So, we talked a little bit about White Tara yesterday, who she is and her relationship with all the
Buddhas. She, on one hand, could be seen as a particular Buddha; or as a sentient being
who attained enlightenment in that form; or as the manifestation of all the Buddhas’
omniscient minds. There are many ways to look at White Tara. But the sadhana starts out
with taking refuge, and all of our practices start out with refuge because taking refuge
is making a clear distinction in our own mind about what our spiritual path is. And that’s
very important because if we aren’t clear on what our spiritual path is, then we can’t
practice very well, because we’re going here and going there and we’re wobbling.
So here we say, “I take refuge until I’m enlightened in the Buddha, the Dharma and
the Sangha.” So that's a statement of what spiritual tradition we’re following and what our practice is.
So, the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are known as the Three Jewels. The Buddha is the teacher
who discovered the path to enlightenment through his own experience, and then taught it to
the rest of us in this world out of compassion in order to lead us to liberation and enlightenment.
The Dharma in one way can be viewed as the teachings; in other way, and in a stricter
sense, the Dharma is the true path and the true cessations. In other words, the realizations
in the mindstreams of those beings who have seen the nature of reality directly; and the
cessations of unsatisfactory conditions and of afflictions that they also have [ceased]
due to having realized the nature of reality.
And then the Sangha that we take refuge in is all those who have directly perceived the
nature of reality. Sometimes people use the word Sangha to mean a Buddhist group, but
that’s not the strict meaning of the word. And calling a Buddhist group a Sangha can
be very confusing because we don’t really take refuge in the group of people who are
as confused as we are. We practice together with them, but the actual Sangha we take refuge
in are those that have direct perception of reality.
So when we do the practice of taking refuge here in the Tara sadhana, in the space in
front of us, we imagine White Tara. All of our visualizations are made of light; we imagine
them as light, not a statue or picture of White Tara, but an actual being with a body
made of light. And she’s surrounded by all the other Buddhas and bodhisattvas. We imagine
that we’re surrounded by all the sentient beings and we are leading them in turning
to Tara and the Buddhas and bodhisattvas for refuge.
And it’s with that kind of mind and then the visualization that we say, “I take refuge
until I’m enlightened in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.” And while we say
that, then we imagine light coming from Tara, and the other Buddhas and bodhisattvas into
us, purifying any kind of negativity that we’ve created with respect to the Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha; and bringing the blessings of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, their inspiration,
into our mindstream so that we can gain their qualities.
So that's is how we think when we take refuge and why we take refuge.