Refuge Vow

I took refuge with Lama Shempen in North Wales in May 2016, aged 28. In short this means that I officially chose to become a Buddhist on this day, at this ceremony. To me it meant many things, including choosing to work with my mind/ the nature of being alive as a human, and learning how to be kinder to myself and others.

I had been practising meditation for several years and had learned a lot about myself through it (though still to this day only the tip of the iceberg). When you make a refuge vow, they say you are choosing the path of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha is our teacher. The Dharma refers to the teachings; the signposts along the path you will follow. The Sangha is the community around you, those who will help to keep you on the path.

For me, at the start, it was about the Sangha first and foremost. I felt some guilt for my reasoning (shouldn’t it be more about my internal quest for enlightenment than cute spiritual hook-ups?), but in the words of my first meditation instructor Doug, ‘Whatever it takes to get you to the cushion.’ I was somewhat addicted to hanging out with young meditators from other worlds. I liked the conversations. I liked the travel. I liked the kisses. I liked the philosophy and rituals. And sometimes I even liked the meditation. Refuge meant connecting with people who wanted to wake up and evolve, because it mirrored what I wanted to do, too.

This is where God, or the Buddha, or the universe (depending on what you call ‘it’) had a little joke with me. I met my partner Jake the day after I ‘became’ a refuged Buddhist, at a gig his band was playing, and promptly fell head over heels in love. It wasn’t long before I was pregnant with our first child. The aligning of my refuge vow with the starting of my family always confused me. Of all the dates in my whole life up to this point, both things arrived accidentally in the same week. I thought by choosing the path of dharma more officially, it meant I’d chosen a path of escapism, strangers, and travel. Of romantic and lonely adventures that would continue to lead me back to myself.

Before getting pregnant I’d helped to organise meditation retreats for young people, and I saw taking refuge as a more committed continuation of that. This cosmic joke brought me a bigger challenge than I could’ve imagined. I guess we all know that when we wish for something, it rarely arrives in the form that we think it will. I usually find my manifestations are harder, more intense, and ultimately far richer for the hard work.

Any part of me dreaming of a transitory life was instead asked to work with this: routine, partnership, a family, growing up, the miracle of birth, the giving of myself; my bones, breasts, milk, arms, body. My night times, day times, my voice, my thoughts, my spine. Giving it all in the name of family life and in loving two children more deeply than anything I could’ve imagined. In the name of a relationship with a person who mirrors my blind-spots, and many of my fears and shortcomings. A partner who together, over time, has helped me deeply get to know myself and has inspired me with humbleness and discipline, but also never lets me relax until my shadow-work is done. Day by day with no cheap thrills or short-cuts.

The Buddhist term for this is ‘the path of a householder’. And the path of an awakening householder can be a tricky path. A poem of patience, woven in and out of unknotting little boys’ hair and losing oneself over and over, tumbled around like laundry in a wash of chores and snack-plates and bedtime bargaining. All the while, never being able to run away. Never able to leave something you cherish too dearly. Learning how to fight the - sometimes peaceful, sometimes panicky - fight for time, for space, for a sense of self again.

All the fears rise up. Anger, boredom, insecurity, jealousy, control. I get over-protective - of the kids, of Jake, and of myself. But the universe brings into our orbits just enough of what we need to open, inch by inch, towards love, the divine, our own selves. 

As a mother, space can feel like a dream. Every crevice of our house gets covered in storybooks, Lego, grubby leggings, cold pasta. Endless ketchup. And most days bring the excruciating reminders of impermanence in the guise of catastrophising thoughts on how to keep your children alive. The Dharma is in it all; in the leggings and the ketchup bottle and the flashes of death. It’s in the boundaries of alone-time and the plastic ducks of bath time. The path is all of it, is my response to all of it, whether I’m being pushed to my edge again or sweetly singing along. Tara Brach (or is it Pema Chodron?) says, ‘Meet your edge and soften.’ This is now my main practice. 

Sometimes at night when the boys are in bed, Jake and I take out our meditation cushions and our dharma books. We debate egolessness and spiritual materialism. One hour, sometimes two; a long deep inhale of reading, writing, thinking, sitting. So here is the elusive me that I miss so much. I have been hunting for a sense of her all through the day. (Then I read that there is no me, no I, no ego, no self. No-one home, to use Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s words. So who is this me that feels so flattened, then? Who is at times resentfully letting herself be controlled by two tiny people?)

We don’t know what we’re doing, but still it is brave. Brave to open, brave to show up, brave to surrender. Brave to create gaps, to stop the constant forward momentum, to let another person glimpse you. My family sees the flurry of me, the whirlwind around me, and they also see me, as I am, at the centre, still and smiling, hurt and happy, raw and fresh. 

This is the householder. Some parts sobbing, some parts overspilling with joy, all the while making sandwiches and washing bibs.