When I Take Refuge in the Buddha...

A couple of days ago, I was re-reading the book Being Peace by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. In a chapter called ‘The Three Gems” (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) he made a statement that has stuck with me and has kept me thinking. He said, “When we say, ‘I take refuge in the Buddha, we should also understand that we are saying , “The Buddha takes refuge in me.” This simple statement is profound in its implications.

By saying, “I take refuge in the Buddha” we are not in any sense talking about hiding, but rather that for many of us, Buddha’s teachings have become a spiritual refuge that finally helped us to make sense of the lives we are living and the world in which we live. I cannot speak for others, but I know it was that way for me. When I discovered Buddhism, I felt like I had come home. Finding a philosophy (some may wish to call it a religion even though no being is worshipped) that had compassion and loving-kindness as its core principles just made me feel totally comfortable. As I delved into it more and learned more about the Dharma (Thich Nhat Hanh defines dharma as “the way of understanding and love”), I realized I had found a guide that would help me to interpret and respond to the moment-to-moment experiences in this life in a way that felt good and positive and right.  I was brought up in a strict Catholic family in which every aspect of our lives had to conform to Catholic dogma, and in which every moment held the possibility of “falling into sin.”  From a very early age, I felt strangled as perfectly natural aspects of my life, from swearing when I hit my thumb with a hammer to thinking about girls, were interpreted as “sinful”.  I found little comfort or experience of a loving presence there. Let me say at the outset that I am not denigrating Catholicism or any other religion or form of religious expression. Many people have found security there and live lives that are good and kind. I am only saying that it did not work for me, and in some ways did irreparable harm. My feeling for a long time has been that I don’t care if you worship an aardvark as long as it brings you to a place of compassion. The philosophy of loving-kindness in Buddhism has allowed me to attempt to treat all people equally and compassionately (we all fail at this from time to time and must forgive ourselves and try again), to avoid judgment to the best of my ability, and to separate revulsion at a particular human act from compassion for the human who committed that act. I truly believe that in all my years in the classroom, and particularly when I was a high school assistant principal, treating the students with kindness and compassion and seeing in them the flawed person I was at their age (and still am) made our interactions almost always pleasant and often enriching and beautiful for both of us.

The idea of applying this philosophy in our real day-to-day interactions with the world and its inhabitants brings me to the second part of the above-mentioned quote, ”…the Buddha takes refuge in me.”  It is a common statement in Buddhism that we all have Buddha nature, another way of saying that each of us is capable of awakening and moving toward enlightenment. In that way the Buddha lives within each of us.  So what?   Buddha takes refuge in us only in that without me, or you and all those who try to live the Dharma in our daily lives, all the Buddha’s teachings are so much dust in the wind. We may derive personal comfort from the practice, but only through our acting in ways that reflect what we have learned from the teachings, can those teachings be said to be useful or helpful to the world. The Buddha’s refuge in us can only be expressed by how we choose to behave in the real world in every interaction we have. We cannot hope to heal the whole world, but we can resolve to act as a model of compassionate living at work, at home, at the grocery store, or in the car during rush hour. And that will be enough to create some small change, even if it be for a person we don’t know who expected us to treat them with anger and is surprised to see that we don’t. That one occurrence can be the spark that enables them to see that each of us has the capacity to choose kindness, and that it feels better than strife. Unless we consistently try to act in a compassionate way toward all life forms with which we share this planet, the teachings of the Buddha cannot hope to result in the very real healing effect that is possible, and that is so desperately needed.