I’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re all going through and pondering the best ways to cope and carry on in a positive way. This concept of REFUGE comes up for me often - and it’s a daily part of my personal practice - a solitary sacred act of taking shelter in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha - the teacher, teachings and community. A symbolic act of accepting protection, safety, respite, reprieve, and support. In doing so, I’ve thought about what this means, how it feels and when I’ve felt this way at other times in my life.
I’m taken back to my childhood, growing up in the farm country of Southern Indiana. Until I was about twelve to thirteen years old I took refuge in my family. It was an idyllic scene: fields of corn, wheat and soybeans, extended family all around, freedom to roam wherever we wanted, knowing that we were always a stone’s throw away from someone that loved us - someone that claimed us as their own.
For me personally, and I’m sure for many others in the family, the epicenter of that feeling of refuge was my Grandma and Grandpa Beard. There was something about their steadiness, their grounded, salt of the earth presence that felt completely safe - completely loved.
Around the time I turned 12, something began to shift in me. I began to feel different in a way that I knew was pulling me away from them, in a way that I began to know was unacceptable. I began to feel unworthy of the refuge - less and less safe, less and less accepted, even though, at that point, nothing had changed on their end other than the passage of time…
By the time I went to Purdue I had become a reject in my mind -and the distance between me and my family was vast - it was a running away of sorts. By the time I moved to NYC in 2000 my relationship with the family was almost nonexistent. Looking back now, I can see that this left me vulnerable to what came next, violence.
I experienced a period of almost no refuge as I allowed myself to be part of an emotional, mentally and physically abusive relationship.
Then, shortly before I met Richard in 2003 (who would become a strong source of safety and acceptance), I entered Jivamukti Yoga School. The teachers, the teachings, the community gave me a glimpse of refuge. In the 15 years that followed I traversed a path of exploration, revelation, discovery, doubt, mis-steps, and re-directs.
Patanjali tells us that we will face hurdles on the path:
Vyādhi-styāna-saṃśaya-pramāda-alasya-avirati-bhrānti-darśana-alabdha-bhūmikatvānavasthitatvāni cittavikṣepās te 'ntarāyāḥ || 1.30 ||
Sickness, sloth, doubt, carelessness, laziness, incontinence, false perception, not obtaining a [firm] ground, and instability—these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.
And that those hurdles will have tangible consequences:
duḥkhadaurmanasyāṅgamejayatvaśvāsapraśvāsā vikṣepasahabhuvaḥ || 1.31 ||
Suffering, ill-mindedness, trembling of the limbs, [irregular] inhalation and exhalation
accompany the distractions.
I learned to accept and learn from it all. I gained faith in my path, in my practice. I took refuge in it and I ended up here. Patanjali also gives us guidance on how to persevere:
śraddhāvīryasmṛtisamādhiprajñāpūrvaka itareṣām || 1.20 ||
For others, [Asaṃprajñāta Samādhi] is preceded by faith, virility, recollection, absorption, and wisdom.
(Translations by Seth Powell, Yogic Studies)
The early years of family based refuge came so easily, naturally, without effort. Like that - as much as is possible for adults with all our baggage and cultural conditioning - the refuge we seek, and may find through yoga, may also BE. It’s a refuge provided by our own hearts and minds.
I think the reason we here - so many of us - start with the BODY is because it is our most immediately accessible source/place of existence. We literally live in it from the first breath to our last. And we came into it due to karma and disturbing emotions. And our relationship with it contains absolutely every possible aspect of the human experience.
It’s a bit of a trickster - changing all the time - which can make the relationship fraught with strife and struggle, but also a super valuable teacher for learning and accepting the lessons of impermanence - an absolute must for any hope of reaching ultimate liberation. The body represents a microcosm of the macrocosm and using it as a meditative device in a purposeful expressive way provides the opportunity for contemplation - working with/against all that is within, the samskaras (patterns, habits, tendencies - our imbedded ways of thinking and acting) to uproot, reset and transform. In this way, our body gradually, in a grander sense, becomes a more hospitable place of shelter -- whether in sickness and disease or health and happiness - ALL are possibly seen as PATH - opportunity to put the teachings into practice. It is a “Coming home to yourself”, as I recently heard Ashtanga teacher, Alex Medin, say.
One of my favorite verses in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika speaks to this directly when it says in the first chapter, 10th verse, “Like a house protecting one from the heat of the sun, Hatha Yoga protects its practiser from the burning heat of the three Tâpas (spiritual, environmental and physical); and, similarly, it is the supporting tortoise, as it were, for those who are constantly devoted to the practice of Yoga.”
And this shelter effect expands beyond our body -- into all the other elements of our practice. As my dear friend Hari-kirtana das recently said “With time, through practice, we become less attracted to the material satisfactions/attachments -- and more and more attracted to the spiritual attainments.” The refuge is right there within us….