One’s taking refuge is a principle practice within the Tibetan Bön-Buddhist tradition. Generally, when we take refuge, we are seeking help and a higher support and more clarity. While there are different forms of refuge in the various doctrines of Bön and Buddhism, it always comes down to the same idea: that we are seeking support from somewhere that we can truly trust.

Recently I wrote a short six-line prayer called Prayer of Secret Refuge. It’s actually not a new concept, nor something that I have created. It already exists within the tradition, but it’s not highlighted or emphasized enough. As you know, I have been emphasizing the Inner Refuge Prayer for many years. I wrote this refuge not to replace that one, but to give you another option if you resonate with it. I feel that both of these refuge prayers are well-suited to the dispositions of those here in the West.

Prayer of Secret Refuge
I take refuge in the vast sky of being.
I take refuge in awareness, clear light.
I take refuge in the union of being and awareness.

From this union, may compassion spontaneously arise.
May all obstacles be cleared in service to others,
And in service to others, may I come home.

You’ll notice that there is a space between the first three lines of this refuge prayer and the last three lines. I recommend that you recite the first three lines regularly, and then you can add the last three lines as often as you would like.

This morning I will explain just a little bit about only the first three lines, but not in the context of religion or a specific faith, but rather more in the sense of a universal awareness; something that underlies all movement and every change. Then I will show you how important their effect is on our making lasting improvements along our health and wellness journey, the theme of our retreat.

If we consider what the essence of the teachings is – it is what this refuge prayer is pointing to – being, awareness and the union of being and awareness. These lines are not referring to Buddha, or Allah, or Christ. Rather, being, awareness, and the union of being and awareness are universal.

The first line is, I take refuge in the vast sky of being. Here being points to who we are. And rather than giving you an introduction to dzogchen or the nature of mind, what I want to do is at least to instill doubt in you – doubt about who you think you are. This is important because most of the time, when people refer to themselves in a very strong way, they don’t have any doubt about it whatsoever.

For instance, when they say, I am sick. I am confused. Or, I am lost, they say it with so much confidence. However, they are wrong. They are absolutely wrong. They’re not sick, or confused or lost. Rather, they are having some moments of experience of that. And you should be very careful about how you define and label that, and also how you integrate it on a deep psychological level. Because, when you say I’m sick, and then you begin to identify as I’m sick for any length of time, then I guarantee that it will interfere with the process of healing. You don’t realize it, but those words and that kind of language have a power, because deep inside us, our inner psyche doesn’t distinguish them as simply just words. No, the words have a power.

In the first line, when it refers to being, I would like you to at least come to have doubts about the pain identities that you have habitually identified with. And then you can come to reflect in yourself: when I say I am not well, should I say that? No, I am having experiences of that. It’s not me that is unwell. I am well. I am good. I am happy. I am at peace. I am endowed with all of the spontaneous enlightened perfected qualities.

That is the I am. That is being. And on any journey, we at least want to have some sense of that, and reflect: I have a desire, a longing, and I’m seeking to have a connection with that sense of me. No tradition should have a problem with this idea. Would anyone here happen to feel any conflict with that idea? No. That’s the power of this first line of the Secret Refuge Prayer: I take refuge in the vast sky of being.

The second line is: I take refuge in awareness, clear light. These days people speak a lot about attention. Our attention is so important in our life. And considering the subject of attention further, we can come to a deeper level of its meaning – that of awareness. You bring your focus of attention to various objects, but awareness is a deeper understanding of whatever you are turning your attention to.

At any given moment in your life, there are an infinite number of possibilities for where you can place your attention. And of course, everybody has unconscious patterns for where they will place it. Unfortunately, though, many people are not putting their attention in the right places. The right place means in the optimistic place, the one where the glass is seen as half full rather than half empty. Or the one where our life is seen as not bad rather than as miserable. There will always be something that you can turn your attention to that makes you unhappy. And as I said, it is a very unconscious process that leads you to doing so.

Unless of course, you become more conscious about yourself, and you are aware and clear on some deeper level that you have choices in every given situation to see it one way versus another, and that you can simply choose differently. Then you will naturally come to know that you can always choose differently – and you’ll see that you can shift your perception of yourself and of how you feel in a single second. The result will be that your perception and your understanding of what you are seeing is interpreted in a totally new and different way.

Now, the third line of this refuge prayer says, I take refuge in the union of being and awareness. That means that if being is beautiful, and if the awareness is very clear and effective, then just imagine what the union of those two will do. There’s really not much that can go wrong there. Because if you are in that place, then spontaneously, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and your perceptions of self, and your voice, and your ideas, and your kindness and your compassion – they will all manifest from that union. The Bön Dzogchen master, Dawa Gyaltsen, taught in his five-fold teachings that the product of this union of being and awareness is bliss. It’s a joy. It’s an optimistic direction, for sure. And if there is that bliss, if there is that joy, if there is that warmth, then behavioral changes will be much easier to make.

This retreat is primarily focused on wellness. And improving one’s wellness has to do with behavioral change, because there is no way that you can become healthier unless you change your behavior. Now, behavior change may sound like it’s an easy thing for you to do. However, changing one’s behavior becomes much harder when it’s just for the sake of your needing to change, rather than because you are actually finding a joy in changing that particular behavior. Otherwise, it becomes a hard project, a painful journey and an effortful thing. The only way that any health journey can really work is when you discover a joy in it.

So, health and well-being have something to do with behavioral change, and behavioral change has something to do with attention, awareness and identity, which has something to do with discovering joy in the right places, which means healthy places. For instance, you discover joy in sleeping rather than in playing games into the evening or chatting, or going out and partying.

We talk a lot about suffering in Buddhism, don’t we? The Four Noble Truths and the recognition of suffering, and so on. Does suffering have a place in life? Absolutely. Will people suffer? Yes, there’s not even a question of that. But most of the time people do more of it than is necessary. And I don’t encourage anybody to suffer more.

Rather, I encourage you to look for joy – but specifically, joy in the right place. How do you define what the right place is versus the wrong place? Well, from the viewpoint of the ultimate truth, the base, it doesn’t matter whether you habitually eat a big sugary breakfast, or have a very healthy, savory breakfast. Either way we will all die. But from the conventional-truth point of view, you have this biological body, and there are very clear biological rules that govern this body. And what matters to us directly is this body – this conventional truth. Therefore, this body needs to be respected. So come back to this body, and allow the body to tell you what the right ways and the wrong ways are to find the joy, rather than listening to what your pain mind tells you, and certainly not what your addiction tells you.

But given the very deteriorated health within our society today, many people are listening to their addicted pain identities and just speaking from there. Oh, I love ice cream! Okay, who is it in you that is saying that? It’s not you. However, if at that moment, it feels like you, then you must ask the question, is there anyone else in me who doesn’t like ice cream? That is your self-discovery, not the self-discovery of finding the Buddha nature in you. Rather, it is to at least discover another and better pain identity in you that can help you sustain this body better. And the good news is that if you can identify with one pain identity, then you can certainly identify equally with another one. And this body will clearly tell you which of those two pain identities is the right one for you.

With the results of blood tests and the biomarker measurements that are readily available today, you can find out directly from each organ and each system in your body what the right ways are for you to find joy. Checking these results over time, they will tell you, if you measure them. And every biomarker is affected by your behavior.

At the end of the day, though, I think that all of these markers are related to inflammation and stress. And the stress is very much related to your pain identity, and to your attention and to the degree of awareness that you have. You may find yourself in a very difficult situation, but not stressed out; your body is not responding to it with stress. Rather, the body is feeling okay. This is a very difficult situation that I’m in at this moment, but my body is feeling fine. The body is able to accommodate, because of your mind. Your inner attention, your inner awareness is able to pay attention to those things and it’s able to host them. It’s this being, attention, awareness, and joy that is able to create more space to host, and it gives a different perspective and is able to accommodate differently.

And I have experienced this directly, and have come to see, that it’s a joy to respect my body. And it is very much a compassion to take care of my body. And, that it is also a joy and respect for my family and my children, too, because I will have more time to spend with them. And it is also a respect for my community, because I can serve them over more time in my life. And it is a respect for myself, that I can explore whatever new fun things that I find. Respecting my body is something that is a gift for all. And that is the relationship that we want to have with our taking care of ourselves. Okay?