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Inner Refuge:
Refuge as Internal Understanding
Buddha is being awake
Buddha means awakened: the sleep of ignorance is cleared away and all qualities are fully developed. To take refuge in buddha means to acknowledge and accept that peace can and will be found only in your own mind, in the empty, clear awareness that is your human heritage. No external reference, be it money, power, relationship, physical well-being, or intellectual, artistic, psychic or sensory ability can bring about freedom from a disturbed mind.
Dharma is experiential understanding
The Dharma is the knowing of compassion, impermanence, non-self, emptiness, etc. in you. These are no longer theoretical concepts but qualities which you know experientially. They have become part of your make-up and interaction with the world of experience.
The instructions of the external Dharma are mere words until they become experienced understanding in you.
Sangha is making use of experience
The Sangha is making use of everything that arises in experience to cultivate, develop, and deepen your understanding of impermanence, compassion, and emptiness. To take refuge in the Sangha as an internal understanding is to let all resistance to experience drop.
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