Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Often treated as a beginner’s step, refuge is revealed as surprisingly demanding in this 15-minute session by Geshe Pema Tsering. His central claim: genuine refuge remains incomplete until a practitioner directly perceives reality on the path of seeing, because afflicted doubt about the Three Jewels persists until that point — and its habitual imprints linger even further into the path of meditation. He then explains what working toward refuge actually requires: understanding that true happiness lies only in liberation, building conviction through logic and reasoning rather than passive belief, and recognizing that the ultimate object of refuge is one’s own potential to become a Buddha. The session closes by linking refuge to bodhicitta — the resolve to practice not for oneself alone but for all suffering beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 37 2004 07 20 RG.mp3
UUID: e595236b-72ac-483a-adca-e1b936c61ab9
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-07-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 15.2 minutes
Words: ~1,726
Uh-huh. The Buddha in one of his sutras said something like, For Dharma we need refuge. The meaning of this is specifically referring to our motivation. If we don’t have the motivation of refuge, when we do anything, then that action is very difficult for that action to become Dharma. It’s very difficult for that action to become a Buddhist practice.
So we really need to focus on refuge before we perform any action and to make sure that what we’re doing actually we actually get the most out of what we’re doing. So what this this going for refuge means is that we’re looking towards the liberation from saṃsāra. And in this way, going for refuge, the motivation that we need to develop is this idea that we’re focusing on at least our next rebirth because we’re looking to work towards to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha for a way out of Samsāra, for liberation from Samsāra, and we need to, in order to do this, we need to be focusing on at least our next rebirth. We need to take refuge in order to do this because we don’t know how to do it by ourselves. And the things that we don’t know how to do by ourselves start with the next lifetime.
We know how to get the most out of this lifetime. We know what we can do in this lifetime to improve our situation and to make ourselves happy in the short term, but we don’t know how to make ourselves happy in the long term, to achieve a good rebirth, achieve liberation, to achieve Buddhahood. So we ask for help or we ask for refuge in order to bring those about. So this actual process of going for refuge isn’t something that we should take lightly or something that we should think that we’ve got, that we understand, that we’ve got down. It’s something that we need to keep working on because we can sit there and say, I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, but actually going for refuge to the Buddha and the Sangha, Dhamma and the Sangha means relying on them and taking their help in order to work towards goals that we may not necessarily understand properly.
It’s difficult for us to take refuge properly because we don’t really understand what we’re doing. We don’t have a clear enough understanding of what the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha are in terms of being able to understand their qualities and so forth. So because of this we develop doubts about what a Buddha is, what the Sangha is, what the Dharma is, and we develop doubts about whether the Buddha’s words, the Dharma, is actually what we need to practice. Taking refuge means believing that the Buddha knows, that the Buddha, the Dharma, means for us to be happy. So doing what it says the Buddha says, doing what the the Dharma explains, in that way.
And we had doubts about that. If we didn’t have doubts about it, we wouldn’t do anything wrong. If we didn’t have any doubts about what the Buddha said, then we wouldn’t do anything but what he said. So we have doubts about it thinking, well, if I do something in the short term, that’ll make me happy. So taking refuge is something we really need to work on and to develop as opposed to just It’s something that we really need to keep working at.
Refuge is something that we really need to keep working at because it’s something that’s very difficult. Now we have this idea that refuge is a beginner’s practice but it’s incredibly difficult. In fact, until we’ve gotten rid of what’s called afflicted doubt or neurotic doubt, that is any lingering idea that the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha aren’t what they say they are or aren’t the way that we may believe they are. That neurotic doubt we get rid of when we perceive the true nature of reality directly, when we become Aryas, when we achieve the path of seeing. It’s something that we get rid of there.
And then even after that, when people are Ārya Bodhisattvas, that is they perceive the true nature of reality and they have bodhicitta, they’re still dealing with what are called the habitual imprints of that neurosis. All right, so they get rid of the actual neurosis when they perceive reality directly and then they’re still dealing with the kind of the smell of the neurosis as they move through what’s called the path of meditation. So until then, we can’t really have true refuge. And up until that point, we need to keep working at refuge. It’s something we need to keep thinking about.
So what we need to do is to understand more, to develop an understanding in ourselves so that our doubts about refuge, our doubts about this process that we are undertaking become less and less and less and less. We first of all, have this idea of we’ve got to look at what we want and we want to be happy. If we look at what we want, find we want to be happy. Then we need to look at what is true happiness and then develop an understanding that the only true happiness is liberation and Buddhahood. And once we’ve developed that idea and we really understand that there is no happiness in Samsāra, we also need to have belief in the Buddha, the Dharma and Sangha.
Belief that the way that the Buddha sets things out is the way, is the path we need to follow in order to get out of saṃsāra. So we needed to develop these two things. We need to have the persistence to keep at the path as was explained until it becomes clearer to us and we also need to have a belief in the Buddha’s the way the Buddha said to practice is the right way to practice. It’s not as if someone can come along and hand it to us and say, here you go, here’s liberation. It’s not like the Buddha’s can do that.
They can’t say, here’s your liberation. We actually have to work at it ourselves. So we have to have belief and then we have to have persistence. And the thing is though, once we start practicing this, once we start developing our beliefs, looking at our beliefs and keep practicing, then it becomes more refined and more refined and realization of the true nature of reality. So at the beginning when we start doing this, it’s really difficult because it comes down to belief.
It doesn’t come down to what we perceive directly, it comes down to what we believe. So it’s much more difficult to deal with a belief than it is to deal with a perception. So we have to keep working at our beliefs, and the way that we keep working at our beliefs is by looking at arguments that are set forth in the Buddhist scriptures, the way that we perceive people to be, and we keep looking at them and looking at things again and again and again until we’re convinced. So it’s a matter of using logic, using our reasoning, using our understanding and putting the Buddha’s words to the test until we develop our beliefs. Our beliefs become stronger and stronger and stronger.
It’s not a matter of just having an idea of something. We have to keep developing our own understanding. Because ultimately, what we’re taking refuge in isn’t something that’s external. We’re taking refuge in the fact that we can become a Buddha. Alright?
We’re taking refuge in the idea that this process is able to happen. We’re taking refuge in the idea that the Buddhas were once like us, and they got rid of all of their neurosis, got rid of all of their hang ups, passed through different levels of meditation and understanding and when they went through what’s called the path of seeing where they saw how reality is and they went through the path of meditation where they acclimatized themselves to that understanding and they eventually became Buddhas. So we’re working with the idea that Buddhas used to be beings who experienced suffering, who did experience suffering and they, who were exactly like us. Before they developed any of these understandings, were exactly like us. But they worked at it and worked at it and they eventually became realized Buddhas.
So ultimately what we’re taking refuge in is the fact that we can do that. That’s what that’s what our our our faith is our our our is in, not faith, our refuge is in. So then we have to keep working at that to to to develop our beliefs in that and also to to make that come about. And then we need to start thinking about other people as well. That it’s not just about our taking refuge and becoming a Buddha.
It’s about all other beings. And all other beings have this potential as well, and they need to be shown the way not to experience suffering. So if we have this idea of okay, I’m taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha, I’m going to develop my beliefs and work towards becoming Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, for the sake of all of the other beings that are suffering and not just because of my own interests, then that means that whatever we’re doing becomes a something that’s motivated by bodhicitta. That idea or that motivation is bodhicitta. And so then if we can have the idea that in order to become a Buddha to benefit all beings, I’m going to do no.
Sorry. I’m going to work towards becoming a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. And we have the idea that all of the positive things that we’ve ever done are mixed with all the positive things that any of the other types of beings have ever done. And then by rejoicing in that collection of good karma or good positive qualities that we can become a Buddha. So we will become a Buddha, so we should meditate on that for a few minutes.