You Have Taken Refuge… Now What?

Venerable Thubten Dechen

The Garden of Maitreya – Bucharest, Romania

Moderator: Veronica Anghelescu

February 20, 2025

V.A: It is my great joy to welcome you all to this teaching that our beloved Dharma friend, Ani Thubten Dechen from Lama Tsongkhapa Institute accepted to hold for us, for which reason we are very grateful. And so this is the first event organized by the FPMT study group, the Garden of Maitreya in Bucharest, Romania, and which we did not want to limit only to our community, but rather to offer it to our numerous friends worldwide, so that as many people as possible could benefit. So we thank you, Venerable Dechen, for having taken a moment from your precious time to share with us from your wisdom. And so we promise to listen carefully and to integrate your advice into our daily lives.

Ven. Dechen: Thank you so much, Veronica. Well, it’s such a wonderful pleasure to be with you. And maybe we take a moment just to settle the body, shake off any energy of the day and just take a deep breath together.

All right, so let’s all just get a comfortable position. And wherever we’ve come from, whatever we’ve been doing before, we just let it go and we bring ourselves into the present moment. And when you’re ready, you can take a long breath in and exhale. And another long breath in and exhale, completely letting go of any thoughts, tensions, anything you had your attention on during the day and just be here and now. And we can really rejoice that we have this precious opportunity together with like-minded friends, wonderful space for us to think about the Dharma. And so we think that we’re going to listen and reflect, hopefully to get something of benefit to our mind that we can put into practice for our own benefit, but also so that we can benefit others. Like a stone landing in a lake, rippling outwards. Whatever we learn, whatever we practice, may it bring peace, wisdom and compassion to this world, which needs it.

I take Refuge until I’m enlightened in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my merits of listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha to benefit transmigratory being.

So that’s our little Refuge formula. So this talk is about you’ve taken Refuge… and now what? It’s a little bit like you bought the mala, now what do we do? And I was saying this to a friend in the shop at lunchtime, and she said, “Oh yes, it is so important to think about this…” and she’s been a Dharma practitioner for a long time, so this isn’t necessarily just for those of you who took Refuge last week… actually we might have taken Refuge a long time ago, and still feel like… “Oh, where am I, where am I going? What am I doing? Am I doing it right?” So the purpose of this is to give us a little bit of direction.

And with that in mind, I sat down the other day beside a picture of Lama Tsongkhapa and I asked myself: “What is the most useful thing I can share?” And so I’ll share what came to mind, and the first thing that came to mind is… it’s not that hard. From where we are right now to where we want to get to, be that enlightenment, becoming a bodhisattva, it’s not that hard. I’m going to explain what I mean by that, okay? I have to qualify that, because we’re going to put this in perspective.

So I have a book about enlightened beings. And we hear all the stories of how people got enlightened and what they did. And I was looking at this book of enlightened beings, and I wanted someone who got enlightened, who wasn’t already a bodhisattva when they were born. And so there’s a chap in here called, what’s his name? He is called Baso Chokyi Gyaltsen. I’m guessing none of us have heard of him. And he just seemed, you know, pretty regular guy. So he studied, he did his practice. He started by meditating on precious human rebirth, and then renunciation. And it said he went to the feet of Manjushri and Maitreya. So I checked with Geshe Jampa Gelek, I said: “Does that mean he got enlightened?” It’s not clear. So I had to go back to the text and tucked away, hidden, hidden in a paragraph is a story about three of his disciples: they’re the three Dorje brothers, Cho Dorje, Peldun Dorje and Dorje Pelwa. And they all got enlightened in one life, one body, meaning they started as ordinary beings. They entered a path in that lifetime and got enlightened in that life.

I have to try and find the page now, because the commentary on it is wonderful; it’s talking about Cho Dorje, and the commentator says: “Not much is known about him.” We don’t know anything about him. He got enlightened. We don’t know where he came from. Nothing is known about his whereabouts. We don’t know if he lived with ordinary beings or dakinis, but he got enlightened. So this is important information, because we hear all the stories of people who jumped off buildings and sat in fire and built towers, but we don’t hear about the ordinary ones that met the Dharma, quietly went about their business, and then got enlightened. And whilst those other stories are encouraging for one purpose, I find these stories really encouraging for another purpose.

So, you know, all the stories of Naropa and Milarepa are very motivating, but it’s good to know that people like us made progress too. So that’s not to say that, oh, you know, we’re going to get enlightened this lifetime, but at least let’s look at our options. So we probably heard of Vasubandhu, who recited the Abhidharmakosha every day, and the pigeon on his roof was born human the next life, and became a scholar, and wrote four commentaries on the Abhidharmakosha. That’s kind of impressive, I’d be satisfied with that, right? Then there were some swans that Buddha Shakyamuni gave teachings to and in their next lifetime they were born human and became arhats. They were birds.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says: “To even hear the word bodhichitta, you need so much merit.” Pabongka Rinpoche says: “We’re sort-of circling in the neighborhood of the path of accumulation.” We haven’t got there yet. So because we haven’t got there yet, we have no idea how near or far we are. But he says, we’re in the neighbourhood. We’re sort of, you know, in the heading in the right direction. And we’re probably a lot farther than we think, making a lot more progress than we know. And so we have a lot of potential.

So from that perspective, it’s quite encouraging. So now I’m gonna do, we’re gonna do a little thought experiment. Don’t have to answer out loud, okay? But just in your mind, have a think and ask yourself, how long do you think you would need to realize bodhichitta? It doesn’t matter what the answer is. It could be five lifetimes, could be ten, could be a few years. But just ask yourself honestly, how much time do you think you need? All right, do you have a number? You can pick a big number if you want. You can be conservative. Just a number.

The point is this. Whatever number you’ve chosen, it’s probably not that much. In the grand scheme of beginningless lifetimes, it’s not that much. Even if you said ten lifetimes, twenty, it’s not that much, comparatively speaking. So the point is, we’re further ahead than we know. We have so much going for us that we might not necessarily recognize, and we can do this.

We’re already human, so we have a lot going for us. So that’s what I mean by it’s not hard. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just contextualizing and saying, for where we are and what we’ve got, we’re in pretty good shape. And Pabongka Rinpoche actually says: “We might even be starting from a vantage point that’s further ahead than some other people did, and they did well.” So we should take confidence and have self-confidence. So if that’s our situation, then the second point is… don’t get distracted. Don’t get caught off guard, going off in other directions. And this comes from Tara. Tara said this to a teacher. It’s in the Lamrim. She said, because his parents were trying to arrange his marriage and showing him all these women he could choose from – “If someone like you gets distracted, that would be a shame.” So it’s the same for us. We have so much. And if we get distracted, that would be a shame. It’s not a criminal offence. It’s not disaster of the century, but it would be a shame.

We’ve got this life of incredible fortune, we have intelligence, we have interest in the Dharma, which is so rare in the world. Pabongka says: “With it, we can do whatever we wish. We can make prayers to get another precious human rebirth. We can achieve enlightenment, liberation. And even if we think we need a life better than this one, this is the lifetime.” We can do it. So we have to start with a position of self-confidence. Tara said, “If we got distracted, that would be a shame.” So now, that doesn’t mean that we should become fundamentalist because, first of all, it doesn’t work. The mind has to proceed gently.

And honestly, nobody will like us if we become like that. So the Kadampa say: “Take a long-term view, relax, have a long-term vision, take it easy, and just be farsighted, don’t squeeze.” But the point is… just put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time and eventually we will get there. So then in that context what Refuge is, if you like, it is our North Star. Refuge is giving us the direction of both where we’re headed, and what we’re relying in. So we can think of Refuge as a goal, Buddhahood. We can think of it also as the path that helps us get there. And we can also think of Refuge as the help we have along the way, the Sangha. And so the purpose of Refuge is to help us achieve our goal.

But what is our goal? And this needs to be clear. Our goal is to help sentient beings. Enlightenment, strictly speaking, is just the means and the instrument to help us do that. It’s not the end in itself.

So an enlightened mind is just a state that permits us to benefit others in the most spontaneous and natural and unmistaken way. But the goal is to help sentient beings. So for that, it’s helpful for us to know what have we taken Refuge in? So if that’s our goal, if that’s our objective, what have we taken Refuge in, and why? So we’ll go through the three, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

The Buddha: why do we follow the Buddha? Why is the Buddha a valid teacher? In Pramanavartika, it said: “The Buddha is a valid being. The Buddha is Pramana because he became valid.” And that right there goes to the very heart of some of the essence of the Buddhist teachings. His enlightenment was a dependent arising. He wasn’t a created God. He wasn’t born perfect from the beginning. He started like us. I mean, he was a prince, but that aside, he was like us. But he became valid. So this captures the view of dependent arising, cause and result. If you create the causes, you get the result. And that we have Buddha nature. We have something within us that is suitable to transform into the bodies of a Buddha. And that is incredibly unique. So this is very important for us to know.

The Buddha became valid. It was a dependent arising. It was a result. A result of what? Really two things. So first of all, he cleaned up. So he used the wisdom, seeing reality correctly, to remove all the layers of distortions and wrong concepts that keep us in samsara. So one job was the removal job, which wisdom does, but he also cultivated the positive qualities, love, compassion, bodhicitta. And those two together gave rise to the two results the two bodies of a Buddha so the enlightened mind is the result of having done the wisdom work and then the form body is the result of having done the cultivating work and this is also important because it’s sometimes said, oh, all we need to do is remove things. That’s true to a point.

Removing obscurations will get you to nirvana, to personal liberation. It won’t get you to Buddhahood. Buddhahood is a choice. You choose to develop the form body of a Buddha, and you invest effort in creating the causes through method, love, compassion, bodhichitta. So it isn’t just the unlearning and removal, there’s active cultivation, there’s active choice in cultivating yourself to become a Buddha. And that’s what he did. So the Buddha removed all the superimpositions, all the distortions, and cultivated all of the positive qualities, wisdom, compassion, through work, through familiarization.

And so we respect the Buddha, we respect the images, we treat images of the Buddha with respect, because if we don’t have the karma to meet the Buddha in daily life, at the very least, we try and treat the representations with respect.

The Dharma: the Dharma is essentially what the Buddha – I should say Prince Gautama, what the prince mixed his mind with, to become a Buddha. And what he did, we can do too. And this is another fundamental principle of Buddhism. The goal of omniscience and perfect qualities and no obscurations is something we can attain. That’s our job. That’s the fulfillment of our human potential. We can attain that too. So what the Buddha did give us a clue about the practice, about the job to be done. Remove the distortions with wisdom and cultivate the positive. And because we have Buddha nature, we can do the same. Again, this is the fundamental, dependent arising.

You create the causes, you get the result. You stop creating the unhelpful causes, you stop getting the unhelpful result. So because we are not set in stone, this is the culmination of our potential. And the afflictions, the disturbing emotions, they’re produced phenomena. They’re not the nature of our mind. If they were, we’d have them all the time, and sometimes we don’t. I think we can all, sometimes they’re not there, right? So we know they’re not the nature of our mind. We get a glimpse of the fact that we can live without them. They’re not the nature, they can be removed. We just have to stop producing causes so that we’re getting them as a result. They’re not definite to be experienced. They’re not the nature of our mind. The nature of the mind is clear light. The afflictions are advantageous and they can be removed. And so the Dharma then is what we use, what we mix our mind with to do that.

The purpose of the Dharma is really to reduce the causes of suffering, and increase the causes of happiness. And we might say… chocolate does that. It’s true, but we’re looking for lasting happiness. So that’s why we rely on the Dharma. And chocolate, they’re not mutually exclusive, but we’re aiming for long-term goals and long-term happiness and fulfilment.

So the Dharma is the real Refuge because the Dharma in our continuum is our Refuge. So the Buddha teaches, but the Dharma in our continuum is what helps us to achieve our goal. And so that’s why it’s so important to study. And in the Refuge precepts, there is actually a precept that we should listen and reflect. It also says that understanding can be challenging, but our job is to listen, to reflect, to understand to the best of our ability, and practice. So that again gives us a really good direction. If we’ve taken Refuge, that’s something we should be looking at. To listen, to understand, so that we know what to practice. It’s easy to say we want to practice, but practice what if we haven’t learned, if we’re not familiar?

Shantideva, rather depressingly, says “We drive away the causes of happiness as if happiness was our enemy.” I mean, that’s a fairly dismal prescription, right? And “We chase after the causes of unhappiness as if it were our friend.” So that’s why we study to learn to make educated informed choices that help us. And then so when we study and this is something that Geshe Jampa Gelek said, we need to actually understand the distinguishing features of this tradition that we’ve taken Refuge in. So what makes Buddhism distinct from anything else are things that we’ve taken Refuge in.

So what makes Buddhism distinct from anything else are things that we need to know if we’re going to proceed correctly.

So we’ll go through some of them, first on the side of wisdom, and then on the side of method. All right, so I am starting with the wisdom.

Some people say that, in terms of method and ethics and so on, Buddhism is kind-of pretty similar to everything else. That’s not entirely true, I have to say.

Sidebar, I used to work in Afghanistan. And so I used to follow the Taliban on Twitter. And one of the Taliban was posting in English that “Oh, you Westerners should not be criticizing our methods of enforcement of the rule of law, because that’s impinging on our religious freedom.” And you know, the Talibans’ methods for enforcing the rule of law are quite severe, but they see that as their religious freedom, that’s to be upheld and respected. And I’m pretty sure that neither in Buddhism, nor Jainism, nor Christianity, will we find such methods. I mean, if I remember rightly, I think there were beheadings and amputations in there. So the point being, it isn’t all the same, right? So even if we say that ethics is the same, it actually isn’t.

So let’s get back to wisdom, because wisdom is the really key distinguishing feature. And Lama Tsongkhapa wrote a beautiful Praise to Dependent Arising, in which he praises the Buddha; he says, “Whatever exists in dependence on conditions, is empty of existing by way of its own essence.” And he says to the Buddha, “Nobody else has taught this. You alone taught this. And for that, I’m offering praise and homage.”

So the combined view of emptiness and dependent arising is a distinguishing feature of Buddhism. Why do we care? Because another premise of Buddhism is that at the root of our suffering is a grasping to ourselves as having an essence, as being essential. There is some findable, graspable, take holdable “I” that we desperately need to protect at all costs, and in so doing, we identify and push away any other, and all our afflictions and negative karma depend upon that. And that’s so instinctive to us, we can hardly imagine what it would be like to be without that.

Dharmakirti says: “Freedom from that view is freedom from the very cause of what is causing us suffering.” And how to reach that is… with wisdom, realizing that that way we think we exist, that graspable essential I, that, that it doesn’t exist in that way at all. And so Lama Tsongkhapa says: “This view that we don’t exist that way… we still exist, just not in the way we thought.” The fact that we don’t exist in that way, he says only the Buddha taught that. Meaning that the distinguishing feature of Buddhism from the wisdom perspective is that it presents the wisdom that cuts the root of samsara. And many other traditions actually strengthen a view of the self. And there’s nothing wrong with that if those traditions are very helpful, it’s just different.

So in other traditions, there might be a view of the self as a pure soul or a pure being that’s held within the aggregates. And for some people that might be very beneficial for their mind. But it’s different, and it has different implications. Because if we’re holding to ourself, then everything we do is still from the perspective of self and other, self and other, self and other. And if we do enough internal work, we can start to see the impact of that in our own lives. Now, as well as, so that’s in the arena of ultimate truth.

But wisdom in Buddhism is not just about emptiness, it’s also about conventional truth. It’s also about let’s have a correct view of how things conventionally exist. And in that regard, impermanence is really important. So the way we view reality, the way we see reality, then has an impact on our ethics, on our conduct, on our love, on our compassion. Buddhism is said to be fundamentally non-harming.

In Buddhism, we say there are three main kinds of suffering. The first one we all know, the suffering of suffering, okay? Unpleasant experiences, hunger, earthquakes, you name it, all the unpleasant stuff that nobody wants. And I think everybody recognizes that, they’re pretty familiar. Now everybody has a measure of compassion, so when we see this kind of suffering, we are moved, we want to do something. So what does our compassionate action do? We might give food, we might give shelter, we might give warmth, and we should give these things to the extent that we are able to. There are many, this is common across religious traditions, there are many traditions that do outstanding work in this area; if you see the Sikh organisations, they’re always in disaster zones giving food, they give medical care, in outstanding work.

So this is the first kind of suffering. So already that’s incredible. So moved by compassion for beings experiencing suffering of suffering, this is the kind of help we might give. But because we also talk about impermanence within the Buddhist view of wisdom, there’s a second type of suffering that invites us to expand our compassion a little bit more.

 And here we talk about the suffering of change. So this is when the good things run out. The chocolate, the job, the money, the partner, you get it. It’s happened to all of us, right? And you don’t have any more chocolate left, crucially. Okay, so when the good things run out, the person leaves us, right? And you don’t have any more chocolate left, crucially, okay? So when the good things run out, the person leaves us, we lose our job, whatever it is, basically when the karma finishes, the happy, pleasant feelings stop. And quite often, then another karma ripens. Why does this matter? Because from the perspective of impermanence, there is no moment of abiding. Things are changing momentarily. And in the moment, the moment that something is experienced as ripened results, the karma that gave rise to it is finished. Like it’s like burning a candle. Once you’ve burnt the wick, the flame isn’t coming back. And our karma is like this. Once you use up the causes as ripened result, that’s it. The cause is finished.

So how can we apply this when we have a view of impermanence and karma? We can even have compassion for the people in good situations, the rich, the beautiful, the healthy, the people that spend billions of dollars using their hard earned fruition of generosity flying into space. Because they’re using up, they have all of this wonderful result of hard work that they did accumulating positive karma, they experience the result, and if that result isn’t used well, the causes are gone, and what are they left with? It’s like going to Vegas and spending all your money in the casino in one night and then the next morning you’re broke. What are you left with? So if we were a friend to our rich friend in the Vegas casino who’s blowing all their money in one night, we might tell them, before you blow everything, how about making some investments? Maybe don’t blow everything in one go. We would have compassion for the fact that tomorrow morning they can’t afford breakfast.

So in the same way, from this point of view, for someone who has incredibly good fortune and is using it up, our compassion might help them create positive karma, advise them to be generous. Our compassion, thinking of the future results, will say, you know, help them maybe practice philanthropy. We will try and help them use their good situation to do more good. This isn’t really what we normally do. Normally, if someone is well off, rich, powerful, and so on, the last thing we experience towards them is compassion. But from the point of view of impermanence and karma, they’re also at risk of suffering, and they’re also worthy of compassion. So the view there expands our compassion.

And then there’s another one, there’s suffering number three, which is pervasive compounded suffering. This essentially just means that – because we are samsaric beings, we are programmed at any given time to experience one of the other two kinds of suffering. It’s a little more tricky to understand. But it’s this view of… we just keep going around and round and round, and we’re not getting out and we go from high to low, we gain, we lose in continuation.  And from that perspective, what would compassion do? From that perspective, we study wisdom. We might say: “I wanna study wisdom to free sentient beings from samsara.” That’s one option. But even having some understanding of that, there’s actually more we can do.

So, so, and Shantideva teaches it; in his chapter on patience he says: “Sentient beings don’t choose what arises in their minds. They don’t choose to get angry. They don’t choose their imprints. They’re born, the mere person is designated on the aggregates and they are born with these aggregates.” They did not pick it off the supermarket shelf. They’re born with imprints on their mental continuum, a body that was done of their choosing. It is a fruitional result of karma, but they didn’t choose this.

And from this point of view, two things. First of all, however bad they might be, however unpleasant, however much we want to reject and discard them, they’re not intrinsically bad. You give them different causes, different conditions, and they can change. And in fact, I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you before, but after the Rwandan genocide, one of the men who admitted to having killed a lot of people said, people aren’t born bad. They can be made that way, and they can be taught to be good.

If we are holding to a view of intrinsically existent self, we will never give them the chance. We’ll just discard them and chuck them in the bin. But if we have a view of dependent arising, at least dependent arising, then we understand that in dependence upon different inputs, different causes and conditions, that person also gets a second chance. And in that way, we can have compassion for the really undesirable people. The ones that we think should just be expelled from our society, because what they are is a dependent arising. And if you get different causes and conditions, you will get a different result. And that’s the kind of compassion our Lamas have. It’s hard for us.

You know, I remember one centre I worked at, I was told that for 24 hours, someone was on paper, a director of the centre. And the police arrived at the door saying, “Listen, this individual has a criminal record and there’s absolutely no way, there’s no way he can be a director, absolutely not, a crime of this severity, just no.” So I don’t think he ever actually made it to the centre. And it’s a pretty bad crime. And he’d been chosen by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. And so someone said to me, “Well, that just goes to show that Lama Zopa Rinpoche isn’t a God, he makes mistakes, look, here’s an example of that mistake.” And it probably wasn’t a mistake. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, with his great foresight of future lives had probably calculated that for this individual, being a director of a Dharma centre, even if on paper and just for one day, was worth it in the long run. It brought some benefit to that individual. Even if the centre staff had to fend off the police, even if it was very difficult. He had a long-term view.

Because he has a long-term view, obviously with his view of emptiness and dependent arising, Lama Zopa Rinpoche believes that when you give somebody a chance to create new causes and conditions, you are going to get a different resulting person. But if you never change anything, well, then the person is going to stay the same. So from this perspective, we can start to have compassion, or try to develop compassion for the people that we really would rather not. So, so that’s where our view of compassion, dependent upon the wisdom teachings, can become so much more vast. And plus it’s for all sentient beings.

Okay, so depending on the view, we have a different analysis and diagnosis of suffering, and depending on the breadth of the diagnosis of suffering, we have a much more vast presentation of compassion. And again, so that’s where study can help us.

There are things that we should have some knowledge of, as Geshe Jampa Gelek said. What is a Buddhist? What makes Buddhism different from other traditions? The Four Noble Truths, the Two Truths, how we circle in Samsara, how we get liberated from Samsara, and how we reach omniscience. These are some of the things that we should try to get knowledge of. And in particular, try to get knowledge of them, according to the presentation of the Lamrim, starting from the beginning and working upwards, and going back to our friend Baso Chokyi Gyaltsen, that I mentioned earlier: that’s how he started. He just started reflecting on a life of freedoms and richnesses and continued from there. So that’s really the advice.  Start from the beginning in the Lamrim and work your way up, building one stage on top of the other.

OK, so this is the Dharma part of Refuge. And with the Dharma, there are a couple of Refuge precepts. So we try and treat the Dharma texts with respect, not putting them on the floor, not putting them in the bag with our shoes, and just keep practicing respect towards our texts, and ideally also reading them, not just putting the book on a shelf and forget about it.

The Sangha. So I have, I have entirely taken this from Serkong Rinpoche, and I put a link here to a little video, three, three minutes long, he explains it beautifully.

So Serkong Rinpoche’s description of the Sangha: he says: “In order to practice the Dharma well, we need reliable examples to guide us. People who have practiced the teachings and actually attained some of its goals. And we call those people the Sangha, and they are the role models we rely on. Sangha are normally in this analysis are people who’ve directly realized emptiness.” He describes them as people who’ve gotten rid of some of their problems and in the process, they’re working to get rid of more of them. So their job is to be helpers and to be role models so that they’re qualified to get rid of more of them. So their job is to be helpers and to be role models so that they’re qualified to help us. So they will have qualities like wanting to help others, practicing what they preach.

We need role models. We need people we can follow, who are ahead of us on the path. They’re with us in the self-help group and can and can help us. And in that regard, there’s a there’s a Refuge precept for this Sangha, which is: keep good company, have helpful friends, have people around you who will support your spiritual practice, and your spiritual development. We’re so influenced by our friends. And this isn’t a Buddhist idea, you know, it’s a very, very popular thing. You are the five people you surround yourself with. So it’s really helpful to have good support, good friends, good community, also for encouragement.

So very briefly, so there are benefits of Refuge listed in the Lamrim.

So first of all, we become Buddhists. You become Buddhist when you take Refuge.

We reduce and exhaust lots of negative karma.

We accumulate a lot of merit. We need that, we need fuel in the tank.

We receive support and protection from harm. And in the Lamrim, it said that we are protected from the harm of spirits and other hindrances.

So I was thinking last night, I remember in this regard with this point, I’d had an experience; it happens to some people: while being asleep, a pressing spirit disturbs them. It’s not very pleasant. So you’re sleeping and you have this feeling of being pushed, like you’re being squashed into the ground. And if it ever happens, try and send love and “Om Mani Padme Hum” and so forth. But this particular time, I was sort of semi conscious. And I remember I just said “Lama Khyen,” which means “Lama, help me.” And I remember in my dream, suddenly I was dreaming of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Geshe Gelek, and whatever it was… it went away. So that was my experience of that, being protected from spirit harm.

Sometimes we take Refuge, and we don’t ask for help. And that I’m guilty of that, you know, we take Refuge, we fall to one extreme or the other, either we think, “Oh, the Buddhas are going to do everything, I pray to the Buddhas that I pass my exam.” I mean, I hate to break it to you, that’s not how it works. So either we fall to that extreme, thinking “The Buddhas are going to make me pass my exam,” or we go to the other extreme: “I’m going to go into Samsara and figure it out all by myself.”

 Our attitude must be: “I have a problem, first I take Refuge. I have to have a difficult conversation, first I take Refuge. I have to, you know, whatever it is, take a journey, go somewhere, do something, I take Refuge.” Actually ask for help.

I remember once being contacted by a doctor I used to work with in Congo. He had PTSD. And of course, I asked my teacher, so what do I do thinking, what mantra, what practice, what this, what that? And he replied and said, “You can ask me to pray for him.” And I said: “Oh, right, yeah, okay.” You know, like this radical idea, you know, oh my goodness, take Refuge. I didn’t think of that. You know, so we have to also make taking Refuge a practice because it’s all very well that there are benefits of taking Refuge, but you actually have to take Refuge to get the benefits.

So, more benefits:

We swiftly attain our wishes.

We swiftly attain Buddhahood. Okay, so this goes back to my earlier point. It’s not that far away and we’re closer than we think. We swiftly attain Buddhahood.

We become a basis for vows. Bodhisattva vows and other vows.

We don’t fall to the lower realms. It doesn’t necessarily mean it never ever happens again. It just, you have a pretty good chance that in the next lifetime, you’re in good shape. So technically, to be absolutely certain of never going to the lower realms, you have to be on the path of preparation, but we get the general point.

So and this is in chapter 12 of Lamrim Chenmo.

So, these are general precepts, guideposts for what we should be doing having taken Refuge. So the first is, as Geshe Jampa Gelek tried to tell me: “Try relying on holy beings, you know? Ask for help.”

So rely on holy beings, ask for help. Listen to them as well.

Then listen to and study and understand and try and practice the Dharma. That’s what they’re teaching.

Be a friend to yourselves. Giving yourselves the best start. Don’t put yourselves in situations that are going to make your afflictions go wild. It just doesn’t help.

The next general precept is if you feel ready to take whatever vows you feel able to maintain. Venerable Robina is a great fan of vows because they help us accumulate lots of merit and purify karma.

And the next one is, be compassionate towards sentient beings and don’t harm them. You know, one of the Refuge precepts is if we’ve taken Refuge, we should give up harming sentient beings directly or indirectly.

And the next is that we make an offering when we’re eating or drinking, when we’re starting our meals, we just mentally offer that. So the texts say: offer it to the Buddhas, but Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains this in a very nice way. He says, first, imagine offering your food and drink to all sentient beings. And then as their representative, on their behalf, you offer it to the Buddhas, imagining that the sentient beings get the benefit of the merit and the generosity. And so, and the last point is thinking about benefits of Refuge, take Refuge again and again. And it’s really a useful experiment to do whether it’s a difficult conversation or a difficult situation.

Instead of just running off into life and try and do it all by yourself, if you actually take Refuge before doing that, watch what happens to your mind. Watch how you feel, see if it makes a difference. What difference does it make in your life when before doing X, Y or Z you actually take Refuge and put some trust into the Buddhas and the Arya Sangha? Give it a try. I’m not going to tell you, just try. It’s remarkable the impact it can have.

We don’t have to do everything ourselves. So try sometimes putting it in practice. Before you go into a situation: “I take Refuge. I take Refuge.” Ask for help and see what that does to the mind and how you approach the situation.

One tiny little story in that regard. So long story short, I was trying to help some women, in Afghanistan, when the Taliban took over. And it was a horrible situation, because I don’t know if you remember, when the Taliban took over, there were all those airplanes with people on them, everybody trying to get out. And there were these women who felt very frightened, because they had been selling in the army bases of the US and other army. So you can imagine what the Taliban are going to think of that, you got number one, it’s a bunch of women, selling things. And number two, they were selling in the army bases of the enemy, trying to get money for their family. But you know that in the view of the Taliban, that’s the enemy. So they were terrified for their lives. And we were trying to get them out.

There was someone who, at first sight, was offering a plane. And, and then they stopped answering or communication. And the lady who was the go between, she said, they had their bags packed, they were ready to go. And these people who had said they were offering a plane just weren’t answering. What do I do? I’ve given them hope. And I have to say that was hands down the worst night of my life. Because how you feel in that situation with so many people counting on you and you can do nothing. It’s horrible. And one way or another, we all face situations where we feel so utterly helpless, yet responsible. And so the next day, I said, okay, how about again, try taking Refuge. Actually take Refuge. Pray, take Refuge.

It didn’t change the outcome. We didn’t get a plane. And they are still there, and still alive. But I just didn’t feel like I had all the responsibility and weight on my shoulders. So that’s why I say, even if the outcome doesn’t change, because so much karma is involved in these situations, still the difference it can make by relying on the support of Refuge, it can make a huge difference to the mind, because it isn’t just on you. So I share that for what it’s worth.

A little reminder from Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “Compassion, do everything with the best motivation you possibly can, try to do everything with a bodhicitta motivation. Because bodhisattvas are not distinguished by what they do, but by the motivation with which they do it. So try to have a vast motivation for everything we do, eat, sleep, whatever it is, for others, for others, and train ourself in this thought for others.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama meditates on emptiness, but he really stressed that the last thing the Buddha taught was bodhicitta. And His Holiness said: “If you try to practice bodhicitta, if you try to put that into practice, then whether you’ve met me or not, it’s as if you’ve made meeting me meaningful.” So we’ve practiced the meaning of meeting His Holiness in this life, whether we’ve met him or not. So that’s a way for us to really think about taking the essence of our life, making it meaningful. And again, slowly, slowly, one step at a time. That’s a way that we can move forward and make best use of this incredible opportunity that we have.

Venerable Thubten Dechen

Photo of Ven. Dechen: Gabri Zoltan

Transcript: Veronica ANGHELESC