I followed the precepts perfectly by being absorbed into state of awareness, and long before becoming a socalled “buddhist”.
Isness is perfect
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I do not think so.
Taking refuge with the full understanding of the meaning of it more fruitful than observing precepts.
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Taking refuge for me was basically affirming that I believe and accept the Buddhas words, as transmitted by the Sangha (in the widest sense), and am using them to guide me, .
The precepts from my perspective are guidelines that enable following the N8fp in an effective fashion. The more the precepts, the easier the N8fp…
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I guess there is a small amount of tension between “buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi” and “attadīpā viharatha attasaraṇā” (“be your own island, your own refuge”, translation Ven Sujāto).
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I take your point, but based on my little scan of the suttas I’m personally inclined to view things slightly differently. One of the clearest things that stood out in my eyes when I was looking at these texts is that refuge followed someone (or a group) being deeply impressed with the reasoned explanation/teaching the Buddha offered.
In all the suttas in which gorillas rolled on the floor laughing (
) folk went for refuge I don’t think there was any exception to the detail of logical explanation having won them over.
The point is perhaps particularly drawn out in, for example, SN 55.24 where the Buddha explains to Mahānāma:
If these great sal trees could understand what was well said and poorly said, I’d declare them to be stream-enterers. Why can’t this apply to Sarakāni? Mahānāma, Sarakāni the Sakyan undertook the training at the time of his death.
Sarakāni is a lay follower who, despite using alcohol, the Buddha declared could not be born in a lower realm as he had taken refuge.
My impression is that going for refuge is actually a bit more like taking on the Buddha’s teachings as a working hypothesis having listened to something that makes sense.
The point is further supported, by the fact that ‘faith’ is highlighted as a separate faculty. See eg. SN 55.37
“Sir, how is a lay follower defined?”
…
“But how is a faithful lay follower defined?”
Faith seems to pertain more to trusting the Buddha is, indeed, an awakened being (as per the stock 9 point declaration of faith given in the sutta). This would point to refuge being something different (as I say, for my money, something more like a broader feeling that the Buddha’s description of how things are and the way they work makes (logical) sense when examined. MN 95 might be another sutta to support this view)
I can relate! I can report that my little exercise has made me a whole bunch more at ease with this question.
Again, in connection to my little exercise, I feel a little differently about this. Yes, going for refuge can just be taken as a simple stock declaration that one is a Buddhist, and it clearly seems that this is the way those of the suttas did it. It can perhaps be taken as an almost run-of-the-mill thing, in this respect.
But I don’t think that’s the only way it can be related to. I don’t think any ‘imitation’ is required (or possible) when (as an internal matter) one says to oneself, “Oh my goodness, the Buddha was an utter genius when it comes to understanding the human condition!!!” and feeling the delight that goes along with the recognition.
Well, yes sure, but the reason I framed the matter in the OP as I did is because I wanted to invite a more technical examination of what exactly refuge is. How does it work?
Looking at the suttas it would seem that one component of refuge concerns rebirth. In several places the idea of those who have taken refuge being guaranteed an alright rebirth comes up.
But then, more practically, in everyday, here-and-now terms, how precisely is a sense of refuge–a place of security, rest, ease–generated in turning to the triple gem. Tentatively, speaking for myself, it is not something that is readily experienced, but something that I have to ‘work at’ a little to call up. It is only in, for example, considering some awesome bit of the teaching that at times I can have any tangible sense of refuge.
Examining things in a precise way may help one to be more proficient at taking refuge (and thus better enjoy its protection).
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Although it didn’t appear in the search results, I feel the Dhajagga sutta pertains to taking refuge, or at least something similar to taking refuge. The instructions are to “remember” or “recollect” (depending on the translation) the Buddha, Dhamma, and Saṅgha. Now for me, since I have never met the Buddha as a living being, it is impossible for me to directly recollect the Buddha. At best, I can recollect Buddha images I have seen, or stories of the Buddha’s life that I have heard. Dhamma and Saṅgha I have direct experience with, so I can access those memories.
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Yes, there are no doubt many other suttas that pertain to taking refuge, but for quick do-ability I limited my little exploration to results from the search terms given in the OP. I’d be the first to be highly suspicious of the thoroughness and infallibility of the scan, but seeing as it’s purpose was just to help formulate sketchy impressions, the method was good enough for my needs.
Two suttas (MN84 & MN94) I came across conclude in someone going for refuge after the Buddha had died having listened to a discourse of one of the Buddha’s disciples. At first the individual asks to take refuge in the disciple that delivered the discourse, but in both cases the disciple says:
don’t go for refuge to me. You should go for refuge to that same Blessed One to whom I have gone for refuge.
The suttas go on:
“But where is that Blessed One at present, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha?” “Great king [/Ghoṭamukha], the Buddha has already become fully extinguished.” “Master Kaccāna [/Master Udena], if I heard that the Buddha was within ten leagues, or twenty, or even up to a hundred leagues away, I’d go a hundred leagues to see him. But since the Buddha has become fully extinguished, I go for refuge to that fully extinguished Buddha, to the teaching, and to the Saṅgha. From this day forth, may Master Kaccāna [/Master Udena] remember me as a lay follower who has gone for refuge for life.”
Tying back in to the point about faith above, here I think the key detail is that a person is willing to take a reason-grounded leap of faith (that will come to be verified when one makes the breakthrough oneself) that the Buddha was awakened irrespective of whether you met him or not. ‘Recollecting the Buddha’ I believe it is bit different to recalling someone you’ve met, but rather reflecting on his 9 qualities given in the stock ‘remembrance’ found all over the suttas.
More broadly though, I too, thought it was valuable to look at how those who had taken refuge spoke of the Buddha, being particularly struck by Upāli’s verses of reverence towards the Buddha in front of Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta.
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If taking refuge is the foundation of everything else, why is it not mentioned in the standard textual formulations of the eightfold path?
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Indeed. It seems to be something that practitioners do of their own free will and decision, not out of a obligation for salvation. The Buddha, afaik, doesn’t proscribe it, but it is done by his followers in the old scriptures all the same.
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Completely agree! Again, I crossed passed a number of suttas, where he actively encouraged people to consider carefully before taking refuge where they themselves were eager to do so immediately.
Also there is this from AN 4.193:
“Well, Bhaddiya, did I say to you: ‘Please, Bhaddiya, be my disciple, and I will be your teacher’?” “No, sir.” “Though I speak and explain like this, certain ascetics and brahmins misrepresent me with the false, baseless, lying, untruthful claim: ‘The ascetic Gotama is a magician. He knows a conversion magic…
All the same, as the great bulk of suttas make pretty clear, going for refuge is the mode by which one humbles oneself enough to admit the likelihood, or even the possibility, that Buddha’s wisdom does, indeed, lead to liberation. It is a point made explicitly clear in the Mahānāmasutta suttas, with:
Sir, how is a lay follower defined?” “Mahānāma, when you’ve gone for refuge to the Buddha, the teaching, and the Saṅgha, you’re considered to be a lay follower.
Bringing this round to speak to the initiating question, I’m a little bit at a loss as to how it might be possible for me to reconcile the notion that declaring (if only to oneself) a basic, working acceptance of the theory could be anything other than a necessary foundation for realising the practice.
Of course, I say this knowing that people will pick up and negotiate the Buddha’s teachings in all sorts of ways, from all sorts of perspectives and I’m certainly very happy to salute whatever ways people find work for them.
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Yes, but we really don’t know when that practice took hold, or how it evolved from the informal practice of becoming one of the Buddha’s followers to a part of the kit of rituals and religious formalisms that eventually emerged as “Buddhism.”
I find it hard to believe that the Buddha would have regarded the ritualized act of “taking refuge in the Buddha” at any time after he, the Buddha, had died as anything other than mumbo-jumbo. His last advice was to be one’s own refuge.
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I find it very easy to believe that the Buddha would encourage followers (within his own life time and after it) interested in his path to allow for the possibility that he was an awakened being and set out a workable method for others to awaken. If a one were not willing to permit these two details I’d certainly be highly bemused as to what there would be left for a follower to follow.
I think this is the only point in the discussion any notion of ‘ritualised’ anything has been brought into the picture. I certainly had no interest in ritual when initiating the inquiry.
From where I’m sitting, taking refuge is an internal matter whereby one is granted some little or great amount of ease of being and gladness of heart for the feeling of having come by a teaching that really might lift them out of suffering for good. Dwelling on the possibility that the Buddha was awakened, that the Dhamma is awesome and that other people have actually managed to realise the teaching may be taken as a place of rest, as a stabilising reflection, as a protection from all kinds of wildness the mind can get up to; as a refuge. No rituals required.
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Well I will then return to my original question. If taking refuge is so important, why did the Buddha not include it in the path?
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I think that’s a matter between you and your god? 
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Isn’t it implicit? This pericope occurs all over the place:
“Magnificent, Master Gotama! Magnificent, Master Gotama! Master Gotama has made the Dhamma clear in many ways, as though he were turning upright what had been overthrown, revealing what was hidden, showing the way to one who was lost, or holding up a lamp in the darkness for those with eyesight to see forms. We go to Master Gotama for refuge and to the Dhamma and to the Sangha of bhikkhus. From today let Master Gotama accept us as lay followers who have gone to him for refuge for life.”
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There are lots of pericopes in the Sutta Pitaka. I think the challenge is to figure out which ones are the most important and most authentic.
I have no problem with the idea that it makes no sense to follow a purported path to the end of suffering if you don’t believe that that path leads somewhere good, and that the person who developed and taught that path knew something directly about where it leads.
But I think we should be skeptical about ideas in the suttas that seem to suggest the importance of undergoing some kind of initiation, being accepted into some kind of organization, or having an official identity that has been validated as bona fide.
After all, what difference does it make to the individual practitioner whether anyone else has “accepted” them as a practitioner of a certain kind? Either their practice is wholesome or it isn’t.
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In my experience, Theravada refuges and precepts are just something one does. Basically, the lay person/persons say “Give me the refuges and precepts”, which they repeat after the monastic. Taking the Five Precepts | A Chanting Guide
Not really an initiation, more of a reminder, and a sense of community participation, which, at my local monastery occurs on Uposatha days or Sundays, before lunch. The lay people take refuges and precepts and offer requisites to the monastics…
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For me this aspect didn’t come into at all! not .0001%.
I think that I probably fitted into the category of independently seeking refuge, without even knowing what that was, before starting to study B more systematically. In that instance I was already taking “refuge” in the Buddha and the Dhamma. It was that personal feeling of having shelter (in all senses), when needed. I had trouble with the idea of elevating the Sangha to that same level. But over time, I have come to see, that without the Sangha, access to the Dhamma, as espoused by the Buddha, would be lost over time. In this way I see the absolute necessity to have each of the 3 parts of the triple gem.
I don’t see this as essential - but it is very useful. A supportive group of Kalyanamitta, purposefully and consciously mixing with ‘ariya’ > all part of the N8fp
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I will begin with my usual disclaimer that I am not a scholar of early Buddhist texts. I will also acknowledge that “refuge” is the English translation of languages used in EBTs, and yet some people are cautious about relying on definitions of English words used in translation inasmuch as dictionaries can only tell us so much about the meanings of words in use.
Having said all that, it would appear that “taking refuge” in Buddhist practice has both a literal and metaphorical meaning. As @Viveka rightly points out, one can metaphorically take refuge in the Buddha and the Dhamma as the sources of enlightenment in a world confronted with suffering.
@Viveka also correctly notes that the Sangha can serve as a literal refuge, that is, a place to reside in away from that which distracts us from practice. I exchanged some correspondence with one of my teachers recently who commended me for spending time at my local Wat, taking the opportunity to be healed (figuratively speaking) by the benevolent influence of the monks in residence. His point is well-taken
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