“The basic instruction is simple: Start taking off that armor.”
~ Pema Chödrön
Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels
Earlier I wrote about the late Catholic theologian John Dunne’s method of “passing over” as a form of religious thought and self-examination. Passing over involves the conscious, intentional movement from the standpoint of our lives to those of others by entering into a sympathetic understanding of them and thereby finding resonances between their lives and our own. From there we come back to our standpoint enriched and with new self-understanding.1
In light of this, I’d like to pass over to a teaching of the American Buddhist Pema Chödrön and then back to the Christian experience. In her book The Wisdom of No Escape Chödrön has a provocative, illuminating, and challenging interpretation of the Buddhist teaching of taking refuge in the three jewels which is instructive for the H&H community. Her words bear fresh wisdom and offer challenging implications not only for us as a Christian spiritual formation community but also for spouses, good friends, co-ministers, colleagues, and members of faith communities.
The three jewels in Buddhism are the Buddha (awakening), the dharma (teaching), and the sangha (community). If the first jewel in Buddhism is less the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama than it is awakening or enacting Buddha-nature, then the analogous first jewel in Christian spirituality is having the mind of Christ (Christ-consciousness) (1 Cor. 2: 16; 1 Cor. 2: 12; Phil. 2: 5; Rom. 8: 5-6; Phil. 1: 9-11). Here mind refers to more than mere mental activity. We might think of it as the lens through which we see life and understand what it means to be human. It is a seeing with our heart when our heart is oriented toward and united with the heart of God.
The second jewel in Buddhism is dharma. In Christianity it is the teaching and way of living expressed and embodied by Jesus (Christ-living). The focus of this teaching is “the reign of God” (in Greek βασιλεία του Θεού). It’s short-hand is “the gospel” or the good news. It refers to an approach to life and a way of being in the world that is committed to making the dream of God come true “on earth as it is in heaven.” The gospel of Jesus was and is good news for some and bad news for others since it’s message is contrary to that peddled by the dominant culture’s powers that be. It means personalizing the dying and rising of Christ in the liturgy that is daily living.
The third jewel in Buddhism is Sangha. In Christianity it is ekklesia, the church. In Jesus’ time, there was no institutional notion of ekklesia. It refers to the household of faith. The Christ-vision and the Christ-life are meant to take place in and among mutually committed, faithful companions (Christian community) who are called and devoted to encouraging one another and to building each other up to love and good works (I Thess. 5:11; Heb. 10:24).
It is here, in taking refuge in the sangha (community), that I find Chödrön’s interpretation of her own tradition’s practice illuminating for us and for all others involved in spiritual formation, Christian or otherwise.
In New Testament times, the Greek word ekklesia, typically translated as “church,” originally had no specific religious connotation. It referred to an “assembly” of people who were called together and who met for a specific purpose. As I have said elsewhere, our raison d’etre is to participate together in the ongoing process of Christ-ening, to become human and holy, to participate in the dying and rising of Christ, and to cultivate lives of spiritual depth for the good of all persons and all creation.
The author of the Letter to the Ephesians offers another way of thinking about this by speaking of God equipping the saints for the work of ministry and moving them “to maturity, to the full measure of the full stature of Christ. And no longer being children” (4:12-14). One serious ailment in the church is that we have a lot of spiritual toddlers and adolescents walking around in adult bodies. The Second Vatican Council can be seen as the attempt born from the self-reflective wisdom and courage of Pope John XXIII to put an end to the institutional and local church’s tendency to infantilize adult members of the household of faith. This is captured in the famous but neglected words— “the universal call to holiness”— that countered an age old spiritual caste system that suggested the life of the priest, monk or nun was an extraordinary, holier, and higher calling than the life of the “ordinary” lay person.
When we gather as the household of faith, we are equal in the sight of God, though our sacred texts show God to be partial to the poor and the poor in spirit. We gather in humility and imperfection. We gather consciously and intentionally to grow up in Christ, to become mature adults who take responsibility for co-operating with God in bringing persons, communities, and all creation to the full measure, vitality, and freedom originally intended by God. The constellation of maturity, wholeness, and holiness is not just a psychological issue but a spiritual vocation, task, responsibility, and ideal. The journey toward spiritual maturity— for Christians, “the full measure of the full stature of Christ”— is a conscious movement of personal deepening in and with God. Ideally it is done in the company of others and benefits the common good. Sadly, by and large, most parishes and local congregations have neglected this responsibility.
Chödrön emphasizes that “taking refuge” in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha does not mean finding comfort or consolation in them “as a child might find consolation in Mommy or Daddy.” To the contrary, she claims taking refuge means “leaping out of the nest” and daring to face into the hard work that helps cultivate the qualities necessary for becoming more human and whole.
Going Out to Meet the Dragon
Chödrön offers another metaphor. Using the image of the warrior who goes out to do battle with the dragon, she explains that the dragon is “nothing but unfinished business presenting itself.” A grief not fully grieved, a fear not faced, a sadness hidden behind the veil of the need to succeed, a dream deferred, untended shame, being stuck, obsessing over what others think, the need for control, or subterranean resentment and anger bubbling just below the surface come to mind as examples. For us to become mature, healthy human beings involves being warriors who do not let fear or ignorance hold us back and keep us from going out to meet the dragon.2
But this battle and dragon are like no others. When we muster the courage and go to meet the dragon, we discover that all the armor that we have been wearing for so long under the illusion that it was protecting us, in fact, has been shielding us not from the dragon but from ourselves, keeping us from becoming more fully alive and awake.
The battle strategy is counter-intuitive, counter-cultural. Each time we dare to meet the dragon we dare to remove one more piece of armor, “particularly the armor that covers [our] heart.” In this sense, rather than implying consolation or safety, taking refuge actually refers to “the courage and the potential fearlessness of removing all the armor” that covers our deeper truth and way of being. This interpretation recasts the purpose of the sangha from merely being a sanctuary to being a mutually enhancing and connected people committed to supporting, challenging, and encouraging one another to continue to take off the armor, to remove our protections, and to undo “all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and gentleness and our awake quality.”3
Like the sangha, the Christian spiritual formation community is a “brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are committed to taking off their armor.”4 Its specific role and responsibility is to discourage the temptation to stay perennially armored and protected and to challenge each other to do the necessary inner work required to grow up into mature human beings. This challenge is not authoritarian, heavy handed, or presumptuous. When we are at our best, it is incarnated as the accumulation of trust built on reverent presence, deep listening, and genuine compassion that enables us to encourage one another to risk meeting the dragon and to remove a bit more of our armor.
We don’t do this by offering advice, arguing, judging, dismissing, or trying to fix or cure one another. We do it by being compassionately present to each other, and hearing one another into speech, into greater depth and fullness of living.5 It is grounded in the mutual commitment to dare to go where we’d rather not go (but where we must go) if we have any hope of becoming men and women of substance, wisdom, compassion, and grace. The church and world are sorely in need of such mature, spiritual elders who, while having been tenderized by life, have also been radically changed, sustained, and enlivened by the Spirit of wisdom and truth. How fortunate we are to have such brave companions.♦
[1] A Search for God in Time and Memory, viii-ix.
[2] The Wisdom of No Escape, 91.
[3], Ibid., 93.
[4] Ibid., 96.
[5] Theologian and educator Nelle Morton made the phrase “hearing to speech” famous in her book The Journey is Home.