(Tsem Rinpoche) The real meaning of Buddhist "refuge"
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| The Buddhist Catechism (Amazon) |
But people still misunderstand and scholar mindlessly repeat the mistake without ever taking a closer look at the word and the potential confusion they are causing.
There is only one real "refuge" in the phenomenal universe, and the historical Buddha called that nirvana. Nirvana is the further shore, the real place of safety beyond rebirth. Everything in samsara is beset by disappointments and dangers on all sides.
Aside from nirvana, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the [Enlightened] Sangha are precious jewels we can resort to for GUIDANCE on the path, for encouragement, inspiration, and clarification.
We ourselves must make the effort. No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha merely POINT the way.]
Going for Guidance?
Saranam or "guidance," Col. Olcott explains: "This word has been hitherto very inappropriately and erroneously rendered 'refuge' by European Pali scholars and thoughtlessly so accepted by native Pali scholars," Wijesinha Mudaliyar writes to him to point out.
Neither Pali etymology nor Buddhist philosophy justifies the translation. "Refuge," in the sense of a fleeing back or a place of shelter, is quite foreign to true Buddhism, which insists on every person working out one's own emancipation [liberation, salvation, enlightenment].
The root Sṛ in Sanskrit (sara in Pali) means to move, to go, so that saranam would denote a moving, or one or that which goes before or with another—a Guide or Helper.
The translation of the Ti-saraṇa as the "Three Refuges" has given rise to much misapprehension and has been made by anti-Buddhists a fertile pretext for taunting Buddhists with the absurdity of taking refuge in non-entities and believing in unrealities.
The term "refuge" is more applicable to Nirvaṇa, of which saranam is a synonym.
The [Abbot] Sumangala also calls my attention to the fact that the Pali root sara has the secondary meaning of killing, or that which destroys.
Buddham saranam gacchami [Dhammam saranam gacchami, Sangham saranam gacchami] might thus be rendered "I go to the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the [Noble] Order as the destroyers of my fears—the first by his teaching, the second by its axiomatic truth, the third by their various [enlightened] examples and precepts." Source
- Singalong: The Three Jewels of Buddhism: Mantra and Meaning
- Tsem Rinpoche (video); Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, The Buddhist Catechism (BPS.lk); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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