Zen Master Bomun On The Three Refuges (Vandana Ti-sarana)
Zen Master Bomun
On The Three Refuges
(Vandana Ti-sarana)
Buddham saranam gacch?mi
(I go for refuge in the Buddha)
Dhammam saranam gacch?mi
(I go for refuge in the Dharma)
Sangham saranam gacch?mi
(I go for refuge in the Sangha)
[Bomun roshi, during public talks and sesshins, often invites people to join him in a call-and-response form of The Three Refuges in Pali. What follows is an introduction to the meaning of the three jewels he provided to a public audience after inviting them to join him in the recitation at the start of an open talk.]
Buddham saranam gacchami means I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in my own basic sanity and goodness, before thinking.
When we say, "Buddham saranam gacchami," we go to refuge to our awakened nature, our basic sanity, and our basic goodness that we all share in common.
When we take refuge, it's not a sectarian refuge-taking. It doesn't matter whether you're a Buddhist, or if you are not a Buddhist, whether you're a Tibetan Buddhist or a Zen Buddhist, or whatever kind you may be. It really doesn't matter.
But I think it does matter, for all of us as human beings, that we take refuge and spend some time each day settling down and being with ourselves --and with ourselves in our ‘particular-ness.’
Equally important in taking refuge in ourselves and in our basic clarity is to take refuge in our basic capacity to know and to love.
Buddham saranam gacchami means I go for refuge to myself, to my own heart-of-hearts, to my own innate wakefulness and silence and goodness.
In the Buddhist tradition, we appreciate the fact that this is not something that we cultivate, that we must discipline ourselves to get to. It's something that’s in each of us. It's our birthright as human beings. When the mind is quiet, when the mind is calm, when the mind is clear, it's our birthright as human beings. It’s our own homecoming to ourselves.
So, the first refuge is to take is in the Buddha, or our self nature, our basic goodness, our basic aliveness. Buddham saranam gacchami.
The next refuge, Dhammam saranam gacchami, means to go for refuge to the way things are in this silence, however they may be. Happy. Sad. Frustrated. Exasperated. Bored. In a place of great spaciousness or ease of wellbeing. However things may be ... including the sounds of the evening and the creaking of the chair.
So, Buddham is to take refuge in our spaciousness of mind. And you could say that Dhammam is to take refuge in the particles that appear in this great space, appear and disappear in the space, trusting that whatever appears, whatever is alive or is true for us in the moment is, in fact, the truth, reality.
And that our opinion is pretty much irrelevant, whether we like it or don't like it. But there is something that's alive that appears when we're in the present tense and we're in this moment and we trust that is truth, or reality, or the Dharma, or the enlightened way, or whatever we may want to call it.
These are the first two refuges: To take refuge in self-nature. To take refuge in the particles that appear and disappear, emerge out of this mysterious space, present themselves for some fleeting moment or two, and then disappear back into this immense space of possibility, a formless place.
The third refuge is to take refuge in the Sangha. We chant, "Sangham saranam gacchami." We take refuge in the fact that we can't do it alone. We just can't do it alone.
And on a deeper level, we're not alone. We're held and supported by so many things.
We're starting a sesshin, a retreat. Sitting with friends. So, we’re informed by all of our friends, and by all of the things that surround us.
I live in Kentucky, in a Buddhist retreat center, a big 800-acre retreat center. And one of the practitioners on the mountain where I live is a woman, a long-time Dharma practitioner. Actually, she was a Catholic nun for many years before she came to the mountain. She's a wonderful sangha member, a dear friend of mine. I take refuge in her as a good friend, as good Dharma company.
She recently came back from a retreat in Vermont, a Naikan1 retreat. Naikan is a contemplative Japanese therapy created by a Pureland Buddhist monk. It's a gratitude practice. She came back from this week in Vermont studying with this teacher who teaches this system, this way of practice of being grateful.
Speaking of taking refuge in the sangha -- do you know when someone's really in the juice? When they've been practicing well and they're full of life and full of possibility and full of Dharma energy? It has this infectious, wonderful, wonderful quality.
So, she came back to our community with this radioactive aliveness. She was really glowing. And it was sort of like when your cellphone runs down and it starts beeping and those little bars all red and it's almost out of gas, right on the edge of going black. And then you plug it into an electric source and it starts glowing. And then the bars start lighting up ... anyway, being with Sister M, as we call her, was like that, her just coming alive.
She did three interesting practices when she was there. This has to do with refuge. I thought I'd tell you, because she's really on my mind. There were three things that she repeated for a week.
She sat and did zazen and repeated these things. You could take a person, you could take a thing. You could take a time of your life. But the question you asked was, ‘What have I received from this person?’ And you were to ask yourself and really look deeply into it.
When they do the formal practice they go through a lifetime. You start with the first five years. You start with a person, but you could do it with anything, even an article. What have you received from this? What have you received from your best friend in the last day?
And then the second question that she asked herself is, ‘What have I given to my friend?’
It could be anything. It could be your coffee cup, for that matter. So she did this ‘What have I given? What have I received? And then the third thing you ask is, “How much trouble have I caused them?’
These were the three sentences that she repeated. She practiced in this way. And she was filled with gratitude.
She said to me something so obvious and true, something we all know -- but in terms of taking refuge in the sangha we think of it as a theory or words so familiar that we go to sleep when we hear them -- she said that after doing this practice for a week, “I really got it that we are each one of us supported by countless beings in our life, all of the time ... all of the time. And that this life that we have, if you really boil it down, this life is what's most precious to each one of us, just to be alive.”
1 Naikan (nye-kan) is a structured method for deepening our appreciation for others by intensely meditating on our lives, our interconnections, our missteps. It was developed in the 1940s by Ishin Yoshimoto, a devout student of Pure Land Buddhism. For more information,
Obviously, if you hold your breath for 60 seconds it becomes poignantly clear that what's most valuable, what's most important, and what's most dear to you is this life, your life. But it's also the life that we all share, the aliveness of the moment. Right?
And she was saying, “It's so clear to me after doing this simple practice everything is supporting our life. And that, relatively speaking, we give fairly little back.”
You receive the support of the air. You receive the support of your automobile, the trees, the plants, the myriad members of the sangha, and the Maha Sangha, the community of beings, both animate and inanimate. And all of them, one by one, are giving of themselves in some incredible, wonderful way, when you really look into it. We are totally surrounded and completely supported.
It wasn't so much what she said. It was her energy.
So, we take refuge in the sangha, friends who give us their energy and time, and all the things that they do, all the many beings.
So,
first is , Buddam saranam gacchami.
Second is, Damam saranam gacchami. And
third is Sangha saranam gacchami.
We'll do it three times, as call-and-response.
In the Zen practice of chanting, the intention is to unify body, breath and mind, to become one with your chanting. In the Zen tradition, this practice is called Kanna Zen, or insight into one word, when you synchronize body, breath and mind in the activity.
It is the activity of forgetting yourself in doing something. In this case, chanting.
The teaching in Kanna Zen is that the meaning of Buddham saranam gacchami is revealed in the activity of chanting, that the deep meaning, or the resonant meaning, or the meaning that is truly fulfilling -- not an intellectual meaning -- is revealed in the activity of synchronizing body, breath and mind in the chant.
So, it's not in order to sound good. It's not in order to think about it. It's to appreciate where you are in the activity of doing it.
From that perspective, it's something that we recognize intuitively when we are united.
