Refuge: Before and After
Refuge prayers typically
say, "Until full enlightenment I take refuge in buddha, dharma
and sangha..." It says that you take refuge until you reach full
enlightenment or buddhahood. It means that you commit yourself to the
discovery of the wakeful mind, or buddha, commit yourself to
teachings of reality, or dharma and commit to the spiritual community
or sangha. Also, in tantra you take refuge and commit yourself to the
guru because it is guru who makes the whole path available and
possible to travel. You willingly take refuge or commit to these
three or four principles, or "jewels" because they are the
way... that's how full enlightenment comes about.
And at some
point it does. You become a buddha, a person whose mind is no
different from Padmasambhava's or Jesus's. At this point you become a
holder of timeless wisdom, a vidyadhara, a master. Then you no longer
have a subconscious mind, and no samsaric surprises in terms of
functioning of the mind. Your mind remains empty (skt. sunyata) day
and night. If you're happy or in a joyful mood, empty of self. If
you're pissed off about something, lustful or have heartbreak, empty
of self. When in the minds of samsaric beings there is contraction in
the form of self-based greed, hate and desire, in the mind of a
mahasiddha there is none of that. However, even mahasiddhas, who
obviously inhabit human bodies and live with other people, keep
having emotions and reactions, they just aren't centered and
contracted around the notion of self.
In this emptiness of
all mind phenomena and states, there is no abiding in some or any
state that would be opposed to some other state. That's why this
state is the royal of all states or samadhis. In emptiness all states
and forms of selfing have collapsed and permanently ceased. That how
the mind of a buddha or a mahasiddha - a fully enlightened master -
is. So, when you finish your purification of the 10 bhumis or
grounds, your mind will be like this. You will become free! And you
will become a guru, a mahasiddha, whose knowledge about dharma and
the path is complete. Such a person can be taken as an object of
devotion and blessings - guru yoga - by followers and students, and
there will be no problems. Problems come when lesser practitioners
are taken as gurus when they in fact don't have the capacity to guide
samsaric minds out of the loop (samsara).
Titles like buddha,
mahasiddha or vidyadhara sound so big, scary and romantic that
everyone thinks it's not possible to reach or maybe in 100 lives from
now or something like that but don't let terms of other languages
scare or turn you off for these are just terms. All these teachings
are meant to help and serve you so that you can outgrow them.
It
all starts with the first awakening eperience where your selfing
mechanism ceases for a moment and leaves a permanent impact. If
you've had that first opening you know how your mind is different
before and after. Already in that little experience buddhanature is
glimpsed and you just keep glimpsing and awakening to it more and
more until all of the samsaric load - selfing in all of its forms -
dies completely and permanently. Millions of individuals in history
have accomplished this. Millions! In our sangha we have 9 such people
and I know few others who've become mahasiddhas, so in a sense it is
nothing special, although very rare in the world of dharma today due
to various reasons.
You take refuge and do the hard work of
slaying the demons that you carry inside. For some time you keep
taking refuge and work your ass off. No doubt you will have hard
times that will make you cry and feel like shit but my friend, if you
wish to see through with this, that's what you have to do. I'm not
going to encourage you to tun your back to samsara and focus on
dharma because if you are not done with samsara already and ready to
put all in with your dharma practice, you are better off enjoying the
moments of delight and getting your heart broken in samsara. Until
you become completely disillusioned about samsara and what it can
offer you, please don't fool yourself that you are ready for real
dharma practice.
But at some point when you're done with
taking refuge in samsara, then you're ready to take refuge in the
Three Jewels and your guru. Then you have finished your preliminaries
and are ready to practice, and you will advance quickly. This is
proper. That's how your path of dharma begins. Then comes taking
refuge, bodhisattva vows and practice learned from one's guru that
you should follow to the letter. If you haven't finished your
preliminaries, you'll still play around, even if you have received
the highest teachings. Anyway, in this way, you start having
cessations of the self-based mind (nirodha) and it is like the bottom
falls off... together with all other boundaries... and the center. In
this way you get more and more familiar with the groundless ground
that is pure and full of pleasure.
Eventually you graduate and
like I said then your mind remains in natural clarity and if you talk
about the dharma, whether in casual or formal setting, blessings will
radiate from your body and fills the room.
In fact, when a
mahasiddha shares the dharma the subtle nonphysical space around that
person becomes full of mahasiddhas, buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities,
dakinis and adepts who come to rejoice the event of turning of the
wheel of dharma. True (human) practitioners are able to perceive such
things.
KR, 28.3.2022
