Dhamma is the second jewel, the second of the three refuges in Buddhist practice. When we take refuge in Dhamma, we seek and find safety in the truth of the way things actually are, everywhere, warts and all.
Taking refuge in Dhamma is a state of meditative relaxed alert attention, neither trying to get rid of anything nor caught in the habits of indulgence of the pleasant and suppression of the unpleasant—not trying to make things fit our idea of how they should be, but understanding, through looking deeply, how they truly are. We can open ourselves here and now to the way it is, rather than attaching to the way we romantically think things ought to be.
Meeting the flow of life as Dhamma (teaching), clarity and peacefulness emerge.
Not waiting for someone else to realize the truth for us, we see Dhamma for ourselves right here and now in this seemingly imperfect daily life, in the hurly burly of interaction and responsibilities; in mind/heart/body internal and external reality, and their relationship. Wisdom viscerally sees the truth of the constantly changing, insubstantial, subtle, diaphonous and tenuous nature of all life; the truth of unsatisfactoriness, its cause, its ceasing and the Path to its ceasing; the inexorable law that all words and actions have consequences; and the dryness of a life lived without kindness and compassion.
Seeing, we stop. Stopping, we find refuge in Dhamma. Wisdom opens the way to spaciousness, to living in safety. Deep and long outbreath.
Have a peaceful week.
With metta,
Gina Sharpe
Guiding Teacher