Okay, when we're thinking of having a refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, it often does include this feeling of an outer Sangha, people, other human beings who help support us. Okay, yes we can have a feeling of refuge within ourselves, but that's basically the Dhamma within ourselves that we're holding onto. So it's really only one of the three that we encourage. We encourage having all three. Yes, you can certainly have it within yourself, but your limited if that is all you have. It's just not enough. To have a refuge in the Buddha himself, it's very important to know his story, to know the biographies of the Buddha. Read two, three, four it does not matter. Read as many as you need to get a feeling for what the man actually did. Reflect on the Ten Paramis that he perfected. Perfected! What would it be like to perfect them? Now, really reflect on it. What would it actually be like to perfect the Ten Paramis? To never get angry again in your whole life, just that in itself, wonderful! You know.
So then the Sangha, and in this case, we're talking about finding a refuge in the Sangha. We're basically talking about the big Sangha, the whole family of Buddhists. Because I go to Washington D.C., I go and visit a Thai temple or Sri Lankan Vihara that's there. I maybe have never been there before in my whole life. But when I arrive, it feels like home. The monks are walking around in exactly the same robes as they have here. Although in winter they have a sweater as well, you know. The Buddha statues are there. The candles, the flowers, whatever are there. They're going to meditate, sit on the floor. They're going to actually bow the exact same way that we bow. Every Therevadin Buddhist does all the same things in that way. It feels so comfortable. It feels so at home the minute you walk in. So this is a refuge around the world. This is Washington D.C. This is Los Angeles. This is Berlin. This is Thailand. This is any Therevadin Buddhist temple around the world. It's like another one of our homes that we can feel at home, a feeling of refuge. So it's very valuable and if we grab on to that refuge, it means that when we're back in the west we're not so lonely. There's a lot of meditators who will never visit the temples back in the West. They don't feel comfortable. They don't really like the religion and this and that. They miss out. They miss out on that whole beneficial refuge that could be there, right maybe in their hometown. So it is an important aspect to use the outer refuge of the Sangha as much as you can.