being given the slip of paper with their new name, as we wish a good journey to our new fellow travellers. This kind of formal refuge is sometimes made a prerequisite or a requirement for other teachings.
In many other cases, however, it's just assumed. If, for example, a Chenrezig empowerment is given, it will be taken for granted that the recipients will have taken refuge, or at least that they will recite a refuge formula early on in the ceremony. All the same, taking refuge formally and properly with a teacher for whom you have real respect is a magic moment.
Taking the Bodhisattva vow really is a second step. When it's done as a full formal ceremony, it may happen quite some time after the refuge ceremony, on a separate occasion altogether. There's an awful lot of teaching surrounding Bodhicitta in its relative and absolute versions and so on.
The gist of it is not simply to escape from the cycle of suffering for ourselves, but taking the Bodhisattva vow means that we will wait and suffer and work until all beings are liberated. That's a pretty mighty vow. One very popular text that deals with this is the Bodhicaryavatara, forgive my mispronunciation, of which it is not hard to find translations.
I remember seeing the Dalai Lama when he was teaching in France in the early noughties, actually ending up in tears as he taught from this text. Having taken this vow, one is a Bodhisattva, or at least a Bodhisattva in training.
Although these two, that is the refuge and the bodhisattva vow, are separate things, and formally taking up these trainings can be separated by significant time, in liturgical practice they are often, or in fact very often, put together as a pair. Now here is what I'd guess might be the most popular verse for doing this. I will put a copy of it in the description. So first of all, a translation.
So in that translation you can see the reference to both of the vows quite clearly. and this is how you are likely to hear it at a Tibetan Buddhist centre. With any luck, it will be sung more beautifully than what I am about to do.
SONG PLAYS
When you recite this, we put our hands together in a gesture that's a little bit like the Christian habit of putting your hands together in prayer, but it has actually got an important difference in that the space between your fingers and your palms is a hollow. It's meant to represent a lotus bud.
Typically, this verse would be sung three times, and let's pretend we're doing it in a vast assembly hall, together with a huge figure of the Buddha and other representations of the refuges. ... i will put a phonetic version in the description although when i say phonetic never forget that when we western people read these things that kind of represent tibetan pronunciation
It's always an open question as to whether a Tibetan would actually recognise what we're saying. However, it's probably workable. And that's it for today. Just a very quick reminder to like, share or subscribe. And whatever promise or vow you have made, please, please keep it.