Refuge · Pāli: saraṇagamana (going for refuge); tisaraṇa (the threefold refuge)

To go for refuge is to make the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha the centre of your life. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu puts the act plainly: “The act of going for refuge marks the point where one commits oneself to taking the Dhamma, or the Buddha’s teaching, as the primary guide to one’s life.” The three are known in Pali as the tisaraṇa, the “Threefold Refuge”, and as the tiratana or “Triple Gem”, which the Access to Insight glossary describes as “ideals to which all Buddhists turn for refuge”.

The words themselves are short and very old. The first passage of the Khuddakapāṭha is titled Saranagamana, “Going for Refuge”, and reads: “I go to the Buddha for refuge. I go to the Dhamma for refuge. I go to the Sangha for refuge.” The same three lines then follow a second time and a third time, which is why the formula is traditionally recited three times over.

The Dhammapada is honest about what a refuge is not. “Driven only by fear, do men go for refuge to many places”, it says, “to hills, woods, groves, trees and shrines”. “Such, indeed, is no safe refuge” (verses 188 to 189). The refuge that holds is going to “the Buddha, the Teaching and his Order” and penetrating “with transcendental wisdom the Four Noble Truths” (verses 190 to 191), because “This indeed is the safe refuge, this the refuge supreme” (verse 192).

What is added to refuge differs by tradition. In Mahayana schools the commitment reaches further: “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). For what each of the three refuges is, see the Three Jewels.