Greetings,

I like spending three months on one topic. It allows time for the topic to marinate into our understanding, our awareness, our felt sense experience. At this point we have explored the superficial refuges that we run to as humans and we've talked about the importance and necessity of having a refuge. We've gotten a sense of what it feels like to have a genuine refuge in supporting our ability to stay with difficulty. This month we will look at the question, why do we need to stay with difficulty?

Image by Jubair Bin Hasan from Pixabay

Difficulty or dukkha is the essential nature of the human condition. This means that to be human means to live with difficulty. It's so natural. It's like urinating, walking, sitting down, sleeping, eating, etc. No one has to teach us how to do these things. The human body just knows. Likewise the human body knows dukkha. It knows the presence of dukkha. It knows the absence of dukkha. And the body itself doesn't care either way. Your eyes don't care if they see something unpleasant or pleasant. Your ears don't care if they hear something unpleasant or pleasant. It's the same for your tongue, your nose, and your skin. If we were aware of how natural difficulty is, we would be less reactive when we feel it.

It's only the mind that gets reactive in this distinction of pleasant and unpleasant. This getting reactive, however, is delusion. It's like a child believing in Santa Clause or cartoon characters. My granddaughter would call on her "super Gekko muscles" to pick up something she thought was heavy. This was based on a cartoon show she watched called PJ Mask. We all know this kind of imaginative mind. My sons believed in the Marvel heroes. When I was growing up, I believed in Superman and a white guy playing a Chinese guy in the Kung Fu series. This all points to believing that our strength and power comes from outside of us. That our protection comes from something other than ourselves.

This misguided belief is because we trust the limited nature of the ordinary mind rather than the wisdom of our embodied awareness. Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha as a refuge is what strengthens our ability to see that our true refuge is inherently connected to our own embodiment. The more embodied you feel, the more grounded and courageous you'll be. The more capacity you'll have to stay with difficulty without overreacting and the more courage you'll have to respond to harm.

You can think of the Buddha as the historical person, a teacher, a monk, a practitioner just like you and me. He provides inspiration to practice with whatever comes up. Ajahn Sumedho equated Buddha to mindfulness, so when we practice mindfulness we are experiencing the embodiment of Buddha. The Dhamma can be seen as the Buddha's teaching or the truth of the way things are. The Buddha once said that one who sees conditionality, or "the way things are," sees the Buddha. Likewise one who sees the Buddha sees conditionality, or the "way things are." And finally, the Sangha represents the community of practitioners. This could also be thought of as metta coming into existence through our relationship with each other - you can see it in the way we hold and support each other.

Taken together as a triangle, these 3 Jewels form a powerful bond. They create a net that's strong enough to hold any difficulty that can arise in our lives. They wrap around us as a protective cocoon that enables us to remain steady in the midst of difficulty. This level of protection doesn't occur simply because we know what the Triple Jewel is. It comes from practicing like we have over the last couple of months with the felt sense of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha vs. the felt sense of taking refuge in superficial things. This is why we don't judge or look down on our superficial refuges. We need to feel their limitations in order to feel the protective nature of the Triple Jewel.

This month various sangha members will explore their relationship with the Triple Jewel. Their experience will be anywhere from loosely aware of the Triple Jewel to a strong commitment to cultivate a felt sense relationship with it. The idea is for each of us to get a sense for ourselves how we relate to this triangle of protection in our own practice and hopefully there will be enough diversity of understanding that you'll become aware of your own relationship with the Triple Jewel.

With a deep bow...

Tuere