Take Refuge
guided meditations
Take Refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Take refuge in love, insight and community.
Taking refuge is the first preliminary practice of basic mindfulness. These are the concepts that draw many of us to Buddhist practice in the first place and should be firmly fixed in our awareness in order to proceed through the process of a mindfulness meditation practice.
Take Refuge in the Buddha
15 min. guided meditation
Taking Refuge in Buddha is the first of the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; love, insight and community.
The Buddha was human, not a god. The Buddha is free. We don't worship the Buddha, we follow the path and the teachings of the Buddha. What the Buddha achieved, we can achieve.
Buddhism is happiness practice. Cultivate love, compassion, joy and ease. Put aside hatred, cruelty, envy and indifference. Point yourselves at the Brahmavihāras – the four divine states.
Envision the end game. Land in Love like a Buddha.
Take Refuge in Dharma
20 min. guided meditation
Taking Refuge in Dharma is the second of the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; love, insight and community.
When we take refuge in Dharma we plant the seeds of impermanence, not self and and the four noble truths: there is suffering; there is a cause of suffering; there is an end to suffering; and there is a path that leads to the end of suffering.
Buddhist psychology and cosmology are rooted it the idea that self, and all matter and phenomena are free of intrinsic nature. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of understand impermanence, self and suffering and abandoning clinging to and craving for permanence and self – the cause of suffering.
It won't last, it's not personal and it will never satisfy.
Take Refuge in Sangha
18 min. guided meditation
Taking Refuge in Sangha is the third of the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; love, insight and community.
When we take refuge in Sangha we take refuge in faith, community, and humanity: in Buddhas and Boddhisatvas; in bhikkhus and householders, and that all beings will be free.
We contemplate the Buddhas and Boddhisattvas that have realized fruition, are off the wheel, that have done what needed to be done and we understand that they too were human, that fruition is possible.
We understand that we are part of a community of practitioners who are on the path. We are not alone. And we understand that all beings are destined for enlightenment, and we take the Boddhisattva vows:
All beings without number I vow to liberate
Endless blind passions I vow to uproot
Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate
The way of the Buddha I vow to achieve
These guided meditations are intended to help deliver meditative peace, ease and openness while embedding basic mindfulness techniques as well as the fundamentals of Buddhist psychology and cosmology.
The first instruction is always breathe in and breathe out. The second is listen don't listen. When in doubt stay with your breath. Words are secondary.
Meditation is the beating heart of Buddhism.
Daily practice brings the dharma alive and frees it up to land in our body and permeate our householder life.