Profound Acceptance (Taking Refuge) I take refuge in Buddha I take refuge in Dharma I take refuge in Sanga One cold January evening, early into my new Zen practice, I arrived at the Margaret Austin Center, not far from Houston, Texas, with more than 50 other participants to begin a weeklong silent meditation retreat. The retreat leader, an esteemed Zen teacher from the San Francisco temples where I had been studying, offered advice and encouragement as we entered the silence that first evening. He suggested that we reconsider our usual understanding of the word "retreat." Most commonly we think of a retreat as a time in which we temporarily set aside the responsibilities and concerns of daily life in order to enter into the silence and solitude of contemplation. After "retreating" for some period, we return to "real world." This wise teacher suggested a more challenging possibility. He asked us to "consider that this is a time in which you have the opportunity to retreat from your automatic and habitual ways of retreating from yourself and your life." He reminded us that most of the time, we are too busy and too distracted to look very deeply at ourselves. We retreat from reality and call it ordinary life. This week of silent meditation and teaching was being offered as an opportunity to retreat from this usual form of avoidance. What we typically call the "real world" is actually the ordinary, habitual, predictable dream world. We come to a meditation intensive in order to wake up from this dream and then return to our lives as this more clarified reality. What might it take to have the courage to "retreat" from the habits of daily life and face the illusions we have come to identify with and rely on? This way of understanding "retreat" and coming to an answer to this essential question a key function of taking refuge. In Buddhist practice to "take refuge" implies that one is intentionally making a commitment to the teachings and to the practices of the Buddha. This commitment is just short of taking a formal vow, but suggests a wholehearted offering of oneself to place these teachings and these practices at the center of one's life. In taking the refuges seriously we are saying, in essence, "When things get tough, this is where I will turn - to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha." The root of the English word "refuge" comes from Latin and old French and literally means to "fly or flee back." We often imbue the word with a meaning that suggests a sense of protection from harm or respite from difficulties. To take refuge is to return - to fly back - and in that returning home we discover a peace within the unpredictable and ever changing world. Refuge does not take us away from life, but offers us a way to plunge into life with an unimaginable freedom and peace. By taking refuge in Buddha we are offering ourselves up to the wisdom and compassion of the teacher — the Buddha — rather than our own willful and self-centered perspective. Here, "Buddha" is more than the historical figure who lived 2,500 years ago. More fully, "Buddha" refers to "life as it is," so in taking refuge we are making a commitment to turning toward life as it actually is. In doing so we begin to understand what it truly means to retreat from acting solely out of the habits of mind and heart that have been shaped by our past conditioning. To Take Refuge in Buddha can mean that we are making a commitment to the ongoing practice of stopping, or at least slowing down, both our reactive mind and our impulsive heart. Through mindful reflection we find that our habits of retreating from life naturally begin to soften. Slowly, step-by-step, we learn how to turn toward everything. Over time we find we have a greater capacity to gently touch our own bruised and sensitive heart. We also develop the ability to quiet our agitated and worried mind. As a result we become more skillful and patient in navigating the desires and disappointments of our perplexing and entangled relationships. These are the everyday consequences of taking refuge in Buddha. In taking refuge we are also making a firm commitment to the teachings of the Buddha - the dharma. Sometimes "dharma" is used to refer to the sutras and recorded sayings of the Buddha. At other times the many commentaries and writings of all the teachers who have descended from the Buddha are included in this vast and beautiful body of teaching. However, like Buddha, dharma has a broader meaning, and taking refuge in the dharma suggests that we are making a commitment to enter the ongoing practice of seeing more clearly how things actually work in the world. This is very close to the way that the tao is sometimes defined. We might ask, "What is the natural order of the universe and how can we come to know the underlying principles of nature and reality." This question may sound esoteric and abstract, but the practical nature of this question arises out of a deeply felt intu