Author: joseph mauricio

Understanding Refuge in Modern Times

Ever wish you could just run and hide? Ever play hide and seek with your life because it all becomes too heavy? Do you ever reach for the panic-button in reaction to difficulty? Ever slump in discouragement because it’s all on you, but you just can’t figure it out?

Well, maybe it is on you. But maybe it’s not your fault.

Many of us have never learned to see our lives as they are. Many of us have never learned how to think. We just accept the mind’s confusion, blame our woes on others, and pray for a way out. But maybe there is no way out, except to be here—to learn to see what’s happening and work through it.

We can do this. With patience, kindness, and love, we can gain agency in our lives. We can become players instead of victims—if we are willing to learn. In Buddhism, we look to the example of an enlightened mind, which reflects the enlightenment inherent in all of us.

It takes training to learn to see beyond the compulsive thinking that grasps at the wrong straws. We create more confusion out of a confused world when we blindly reach for what we think will save us. This might be as grand as a lifelong commitment to a nation or spiritual community—or as quick and impulsive as a harsh word, or hitting “send.”

When we feel pressured and need relief—when we’re challenged, triggered, or brutalized by life—our immediate defense is often to lash out. We turn to anger and aggression, or to something or someone we hope will save us. Or we retreat to a private island in our mind, looking for refuge.

But when we seek refuge in something not grounded in what is, we only deepen our confusion. We stop learning.

Throughout history, there have been countless religious, cultural, and commercial icons of refuge. Yet—if you’ll grant me a cliché—wherever you go, there you are.

And if we’re not willing to be here, how can we ever move beyond?

We’ve taken the beautiful teachings of Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha and used them to condemn one another—or to save ourselves. Perhaps we spin on a bipolar wheel of condemnation and salvation, swearing off our vices each morning and forgetting by nightfall.

When I was lost in the self-abusive cycles of alcohol and drug addiction, I was blind to any direction my life could take. I spent all my time trying to extricate myself from the sins I’d committed the night before. I took refuge in blame and resentment.

The legal counsel of my rattled brain was perpetually building cases against some system or person. The biggest problem was that I thought I could do it alone. I kept my self-professed sins to myself, spinning outward appearances however they needed to look.

The phrase is “close to the vest”—but “vest” is close to the heart. And putting all that guilt, shame, and doubt into my own heart was as unhealthy as it was ineffective. Because no matter how intelligent we are, it’s our heart that communicates. Whether we understand that—or the recipient of our communication does—we still feel each other. No one needs facts to stop trusting us. If our heart is not in sync with itself, our confusion communicates. And the world responds by withholding trust. This only deepens our isolation, as we carry a broken heart in secret through a world of resentment.

At some point, in utter frustration at nothing working, I just surrendered. There was nowhere left to run. Which left me here. The way out is the way in.

We sit. And we sit. Until we begin to disengage the compulsive mind from the mind’s potential. We get lost in fantasy. We train the mind to recognize that—and return to ourselves, and this very moment. At any time, again and again, as we drift into delusion, we can return to now.

That is our refuge.

In meditation, we train the mind to recognize delusions of blame, shame, doubt, and confusion, and to turn back to trust—in our own heart, and in the present moment.

This is the example of the Buddha. No one saved him. He worked through is shit. He awakened.

With nowhere to run and no external salvation, Buddhism offers practical remedies. We turn to the Buddha—not for rescue, but as an example of a liberation we can achieve. How is this different from running to a god, a savior, a corporation, or a country to save us? Well, the Buddha will not save us. He is long gone. But the enlightened mind he accessed is available to all of us if we follow his example.

But taking refuge in his example means being willing to face ourselves, now in this moment. Not blaming ourselves for the past. We have no control over the past, so how can we be faulted for that which we have no control? Maybe there is no fault, but it is an opportunity to change the present. And no matter how difficult that present may be, it is always better to face it than to turn away.

So when we are triggered, panicked, or confused, we have the opportunity to turn to the enlightened mind within us. You may see this as your higher power, the awakened mind, which offers us the strength to face the moment, through each moment of our life.

Instead of grasping for external salvation, we can turn to the example of an awakened mind, which liberates the awakened mind within us.

The Buddha was not a god. He was a human being—who lived, died, failed, and succeeded. He had no supernatural powers. He was a teacher and student of the Dharma (the path to liberation) who worked diligently to free himself from his own suffering. Because he did the work, he understood how others suffer—and offered teachings to guide people to their own liberation.

Turning to this example is Taking Refuge in the Buddha.

“Buddha” means awake. We are taking refuge in our own wakefulness—both the part that already exists, and the part still developing.

To guide us on the path, we turn to the teachings—a map, not a doctrine. This is Taking Refuge in the Dharma.

The Buddha offered his teachings (the Dharma), and he offered the wisdom of the community around him—the teachers and students walking the path together. This is Taking Refuge in the Sangha.

The idea that we could wake up tomorrow free of guilt, resentment, and limiting patterns might seem like magic. But the Buddha offered no magic—only an ordinary path to learn how to see.

A Beginner’s Guide to The Mind’s Great Awakening

Enlightenment. They say those who have reached enlightenment never speak of it, and those who speak of it have never reached it.

This makes me uniquely qualified to speak about it.

First, we might define this well-worn, well-used term. To me, enlightenment is the experience of a mind stabilized in a state of perpetual wakefulness. Wakefulness is the mind freed from its habitual misconceptions—those distortions shaped by attachment, bias, and ignorance. When the mind is free of ignorance, it naturally reveals its innate wakefulness. In other words, it connects with wisdom. So wisdom, it seems, is the mind’s natural state. So, reaching enlightenment should be easy. All we need to do is identify and remove any obstacles to the mind finding its way home.

Simple, yes. But not so easy. Awakening into our natural state requires dis-believing all the sticky things the world throws at us, as well as the equally sticky parts of a mind that has been conditioned by sticky views based on avarise, aversion and avoidance. Buddhist texts refer to these wrong views collectively as ignorance as they are based on not knowing – or believing our true selves. Ignorance, therefore, is the converse of wisdom.

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge or learning. It is not an accumulation, but an opening—an attunement to something already present, both within and beyond the individual. Some say it is a cosmic state, natural throughout the universe. The experience of that knowing openness is what we call wakefulness. Enlightenment is when this wisdom experience becomes stabilized.

If wisdom is an experience of an open mind rather than a product of accumulated learning, then learning, while important, can also become an obstacle. It develops the mind, yes—but it also risks inflating the ego, which encumbers the mind with things about itself, thus reducing the clarity of mind needed for direct perception. The enlightened mind sees beyond concepts and egoic frameworks to direct contact with reality as it is. Terms like “as it is,” “just so,” or “things as they are” are used traditionally to describe clear seeing. In this sense, enlightenment may not be the exalted or elevated state that some fancy it to be. In fact, enlightenment might be quite ordinary. simply seeing reality, within and without, clearly, as it is.

Just so.

Chögyam Trungpa once suggested that enlightenment is not a higher state, at al but the “lowest of the low of experiences.”  This opening of the mind occurs when the conceptual mind exhausts itself.

The process of exhausting can sometimes be an excruciating. I’m not convinced the path must be torturous, but traditionally, it does involve a dislodging of pride, ego, and fixed identity. That dislodging—the letting go of our tight grip on self— happens to all of us, often through painful experiences. It happens when the world dissolves and our hearts crack open leaving us with no energy to struggle, and no. recourse but to accept and open.

There is a saying: Disappointment is the chariot of liberation. For example, when we break up with a partner to whom we were deeply attached, the pain is twofold. First, we grieve the separation. But more subtly, we also grieve the loss of the identity that was constructed around that relationship. And it is precisely that identity that can obscure sustained wakefulness. Some traditions suggest renouncing relationships for this reason. Others say that enlightenment can emerge even amidst attachment, addiction, and the turmoil we create by continually substantiating ourselves to ourselves.

This leads to the idea of the inseparability of Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara is the endless wheel of attachment, addiction, and suffering—the habitual conditioning of the mind. Nirvana is its absence: the opening to clarity, to wisdom beyond the self. While some traditions aim to withdraw from Samsara entirely, my tradition teaches that we can live within Samsara and still see its emptiness—its insubstantiality—and the illusory nature of what the world claims as true.

Astronauts who have seen Earth from space often describe it as a profound, perspective-shifting experience—one filled with awe, tenderness, and love for this fragile blue orb that nurtures life. In this way, enlightenment can be likened to a vast perspective—one that sees beyond itself, and continues to see beyond itself, again and again. As Pema Chödrön says, it’s like peeling the layers of an onion. The unveiling of misconception and delusion is an ongoing process.

From this point of view, perhaps there is no fixed, stabilized state to attain. Stephen Hawking, in his later work, concluded that there is no single grand unified theory of physics—only different theories that illuminate reality from different angles. Understanding, then, is not about finding the final answer, but about seeing through various perspectives, again and again.

If enlightenment is, in fact, the stabilization of perpetual transition, then it means the mind has trained itself to remain open regardless of circumstance. Tara Brach refers to this as “radical enlightenment”—the mind’s ability to experience, open, experience, open, again and again, never resting in the security of fixed ideas.

Perhaps the enlightened experience is completely present and spontaneous—leading nowhere, clinging to nothing, understanding nothing beyond what is actually here, now. Maybe it is very simple and our journey is to stop complicating it. This open naivete is called “beginner’s mind”.  Not over thinking, but learning. Enlightenment for dummies, you might say. Chics hatching into a new world. Babies opening their eyes. Life all around us, indomitable unstoppable often overlooked but always there.  And we can join that quite simply.

A being in a state of perpetual learning.

When Cruelty Becomes the Norm

Photos by Maria Lau, on site at “No Kings” NYC

As violence in our culture becomes increasingly normalized, we naturally begin to grow desensitized. This is, in some ways, a psychological adaptation—our minds regulating themselves in order to survive the constant barrage of suffering and threat. But this normalization shifts our internal baselines: what was once unthinkable becomes merely uncomfortable… and then, quietly, becomes acceptable. Like the proverbial frog in water slowly brought to a boil, we may not notice what’s happening until it’s too late—until the flesh falls from our bones. I only hope we make a wonderful human stew.

At a recent No Kings protest, a photographer friend of mine saw a sign that read: “When cruelty becomes normal, compassion seems radical.”

That idea struck me deeply. The forces of hatred and cruelty have become so embedded in our society that speaking out against them can provoke backlash, censorship, or isolation. Yet if we don’t speak out, that same darkness begins to seep inward. As Joe Strummer once warned, “We’re working for the clampdown.” And here we are—told to “get along, get along.”

How does someone committed to nonviolence and kindness push back against a rising tide of ignorance? Perhaps the answer is in the question. If ignorance is the disease, then the antidote is the clear and courageous offering of truth. Wherever we can—through conversation, media, art, or daily example—we must counter distortion with clarity.

This is a time for artists, creatives, philosophers, and writers to rise up—not with dogma, but with presence and heart. We must choose roles that contribute meaningfully to society. Art matters. It always has.

I’m reminded of how, during the Nazi occupation of France, playwright Jean Anouilh staged Antigone as a veiled indictment of collaboration and authoritarianism. The occupying forces didn’t catch the deeper meaning—but the people did. Similarly, Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros warned of creeping fascism through absurdist allegory. Not all protests need to be loud; some speak powerfully through metaphor.

The same applies to our own hearts. If we root ourselves in compassion—true, fearless compassion—we tap into something far more potent than self-righteous anger. The image of the bodhisattva comes to mind: a humble servant, setting aside ego and personal gain in order to benefit others. This isn’t weakness. It’s one of the most powerful stances we can take.

Compassion doesn’t have to be grand. It can start with expanding the circle of our care—from pets, to friends, to strangers, and even to adversaries. If we nurture that inner warrior of compassion, we can become strong in the face of repression, wise amid ignorance, and peaceful in a violent world.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once used the image of the Garuda—a mythic bird that soars with fearless compassion—to represent what he called the “outrageous” bravery of an open heart. He said this kind of bravery defies our narrow, self-protective instincts. It dares us to leap beyond the smallness of self-concern into the vastness of humanity.

And make no mistake: those who cling to strength through violence, hateful rhetoric, and domination are often the most frightened among us.

How, then, do we respond? By showing up. By being sane, balanced, and clear—even when the world around us isn’t. Each moment of calm presence, each small act of compassion, offers sanity back to a world that desperately needs it. Whether it’s just one person at the coffee shop or a room full of people at a talk—your kindness matters.

Even more outrageously: we may end up benefiting the oppressors, too. That’s the radical nature of true compassion. No enemies. No kings. No victims. No heroes. Just human beings—some who will listen, and some who won’t. But compassion doesn’t require agreement. It requires courage.

When I hear the phrase “We are all children of God,” I feel the deep equality of sentient life. In Buddhism, we speak less of God as a figurehead, and more of the innate Buddha nature in all beings that sparks awakening in us all. That is the wellspring of our strength. Tapping into this goodness allows us to face cruelty with clarity, to stand in danger with dignity, and to act with courage.

When cruelty becomes the norm, those who remain awake become strong reminders of sanity.

But have as we face cruelty in our world can we face the cruelty in own mind? How do we treat ourselves? How do we speak to ourselves? We don’t have to follow along with oppression, even our own. We can take the brave step of facing our own life with kindness, so we have the strength to face the world. The Shambhala teachings urge us to be “kind to ourselves and merciful to others.” It all starts with “Maitri” or lovingkindness for ourselves.

When we choose kindness in the face of cruelty, whether in our society or our mind we are taking an outrageous step—not just to change the world, but to trust in our own basic goodness. And if that changes nothing but our belief in ourselves we’ve taken an outrageous step forward.

 And maybe that changes everything.