This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, good afternoon, good day. Your chanting sounded quite wonderful, so I'd actually like to start out by chanting. I'd like to chant the Pali refuges. because my talk this morning is going to be about the refuges, about refugees, about ourselves as refugees. So we're going to do this, I'd like to begin with this, basically the primal vow of Buddhists, the one practice, the one recitation that is common to all Buddhist traditions so far as I know.

[01:04]

So it's Buddha, basically the refuges are in Pali, Buddha, Saranam, Gacchami, Dhamam, Saranam, Gacchami, Sangam, Saranam, Gacchami. And I'll unpack that a little bit. Saranam, Gacchami means go to refuge. Saranam is refuge. And we'll talk about that a bit. And Gacchami is go-to. And then we repeat this three times. So we do that once, and the second time we say dutiyampi budam, and so forth. Dutiyampi just means a second time. And the third one is tatiyampi, a third time. So if you're not familiar with it, You will get it by the second or third repetition. So please chant along with me. Udham Saranam Gacchami Dhamam Saranam Gacchami

[02:23]

Sangam Saranam Gacham. Dutiyam Gacham Saranam Gacham. Dutiyam Gacham Saranam Gacham. I'm [...] Now you are all Buddhists.

[03:51]

I think back for over the last 10 years I've been working with communities of Dalit Buddhists in India, people who were formerly designated as untouchables. And they've taken up the practice of Buddhism as a refuge, as a way of really rejecting and re-identifying themselves. And this conversion movement goes back to 1956. There was a quite incredible figure on the Indian political scene throughout the first half of the 20th century. Dr. B.R.

[04:55]

Ambedkar. Dr. Ambedkar was born in an untouchable mahar caste, and he was very, very bright. So first he won a scholarship to a high school, and then he won a scholarship to the University of Bombay, and then he won a scholarship to... Columbia University where he got a PhD and then that wasn't enough he got another PhD at the London School of Economics and was admitted to the bar and he returned to India among the most educated people in the country and yet he was still in the eyes of those who governed those who ruled, untouchable.

[05:56]

But he was also unstoppable. And he built a movement. He catalyzed a movement for first attempting to reform the depredations of the caste system by enacting some kinds of reforms within the Hindu society establishment, and he wasn't really successful at that. And in time, by the 30s, he had decided that he was going to convert to another religion. So he was a refugee at his own, within his own society. And it took him quite a while. He studied all of the great religions and all the religions that were extant in India at the time.

[06:59]

And he was courted because he was the leader of a very large community. He was courted by the Sikhs and the Christians and the Muslims and the Jains. And he explored all of those religious traditions quite thoroughly. And he decided... by the late 30s, early 40s, that the proper religion for him was Buddhism. Because he felt that Buddhism embodied the core principles that he needed to be able to share with his community. So in 1954, he wrote the following. He said, Positively, my social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three words, liberty, equality, and fraternity.

[08:08]

Let no one, however, say that I have borrowed my philosophy from the French Revolution. Although actually, he did. He said, I have not. My philosophy has its roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them from the teachings of my master, the Buddha. Two years after that, in 1956, when he was ill and he was concerned about actually being able to complete this act while he was still alive, He called the most prominent monks in India to the city of Nagpur, which is in central India. It's a city that I know very well because it's where the school is that I've been working at. To the conversion grounds, the Diksha Bhumi.

[09:14]

And in the presence of 400,000 people, because they like to keep things small in India, he took the precepts, but essentially he took these refuges, which we just chanted, and he converted publicly to the Buddhist path. And then he turned around and he administered the refuges, to everyone who was present. And all of a sudden there was the renewal and arising of a new Buddhist community in India. And that community is now quite large. It's in the tens of millions of people. And I could say a lot more about it, but...

[10:19]

probably not going to have time here, but if you have more questions, when we go to the dining room, we can talk about that. So they took the refuges. They took these same refuges that we just recited. And then, unfortunately, six weeks later, he died. But that something was set in motion by this process, by this this taking of refuge. We all want refuge. In the Psalms, in the 71st Psalm, there's a line, be to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come. So as we take these refuges, we recognize ourselves as refugees.

[11:23]

This is an issue in our world today, right? I've been, for reasons that were inexplicable to me, visiting refugee camps in situations of where refugees were living for about 25 years now. In Burma it began with people who had been displaced by the civil war that was going on inside Burma. And they were driven out either to the edges of their own country or many of them into very barren camps just over the border in Thailand or over the border in Bangladesh.

[12:31]

And more recently, in March, I was part of a witness delegation that went to the Rohingya camps. in Bangladesh. Hopefully you know about the forced exile and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim people from Burma. First of all, it's horrible. It's also deeply troubling for those of us who had been so devoted to democracy and a Dharmic vision for a new Burma that was emerging from dictatorship. These camps are quite incredible. I can talk more about that also.

[13:35]

A million people. That's a lot of people. Just spread out over sprawling, dusty camps. When I walked into the camp, there was a stream of raw sewage that was running through the middle, right by the main pathway into the camp that we were at. These were refugees, people who had been driven out of their own country, driven out of their villages, which had been burned, many of them subject to rape. women as a political tool to murder of men, women, and children. And I've also been working with these kind of internally exiled communities, communities of untouchables in India.

[14:39]

And it came to me on one of those trips we were We were in Mumbai. And probably many of you have seen Slumdog Millionaire. And this was in one of these so-called slums, which is just where a lot of people live. And this happened to be a large Buddhist community. And it was very interesting because they... We had done some meditation and some puja with people at a kind of street-side vihara meditation place. And then people really wanted us to come back and visit with them in their homes. And so we walked our way into this kind of warren of very, very narrow streets.

[15:41]

Really, like, you know... The passageways between the houses were about the width of one of these tatami mats. And the houses were either constructed of bamboo or sheet metal or some of them were cinder block cubes. Very, very small. But what was interesting was that people really wanted to take us as guests and into their homes to serve as a cup of tea or a cookie, a cracker, to meet their children. And the homes were incredibly orderly, clean, organized. The children were all dressed in You know, clothing is actually relatively inexpensive.

[16:45]

They were dressed really nicely in clean clothes. And the children were all going to school. And the parents were really proud of them. And the parents had... They had fled their villages in rural India and just took a big chance and came to the city because it was... Nothing happening at home. There was no opportunity. There was no school. There was no work. And while the city life may have been marginal to some extent, it was more hopeful. And while I was visiting these homes, what I realized... So these slums are horizontal, right? They just spread out. I realized... My grandparents and great-grandparents were refugees.

[17:48]

They came to New York with nothing. One of my grandfathers basically sold pencils and socks on the street corner. But they were fleeing oppression as all these people that I... were fleeing oppression. They were seeking refuge. And also for their children, what they really desired was that they could educate themselves and have a more promising life. And so there was so much connection that I felt in the story that led me to my life, that they were now living out in different times and different places, seeking refuge.

[18:53]

And my grandparents and great-grandparents' generation, so in New York, the slums weren't horizontal, the slums were vertical. And it was true also that people would come from, just as in these communities in Mumbai, a whole village would live in a certain limited area. And it's just a whole village from Eastern Europe, from the Ukraine or wherever, or Moldova, Belarus. The whole village would live in one or two tenements. And in fact, Now that they're dead, the whole village is in the same cemetery. If you go to this cemetery in New Jersey where they must have had some burial society, there they are.

[20:00]

The whole village is right there. So we all seek refuge. In one of the verses of Thich Nhat Hanh, one of his versions of The Refuge, it has three parts. One of the parts is very interesting. It says, Taking refuge in the Buddha in myself, I aspire to help all people recognize their awakened nature, realizing the mind of love. Taking refuge in the Dharma in myself, I aspire to help all people fully master the ways of practice and walk together on the path of liberation. Taking refuge in the Sangha in myself, I aspire to help all people build fourfold community to embrace all beings and support their transformation.

[21:12]

So this idea of refuge has an outer dimension, something that we flee to or seek shelter or asylum. But I think as we take up this practice, there's an inner dimension that is really deeply important. And whether we know that we're doing this or not, I encourage you to think about it. Think about how do I embody the refuges? This is also Thich Nhat Hanh talks about it. It's also, it echoes the language that the sixth ancestor used in the Platform Sutra where he talks about

[22:18]

He says, good friends, I urge you to take refuge in the three treasures of your own minds. So there's something about the taking refuge that appears to be speaking of self-refuge and something outside of self, a place, or that there's something called refuge. And that's in the language, that's certainly in the language of the Pali in Sanskrit. But in Japanese, there's a kind of different, there's a different gloss on the word. The word that we use for refuge is P.A., which is made up of two characters.

[23:26]

According to Dogen, who we always use as the ultimate authority on everything, the first character means to completely throw oneself into. And the second character, the A, is to rely upon. So it means to have enough faith, to trust, to throw yourself completely into an activity. Whether that activity is our sitting practice, whether that activity is cooking a meal, serving a meal. Blanche Hartman... who was my first sewing teacher, when you sew a rock to a robe, you do namukie butsu, right? And the way she described it was, you have the needle, you plunge into Buddha.

[24:38]

So that's consonant with the meaning in Japanese. Dogen says it's like the way that a child leaps into its parents' arms. We should leap into the three treasures. It's the way we should bow. Just kind of throw yourself into that bow completely. It's the way we do zazan. We should throw ourselves into that zazan completely. It's the way we should love those around us. Throw ourselves into that completely, unreservedly. We should throw ourselves into ourselves. So if you look at the three treasures that way, to take refuge, to throw yourself into the Buddha, means doing just what we're doing right now, taking the physical posture, and that's however we're sitting, whether it's cross-legged or a chair, taking the upright posture of a Buddha.

[26:06]

This is what My friend Tygen Leighton says this posture, he calls it Buddha Mudra. To put yourself, to arrange your body as a Buddha arranges his body. So we compose ourselves that way. That's our composure. And we hold that position, which... Sometimes it's incredibly relaxed. It should be relaxed and flexible. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's painful. And we hold it. We do our best to hold it nonetheless. When we take refuge in Dharma, Dharma has a lot of meanings. In a kind of orthodox way, it means to take refuge in the teachings of the Buddha.

[27:15]

But more to me, it means to throw yourself into the way things are right now. And to set aside in that instant any idea of wanting things to be to be different from how they are. That is the Dharma. The Dharma is how is it right now? And how am I right now as a Buddha in my Buddha posture without wishing things to be different? How do I sit with those things coming together? And then to take refuge in Sangha is to recognize I am not alone.

[28:24]

I do not just exist within this bag of skin. Right now, this whole room is I. not me in some egotistical sense. Right now, we are the big mind in this particular moment and space. The breadth of our connection is beyond our understanding, but we are all sitting here creating this moment. And we're sitting here, some are concentrated. Some are probably bored. Some may be feeling joy. Some may be thinking, when is he going to be done? Whatever. That's all the big I. And this is what, if you look at the Bodhisattva, at the end of this we do the Bodhisattva vows.

[29:37]

Is that right? The Bodhisattva vow, again, of the sixth ancestor, who's kind of one of my heroes, it's like, he has the basic Bodhisattva vow with a little twist. And that twist is, I vow to save, not just I vow to save all sentient beings. He said, I vow to save all, sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to save them. Sentient beings of my mind. So that means all of those characters who inhabit our mind, whoever lived there, the child, the teenager, the fearful person, the joyful person, the loving person, all of them persist within our mind and with certain

[30:37]

when certain conditions arise, that being is reborn. But it's also true that all of us are sentient beings of each other's mind. So we're all in this together. There's a book of Robert Aiken Roshi's that I saw in the bookstore, I was just thinking about as I came in, it's been republished, a book called Zen Master Raven, which is sort of a fable with animals talking to each other about the Dharma. Raven, I think it is, asks brown bear, what is right view?

[31:40]

And Brown Bear says, right view is we're all in this together and there's not a lot of time. So if we look at this in the context of the three refuges, the Buddha is just how I take care of myself and how I recognize Buddha in all beings. The Dharma is Buddhist teachings but it's also the way things are at any given moment and Sangha which traditionally was the community of monks nuns practicing lay people Sangha is just our interdependent society what Dr. Martin Luther King may have spoken of as beloved community.

[32:47]

So I want to circle around in the last few minutes to those words from Dr. Ambedkar when he talks about liberty, equality, and fraternity. I don't use fraternity so much. I'll use community. There's no... There's no good ungendered word for fraternity, but that's, I think, the implication. So I had this awareness, came to me when I was in India, thinking about that, was that, oh, liberty is community. I'm sorry, liberty is the Buddha. The Buddha's way is the way of liberation. What he demonstrated by how he sat, how he walked, how he lived, was a way of liberation that we could call liberty.

[33:59]

Liberty traditionally has a couple of dimensions. To be free from things... He was free from the chains of suffering and also freedom to do things, to act. And he was freedom to move in whichever way he wished with those who approached him. And so he was free to help them be free. So you can equate, there's a resonance between liberty, and Buddha, equality is one of the transcendent ways that we see our lives and the way things are. In certain schools of Buddhism, when your suffering is transformed,

[35:11]

then what you experience is what's called the great mirror wisdom, the great wisdom of equality. Seeing all things as just things that arise and pass away. And that is, in an ultimate way, the way things are. Now, we often get caught by... the edges of that. And yet, in a really deep sense, the dharma is the dharma of equality. And the resonance between community and sangha is obvious. So he was refocusing this deep, deep ancient of Buddhism in the terms of modern social liberation.

[36:23]

And we can do the same. And we can recognize ourselves as refugees and make the connection with all the refugees that we encounter in the world. those who are homeless in the streets, those who are coming over our borders through difficult treks in the desert, those who are fleeing Syria, those who are fleeing Burma. When you go to these places, yes, of course, the circumstances are really, really difficult, but What do you see when you get there? You see other people. You really see it in the children. It's like children are children.

[37:25]

They have all the life and promise. And even in these difficult circumstances, there's a joy that erupts like the grass breaking through concrete in the street. And this is us. These are our children. These people that we encounter as refugees along the way are us. And I think that the practice just sitting here, just sitting facing the wall, is the way we recognize recognize our commonality. It's waking up to our complete connection and oneness. We may feel the two-ness because that's part of it too, but we return to the oneness.

[38:33]

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. So I think that's actually a really good place to stop. So thank you very much. And I look forward to having some discussion with you in a few minutes. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:23]

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