This is the root, this is the foundation, this is the absolute bedrock of our spiritual life; this is how we really start practising the path: by going for refuge.
Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels
Buddhism includes many different schools and traditions, and there have been many approaches to making Buddhism accessible in the modern world. This naturally leads us to ask if Buddhism is really a collection of traditions or if something unites the tradition as a whole.
Triratna's approach grows out of the way Sangharakshita, our community's founder, responded to these questions. During his years living in India as a Buddhist monk (bikkhu or bhikshu), he learned from a range of Buddhist traditions, practised their teachings and investigated their meaning, all the time seeking the core of the tradition. He believed that, for all its seeming complexity, everything we call Buddhism is designed to support people wanting to follow a path to Awakening or Enlightenment, and everything we inherit from the long history of Buddhism needs to be viewed in relation to that aim.
To be a Buddhist is to follow that path. For Sangharakshita, this is best expressed through the most fundamental of all Buddhist practices: Going for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Together, the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are known as the Three Jewels or Triratna (where get our name as a community). These are Buddhism’s highest ideals, and Going for Refuge is the traditional Buddhist term for committing ourselves to the Three Jewels by making them the centre of our life.
Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels has always been the way a person becomes a Buddhist, and every day around the world millions of Buddhists chant verses committing themselves to living out these ideals. This is often seen as the start of the Buddhist path but, for Sangharakshita, Going for Refuge in fact contains the whole of the path. However complex particular Buddhist teachings may be, they come back to this.
Listen to Buddhists chanting their commitment to the Three Jewels (Tiratanavandana)
Going for Refuge to the Buddha means seeing the Buddha as our ultimate teacher and spiritual example, and committing to reaching Buddhahood. Going for Refuge to the Dharma means seeing the Buddhist teachings as a reliable guide to understanding life and how we should act, and then devoting ourself to following that path. Going for Refuge to the Sangha means regarding our teachers and our companions on the path as our true community.
For Triratna, recognising the centrality of Going for Refuge is the key to making Buddhism available to people in the modern world in its full depth. It encourages us to examine whether ancient ways of practising remain helpful today; and at the same time, it suggests that we should take care not to lose the essential, timeless values that are embodied in The Three Jewels.
As well as the different schools and traditions, in many settings the Buddhist community, is divided between monastic followers and lay followers, as well as between men and women. Triratna focuses instead on our shared commitment to the Three Jewels, which we consider more fundamental than the various ways of understanding the Buddhist path or one’s place in the community.
