Ngöndro Retreat: Refuge

This one-day retreat features several sessions in the morning and afternoon, with short, pithy meditations on causes of refuge, deepening our motivation for refuge, and the blissful, purifying meditations. We will have a refresher of the main points in Geshe-la’s teachings, and plenty of time to accumulate Refuge recitations.

Enjoy the company of our fellow Ngöndro participants as we spend an day consolidating our practice and connecting with the meditation topics Geshe Zopa taught on.

The First Ngondro: Refuge
A key component of Ngöndro is the practice of taking refuge. While we often seek temporary refuges in life, the ultimate refuge is buddhahood itself. By sincerely taking refuge in the Three Jewels, we open ourselves to the blessings and transformative power of the Buddha’s teachings.

Extracted from Geshe-la’s own teachings, over the coming several retreat days we will incorporate meditations on:
(1) Four Common Ngondros: perfect human rebirth, karma, death and impermanence, limitations of samsara
(2) Causes of Refuge: worldly, lower scope, hearers and solitary realisers, bodhisattvas, and the tantric perspective
(3) Purifying Meditations on Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, including Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya.

In the Refuge Ngöndro, we think of our guru as a buddha and feel that all the buddhas are present with him in front of us. The cause for us to receive their blessings is our aspiration.

You can consider yourself a Buddhist if you feel that buddhas are really present and if you are confident in their power to free you definitively from suffering; and not only you but all other beings. If you feel this intensely, strongly, this is the real, actual taking refuge.