Coming Home to True Refuge | Finding Peace Through Awareness, Truth, and Love

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting TaraBrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Welcome friends. Thank you for being here. About 25 years ago a new student came to meditation class and he told me about his introduction to meditation. It had been about a year earlier. He saw a poster and the poster was it's a breathe in, breathe out and smile. At the bottom it had the words tic-not-hon. He thought that those words tic-not-hon were really the translation of the mantra, you know, breathe in, breathe out smile. So for the next year he just kept reciting tic-not-hon. Tic-not-hon. And he, as he told me, he just put his heart into it and how much it helped him be focused and open and relaxed. And I love the story because you know when I think through the decades of those who have been most deeply transformed through practice, doesn't have to do with a particular religion or a particular tradition they're practicing in or even the particular practice. It's the quality of sincerity, the care about awakening. And so for many the invitation of a new year is a deepening of attention, remembering what most matters to us. And for me personally a very powerful reflection that helps in remembering and remembering the deepest, most important things are what are called the three refuges. This is a well-known in Buddhism and it's also found in many spiritual traditions as artippal pathways of remembering, of homecoming. Each of the three refuges are understood to be entirely interrelated. The first the refuge, the refuge in Buddha is refuge in awake awareness. And the second refuge in Dharma is refuge in truth and presence. And the third refuge in Sangha is refuge in the loving relatedness of the community of beings. So for over 25 years now on this podcast really, I've started each new year with an exploration of these three refuges. And I've chosen one of my favorite explorations in those talks for today. It highlights the classic ways we get way laid on the spiritual path and how that sincere reflecting on these refuges can refresh and deepen and enlarge us in any moment. Okay, may you enjoy. Namaste, welcome friends. I hope you're entering this new year in good spirits. So I thought I'd start with a story that I love. A woman tells about an old tired looking dog who wanders into her yard and he has a collar, but he doesn't have tags. He looks well fed and clean so she figures he has a home. But he follows her into the house down the hall and falls asleep on her couch and her dogs don't seem to mind. He seems like a good dog, so she let some sleep. An hour later, he goes to the door, she lets him out and the next day he's back, resumes his position on the couch, takes a nap for an hour, goes home and this goes on for several weeks. So she gets curious and she pins a note to his collar and she writes, you know, every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap. I don't mind, but I want to make sure it's okay with you. The next day he arrives with a different note pinned to his collar and it reads this, says he lives in a home with three children. He's trying to catch up on his sleep. May I come tomorrow? Ah, so what draws me to that is such that feeling of welcome of assumed community and belonging. You know, we often would watch our dog, Jonathan and I would be in the same room with her and that would be when she got really contented and mellow, happy. She could settle in, she's a pack creature and you could feel her nervous system relaxing when we were all together. She was at home. Most religions and spiritual traditions have the word home with quite a deep meaning. Same thing with the word refuge, which will be exploring today, that home and refuge reflects and it's a response to this universal longing to feel belonging, to feel safety, to feel held or resting in a loving space. So the first talk of the new year, I'm for quite a long time, now I've been drawn to reflecting on what are called the three refuges, which really are all facets of our gateways to true refuge, truly, feeling at home. And our larger world is just in so much crisis, there's so much endangerment and the pace of change is more than most nervous systems can integrate. So there's such this natural longing for spiritual refuge, that longing deepens. Maybe I'll start by sharing my own first very conscious and memorable sense of refuge. It was a bit, I think, was around 19 and at the time I quite notably was very regularly at war with myself. And so this experience happened at a yoga class and it was early spring in New England. So I was walking home to my apartment and I stood by a pair blossoming tree. The fragrance was filling the air and there was the night sky with stars and I got very still. So my senses are wide open and I realized that my body and my mind were in the same place at the same time. My body and my mind were in the same place the same time. And there was a deep sense of belonging to that tree, to the sky, to all beings. There was this real sense of presence and such a tenderness for for the world, such a sense of peace. So this was refuge I felt at home. And quite notably my awareness was wide open. I wasn't circling in self-centered thoughts. And I named that because in the decades following I came to discover that this relaxing of selfing, of circling around the self and our thoughts and all orientations. That relaxation of that, you know what I need, what I want, what I fear was an integral part of truly being at home in my own being and in the world. It's an interesting inquiry, you know, what does feeling at home mean to you? And you might just sense that for yourself. What does it really mean to feel at home? And we might pause together for a few moments as we often do. Perhaps you can sense when recently you did feel truly at home when there was a sense of true refuge. Was it when you were with deer ones? Or in a beautiful place? Or maybe listening to music? Or dancing? Or creative project? Or maybe when you were quiet meditating? You know, whatever the circumstances, what was it like to feel truly at home? And what allowed you to feel truly at home? The common denominator of true refuge is a sense of presence. When we feel truly at home, we'll also notice in the background there is a sense of presence. Now maybe when I invited you to reflect, you found that there has not been that much of that sense of homecoming. And the block to presence, the block to refuge is unprocessed fear. I mean, if we really examine and you might sense this, there's a kind of persistent background hum of fear a lot of the time. And it's what drives the self-centered thoughts that keep us from feeling at home. It drives our busy doings. So we can often move through the day really preoccupied and anxious, always thinking there's a problem to solve. That there's something to do or to work out. That if we're not busy or vigilant, something bad will happen. And often the sense that we're not prepared for what's next, that there's something around the corner that's going to be too much to handle. I suspect you've noticed this. And in a big way, this hum of fear comes from our basic vulnerability as mortal creatures. I mean, if we're really looking at our lives, there's whole domains we can control and manage, but the really deep, big swaths of life are out of control. Our emotions, the process of aging, sickness, death, losing others, the weather, what other beings feel and do. It's out of control. And humans through the ages have apprehended this core vulnerability. So William James wrote this. He said, all religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry help. And we can sense the truth in that, that it's our response to feeling helpless in the face of uncontrollable forces. And so religions often respond to the cry help with messages like you will be saved if you behave a certain way or believe a certain way or affiliate a certain way. For some, you will be saved if you're amongst the chosen. These are the promises of refuge. Yet the contemplative, the mystical depths of most religions and spiritual paths point to something qualitatively different, that the only true refuge is in reality. That's the only true refuge in reality, in isness or beingness, and what we are beyond the story of ourself or others. The only true refuge is reality itself. The poets have said it in a million different ways. Kabir writes, the God you love is inside. It's what's here now. So the core inquiry in all spiritual traditions is, you know, what is the pathway to realizing true refuge, to homecoming. And it's really interesting that many different traditions converge on three archetypal, totally interrelated gateways, to refuge. And there are different faces of the same gem. And the words that I think best express them are awareness, truth, and love. And as Ezra discussed in Buddhism in the poly script, these are described as Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And that if we learn to deepen our attention to any of these portals, we come into reality. Okay, so it's natural that we move through life seeking belonging, seeking safety, seeking peace. And yet rather than presence, rather than reality, what's true in the moment, we have literally leave presence and go for what I call false refuge. And it's not false because it's bad. It's not a good, bad thing. It's false because it actually obscures the portals to true refuge. And it doesn't deliver. In other words, it doesn't give us the peace, the safety, the freedom we seek. We need to be on to our false refuges. You know, we need to be on to them. So we have the choice to undo what's keeping us from what we long for. And so I'll read, I'll spend a little time with this and review just so you can sense as you kind of as you're entering this new year, what are the false refuges that you're habituated to and just to bring more awareness, because awareness is the superpower that undoes them. So false refuges are triggered by our survival brain, which is designed, it regularly signals to us, something's missing so that that's a way to ensure that we'll go after food, sex, shelter, things that help us survive. And it regularly signals something's wrong so that we keep activated to protect ourselves. And yet as as we know, and you can see this in our evolutionary unfolding, the sense of something missing is no longer hitch to survival. We can have enough to eat, we can be okay on that level. And yet it still drives us. So is this what the Buddhist call if only mind, if only I had more fill in the blank, I'd feel better. And it leads to grasping, it leads to grasping on having more food or more drugs or more money or more possessions. I often think of reader-rudner who wrote, someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich, they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be. You know, if only mind. And when we're in, if only mind, no matter what it's hitched on, there's not a sense that now matters. In other words, if something's missing, we're leaning towards a future time. And that's when they'll be real life. That's when life will be meaningful. You know, we're waiting until we're pregnant and we can have a child, or we're waiting for an intimate partner. I should probably reverse those two. We're waiting for a different sized body. We're waiting for a promotion. We're waiting for our team to get into a certain college or we're waiting to retire. But there's a sense that real life is ahead. And we leave reality right here. We're not here for life. Now, a major false refuge comes from the sense of not good enough. What's missing is feeling good enough. So that leads us chronically trying to be someone who's more indifferent. And it's interesting just to check if that's a sense. If there's a sense of as you are, is not enough. Which of course means you can't just rest in presence. They're supposed to be something more indifferent. And it often leads to seeking approval. You know, we're social creatures that were hooked on how the world sees us. And I can speak personally here that, you know, I realized in my teens and in more in my 20s how hooked I was on seeking approval, you know, looking good, impressing with knowledge or grades or political work. And then as them when I got involved with yoga and meditation, you know, being the best yogi, trying, you know, just trying to prove myself. And underneath it, if I'm worthy, then I belong and I'll be loved. But I was hooked. And so I remember somewhere along the line, I started asking myself the question, what would be enough? What would help me feel like there was nothing missing? You know, and over the last decades, there have been two major insights from that question, you know, what would be enough? It's a really, it really helped me. And the first one was that no matter the accomplishment, no matter how much it seemed I was getting approval, it never was lasting enough to eliminate not enough. In other words, a fix would only last a short time. I kept having to do more to try to get back to OK-ness. So I was on this ongoing ride of inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate. The second realization was that the moments of truly feeling enough in trinsic worth belonging had nothing to do with approval. They were not hitched to accomplishing anything. They really arose that enoughness arose in moments of gratitude, of love, of quietness, of presence. And in those moments, there wasn't even identification as a self. I wasn't concerned with myself. You know, remember one retreat I led, and there was an elderly woman, I say that, and I realize she's probably elderly as in my age, gets distorted as you get older. And she touched, as I described, those moments of enough as I am, nothing missing, and a really deep piece. And when we met, she shared, sadly, really, why did I have to wait so long to realize I didn't need to keep proving myself that the moments of proving myself were actually blocking the sense of enough. So my friends, the sign of false refuge, if you stop and investigate, is it doesn't really work. It's like drinking saltwater, it takes us away from home. Okay, so I've named some false refuges that come from that sense of something's missing. There's also the false refuges that come from the sense of something's wrong. And then we have to seek refuge from the unprocessed fears around something's wrong, which again leads us to going after drugs or food that none of us going after distraction. I mean, there are billions of wormholes online that we just lose ourselves. And being hooked on a screen, because when we're hooked on a screen, we're not having to feel the rawness of unprocessed fear. They call it the weapons of mass distraction, right? We get hooked on the false refuge of workaholism. There's always a sense of a problem to fix. And then there's the obsessive thinking, which really is a false refuge, where we're constantly trying to solve a problem or worrying or figuring out something, just to sense how many moments are you circling and trying to figure out something? It brings to mind this classic story of a novice in a monastery and he's asking a senior monk, what happens after we die? And the senior monk says, well, I don't know. And he upsets the novice. He says, well, I thought you were a Zen monk, and the response was, I am, but I'm not a dead one. So false refuge, trying to figure out, trying to, in some way, distracting ourselves, and it's just so poignant that life is what's happening while we're inside the incessant inner dialogue, the planning, the worrying, the tech wormholes. I'll name one more very pervasive false refuge that has been quite a place of learning for me, and that's blame. And I talk about it a lot because whenever there's a sense that something's wrong, we seek a place to blame, and it could be ourself or it could be others. It's a way to try to control things, and it's such an important flag of false refuge. And I'm not talking about why is discernment of knowing, oh, this is causing this, I'm talking about the energy of blame, the anger, the making bad, because blame often turns to aggression. And I quoted Reader Ruddner before, she has another one where she says, my grandmother was a very tough woman, she buried three husbands, two of them were just napping. Blame, blame and aggression. You know, the point here is that false refuges take us from presence, they take us from love, and they make us smaller, they keep us in the sense of self and other. They create divides and they lead to violating others. And it's our existential predicament to feel that something's missing or something's wrong, and our very quick reflex with a survival brain is to go over false refuges. Lily Tomlin says that for fast acting relief, try slowing down. And I think that's a great wise response around false refuge. Not to add judgment to them, that's just another false refuge. But see if we can slow down and with interest and care, just notice them and notice how they take us from presence, and notice how they actually don't give us what we want. And you might pause here and we'll pause together and just reflect for a moment, take a few full deep breaths. And if it helps you to close your eyes, close your eyes, and sense entering a new year, and for those that don't experience this calendar time as a new year, entering a new day or a new moment, because this is always relevant. Just sensing what are the false refuges you want to hold with more awareness. You're really asking what are the habits that take me from presence, take me from heart. Again, not judging. Just bringing the power of awareness to what's here, noticing that they don't actually bring you what you long for. And then in a very simple way, feel your aspiration to turn towards true refuge, to what will help you access peace, open-heartedness, freedom. So, as I mentioned, in Buddhism and all the deep spiritual contemplative past, there's this inquiry of what really brings true refuge. And so we'll reflect on the three portals of truth, love, and awareness. And with each, there are two dimensions we'll look at. And once the outer, like in our lives, how do we take refuge in what we're doing in our activity that wakes up that dimension of true refuge? And then there's the inner practice. What is the inner experience that we can explore? And we'll start with refuge and truth, which in Buddhism is called refuge in the Dharma. And truth means the path, the way things are, the living reality. And the outer way that we take refuge in the Dharma are in truth is by engaging in whatever supports presence, whatever supports more presence. And for many of us, it's taking the time for a retreat, whether it's emptying a day so that we can have some quietness, are doing three days or a week or a month, whatever we can do, but doing a meditation retreat. For others, it's doing the training that comes with a meditation course, or having a meditation group that we practice with. For some, it's certain books that help us deepen presence, or certain podcasts are being in the natural world. One woman writes, my six-year-old grandson was floating in a lake with mountains and forests all around and exclaimed, I have nature all over me. I love that. Presidents with nature reveals our nature, reveals truth. It connects us with that intrinsic life-loving life energy, that besentience that we share with the entire living world, with animals and trees and plants and birds and insects. When we're in the natural world, we realize who we are beyond a separate self, which is the freedom of true refuge. So the outer gateways of refuge and truth, refuge in Dharma, or whatever deep and presence, and it's really an ongoing exploration and experiment. What helps to increase your presence with life, a direct experience of living reality? The inner practice of refuge and truth is paying attention to what's here and now. And the two questions that can help us find this inner refuge is what is happening inside me right now. And can I be with this? With care? Can I be with this? What is happening inside me right now? And can I be with this? Those two questions are the essence of mindfulness. The practice we often do together, mindful presence. There's a wonderful image that I love of Swami Satcharananda, who's a as a Hindu yogi, and he's on a surfboard in the waves doing tree pose, the yoga posture, the tree pose. And the caption underneath is, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. And I think that's great instructions for taking refuge in truth. The portal of truth is that the waves are going to keep coming, the waves of life, the challenges, the joys, the sorrows, and we can find homecoming in the midst of a changing world by learning to be friend, what's happening moment to moment, befriending that home of fear, whatever way it expresses. I think of one woman taking refuge in the dogma in truth. She was at a new job, super qualified, but the CEO of this company was a harsh, critical guy, cut people off. He was intimidating, and she got anxious around him, and she'd scribe having brain freeze at the weekly executive meetings. And so I asked her what she did before the meetings, and she would busy herself. I mean, she took false refuge. She would try to do things, organize her emails, and so on. And so I invited her to explore what it really meant to take refuge in truth before the meetings. And we practiced a little and asked those questions, what is happening inside me right now? And she could feel the fear in her body, her heart kind of clenched in her heart racing, and so on. Can I be with this with care? And what she found when she asked that question was a sense that, oh, well, I can be with this, this is just part of me. It belongs. And I use that language a lot. This belongs. It's like a wave in the ocean. And what she realized that she kept paying attention is that fearful part in her just wanted to be accepted. It wanted it to be okay that it was there. It didn't want her to feel bad or wrong for having fear. That is so wise. So what she would do during the meetings, fear would come up in some part of her or she'd kind of whisper to herself, this belongs. It's okay. And she still feels anxious, but there was more space, more inner freedom, because she was taking refuge in truth. She wasn't running from reality. She was opening to reality. And in the moments that we truly open to reality, take refuge in Dharma and truth, no resistance. We discover an openness, a peace and freedom beyond our fears. This is the poet, Dana Falls. There is no controlling life, try corralling a lightning bolt containing a tornado, dammit stream, and it will create a new channel. Resist in the tide. We'll sweep you off your feet. Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in. The wild and the weak fear fantasies failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, our sadness veils your vision with despair. Practice becomes simply bearing the truth and the choice to let go of your known way of being. The whole world is revealed to your new eyes. Refuge in truth. Refuge in the Dharma. And we'll just do a very brief practice or taste of it. You might let your attention go inward. Take a few full breaths. And scanning your life just sends some situation that feels difficult, that throws you off balance, brings up some challenging emotions where you get reactive. And again, feel yourself right here now. Feel your body breathing and just ask those two questions. The first question is what is happening inside me? And if it helps to put your hand on your heart, really contact your body and what you're feeling, breathing with what's here, what is happening inside me? Okay. Can I be with this? With care. Can you say this belongs? Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground. Just breathing, feeling what's here. Maybe the reactions and the difficult emotions are still there, but can you send to a bit more space? Can you sense that that feeling of self, the story of self isn't quite a solid? There's a little more porousness. And the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes. So this is refuge in Dharma and truth. The second portal refuge in Sangha are love. Traditionally, the word Sangha meant the spiritual community of monks and nuns and laypeople, but the larger meeting is really our web of loving relationships. And spiritual paths is often compartmentalized. It's separated from our world, the relationship. There's some idea of meditating on our own in a cave, you know, that from tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, that personals I love, tall, dark, handsome Buddhist, looking for himself. Refuge and reality means that this whole web of relationships were opening to, attending to. And that means that we are willing to feel the vulnerability and feel the goodness of being in relationship, very embodied. There's a Harvard study that many are familiar with, 80 years, longitudinal study, what brings happiness more than anything else. It's close relationships. And Buddha said, this is one of the most famous quotes, the good friends of the whole of this holy life. So spiritual friends, beloved community, it reminds us of what's important. It helps to affirm our value. It's the space that we can join together in serving and playing and celebrating and awakening, awakening. The outer refuge, when we talk about inner and outer, for refuge and love, the outer refuge is consciously relating, bringing presence to relationships, consciously. Friends, family, more formerly in groups, whether it's a 12-step group or a mindful friends group, as we do in the Clouds, Saga, Kalyana, Mitas, what's described in the Buddhist communities, rain partners, meditation with others, in different communities. The bottom line is Luis Coslino says, it's survival of the nurtured. We need this personally and spiritually to remember or belonging to each other, to support each other on the path. One aging couple described their support for each other. He was losing his vision, so she could help guide him, bring alive the beauty and what was out there, and she's losing her hearing, and he helps on that. There were with another couple, talking about memory and talking about this memory clinic and describing different techniques, visualization, association, and what a difference it was making for them. One is friend asked for the name of the clinic he went blank, and then a smile broke across his face and he said, what do you call that flower with the long stem and thorns? You mean rose? Yes, that's it. He turns his wife rose. What was the name of that clinic? We all need help. And of course, that's a silly example, but the ways we need each other and one of the deepest ways is to mirror each other's goodness. You know, we forget. We forget who we are, we get caught in that self-centered spiraling of thoughts that keeps us small. We need each other to help us remember that we matter. There's a story I heard years and years ago shared by a actually by a Catholic nun, and it has stayed with me over these years because of just just what we're talking about. So she was teaching in a small Catholic school and got to know the students over the years and it was very fond of one. His name was Mark. He was mischievous and totally respectful and fun. And she remembers one year in high school. His class was having a difficult season. The new math was hard and each was stuck in their own insecurities and there were tents with each other. And at one point she had them put aside their studies and list the other students on paper and think of the nicest thing they could say about that person. And they all had a hand that in. And a Monday she gave each student their list. And they're totally, you know, surprised and touched. You know, really, I never knew I meant so much to anyone. I didn't know others like me so much. So the papers weren't mentioned again, but it was a it was a meaningful experience. Several years later, you know, after the students had graduated, she was returning from a trip, this teacher and her parents let her know the sad news that Mark, that student had been killed in Vietnam. And so she attended the funeral along with all the classmates and at one point Mark's father took her aside and he said, we want to show you something. And he took his wallet out of his pocket. They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it. And opening the wallet, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that obviously had been taped, folded and refolded many times. And she knew that they were the papers, the ones that where people have listed good things. In this case, about Mark, what his classmates had said about him. Mother said, thank you so much for doing that. As you can see, Mark treasured it. And Mark's classmate started to gather around and one just smiled and said, I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home. And his wife said, well, Chuck asked me to put this in our wedding album. Well, I have mine too. Another said it's in my diary. And then another one reached into a pocket book and took out her wallet and shown her worn, frazzled list of the group. I carried it with me all the time. I think we all saved our list. And that was when this teacher said she finally sat down and cried because remembering our goodness and the goodness of others. It connects us in this minute, timeless way. This refuge in love, refuge in Sangha naturally extends to the wider community. It just leads to widening circles, including more and more in our hearts. I think of St. Teresa of Avela says only at the shrine where all are welcome will God sing loudly enough to be heard. So last element I'll mention about the outer refuge of Sangha of being a weak in relationships is that it really takes intentionality and willingness because we tend to want a higher vulnerability. You might listen to the words of the poet Mark Nipo. He's so good. He says we weigh so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved. And beneath every anger is the wound to be healed. And beneath every sadness is a fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added labor protection that keeps us from feeling the world. And often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which if not put down diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something and then forgetting that we chose to put them on, we complain nothing feels quite real. In this way our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable. This is the refuge in Sangha in love. It's that practice of reality of ungloving ourselves so that we can wake up with each other. The inner gateway is any reflection, any way of paying attention that opens your heart. Anytime you are paying attention in a way that brings tenderness, brings kindness, brings care, you are taking refuge in love in Sangha. And we'll just pause here and do a very simple inner practice that is refuge in love. And again if it helps you to close your eyes or lower your gaze please do so. Feel the breath and let the breath gather your attention. Bringing to mind someone that you care about, that you feel a connection with, let's uncomplicated. It could include someone that's no longer alive, it could include a pet. And take some moments to sense what you love about this being. Their goodness, their humor, what they look like when they're showing you love. Their intelligence, their awareness. Imagine letting them know what you appreciate, letting them know their goodness. How they receive that. Just imagine. And feeling your care, you might mentally whisper their name and say thank you or say I love you. And sensing the quality of tenderness and of togetherness of the invisible yet very real link connectedness. Who you are in that togetherness. Just sense how there's less self-in that you're open to something larger to that field of loving. This is the gateway of love of Sangha. You might take a few breaths and open your eyes and last gateway, the last facet on the jewel is described as taking refuge in Buddha, in Buddha nature, in awareness. And the word Buddha means awake, awake awareness. The outer refuge in Buddha or awareness is reflecting on others who express the qualities of inner freedom, of love, of wisdom, of spiritual realization. So whoever inspires you in that, for some it may be the historical Buddha who reminds us really the whole teaching of the Buddha is you have the potential to wake up to be free. So it might be Jesus, it might be any of the awakened beings in any of the religions or traditions that inspire us and that remind us, beings that remind us of our own awakening heart and mood. So that's the outer refuge. And we all have the capacity to be inspired by others because it's a reflection of what's possible. The inner refuge in Buddha nature, in open awake awareness, it can be helpful to imagine, a sense of boundless, formless sea of awareness. And the waves or the passing experiences of sound and images and thoughts and feelings are habit is to attend to the waves. And refuge in Buddha in awareness is realization of that background, that sea of consciousness, of knowing, of sentience. Let's just take a moment to experiment. It helps again to, you might close your eyes here. Let yourself arrive right in the moment. I'm for the next few seconds, stop being aware. Starting now, stop being aware. Just stop being aware. Okay, that's enough. It becomes clear. Awareness is always here. Now take a moment to just notice the awareness that's here. What's it like? Are there any words that express what's the awareness like? Perhaps you can sense the quality of openness that includes even the most distant sounds. It's boundless. Awareness is boundless, open that sea, that boundless sea. And perhaps you can sense the quality of wakefulness. It's not just open, there's also a wakefulness, a noticing, a cognizance of all that's happening. And perhaps you can also sense a kind of tenderness or warmth with the changing life. You might feel the sensations that are living through your body right now, your hands, your heart, your belly. Just feel them. Now sense how awareness is inside your body. As you feel sensations, you know that awareness is in and through your entire body. And listening to sound. Listen. You can also sense awareness as in and through all of space. In and through your body, in and through space, a continuous sea of awareness. Relax back. Just be that awareness. Noticing the changing sounds, sensations. Now it's quite natural that the mind focuses on a certain sound or certain sensation or a thought. And when that happens to reconnect with the sea of awareness, just ask, what's aware of this? What is listening right now? What is aware of the thought? There's nowhere to land. You can just ask that question, kind of turn towards the mind and then relax back, resting in and as awareness itself. Be the ocean aware of the changing ways. The the teachers, three nurse, Sargadatis, as you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. That source alone is go back to that source and abide there. If you stay in open awareness, you find that it is permeated with the light and love you have never known and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. More true than any story of a temporary, limited, itself, this is taking refuge in awareness in Buddha. Okay, my friends, you might take a few full breaths. So this talk and these reflections are the different gateways to true refuge, homecoming. If we look at daily life, yesterday, today, we can see that there was a lot of forgetting. We were in trance, all of us on autopilot at times, the false refuges. And there's also moments of remembering where there's more presence, more homecoming. And I often think of the whole path as forgetting and remembering. And that these three gateways, when they're conscious, can deepen remembering. And what are we here for? But to remember, to become all that we are. So we practice bringing presence to truth. What is happening right here? And can I be with it? Bringing presence to love, opening to our shared vulnerability and hurts and to the intrinsic goodness that's here, offering our care. And we take refuge in awareness, noticing that behind any experience, there's a wakefulness and space, a formless presence that's our home. And here's the thing, that depending on your temperament, you might emphasize one gateway over another. They all activate each other. And all of them serve to awaken us beyond a small self and reconnect us with the peace and the freedom of what we really are. In the Buddhist tradition, there's a simple reflection of taking refuge, it's often used at the beginning of a meditation. And I invite you to experiment with it if it seems to serve you. And we'll close with this reflection. So in this, I'll be reciting a simple phrase of taking refuge and you can whisper it to yourself. Okay, again, take a moment to arrive, to fuel yourself here with a spinal reflection. I take refuge in the Buddha, in awareness. So repeating that and sensing what it means to you to take refuge in awake awareness, in your own luminous presence. What does it mean? I take refuge in awareness. I take refuge in the Dharma, in truth. In sense what it means to you to take refuge in the aliveness of the present moment. I take refuge in Sangha, in love. Again, sense what it means to take refuge in loving, refuge in living with an open heart. In a shared prayer, may all beings find refuge in presence, in truth, in love, in awareness. May all beings live from wisdom and love. May all beings experience a growing inner freedom. And may there be peace, justice, and compassion in our world. Thank you, friends. Thank you for your presence, your care. I look forward to being together as we move through the months to come. Blessings and love to each. Beloved